~stef/blog/
Reflections on the FCForum2010
This years Free Culture Forum goal was to come up with some economic models to support the free culture outlined in last years charter. Let me dump my random thoughts regarding this event on you:
Prop(rietary) culture
Before I delve into some specific models I have to state that Free Culture is only to a small degree about music, movies and books. In fact these three manifestations of culture are simply those ones that are based in the entertainment industry or as we called it in one of our working groups the prop(rietary) culture. Free culture is a lot of other things, it might be blogging, 3d printing, fanflicks, theater and a host of other things that produce or are based on the commons.
The corporations making up the entertainment industry are very good at communication, by owning or being the media most of us consume everyday - they are much louder than their real economic importance is. So we tend to give them more attention than they really deserve. By comparison the complete entertainment industry is only a tiny fraction of the food or automobile industry.
Prop Culture is whining about declining profits, yet as many studies show (citation needed) the amount of money going to music/movies has increased as has the production of those. Those whining in prop culture are the companies behind the thugs of the content maffia, these are not really producing culture but only ephemeral entertainment products. These products for example like Justin Bieber, Brittney Spears or the umpteenth Robin Hood movie adaptation are designed, produced and marketed products to consumers. Most of these products have a limited lifetime and then they're obsolete.
The myth of the 'rock star' is a lie (let's call it that from now: the 'rock-star-lie'), there is only a very limited number of natural stars - without being a product of the industry, becoming one is as improbable as winning the lottery - still exactly this myth is being sold to thousands of aspiring artists. A huge number of such products never recovers the product development costs and the competition of offerings on the Internet do reduces the chances to land a hit.
So instead of trying to do the job of well-compensated businessmen to find out how to make more money for their corporations, we should focus our efforts to find new economic models to foster diversity and concentrate on the middle and end of the long-tail of cultural production. After all giving more money to already successful artists will not motivate them to create more. Also why would anyone pump more capital into a dying industry?
Models
Let's have a look at some of the more exciting models that were or were not discussed at the forum. One of the most striking realizations for me was the fact, that most of free culture is currently produced by wealth that has been pre-accumulated out-side Free Culture, we need to find ways how to bootstrap this system, so that it can become self-sustainable. The incentives of the industry to create share-holder value through artificial scarcity is in direct opposition to our goal to foster cultural production.
Flatrates
Lot's of people are very excited about the Brazilian Internet flatrate, me not so much. After-all we do have the same for storage devices and even that has been just recently ruled unlawful in some cases (pdf). The beneficiaries of such a tax would be the dying industry, while in fact more than 60% of all shared files are porn. Shouldn't we support that industry then, what about fostering diversity and supporting artists directly? So the problem is, how to allocate the accumulated capital, why should this be done by a central authority, in the age of the Internet consumers themselves could decide what to support and what not. Decentralizing this decision would make sense, i think making Flattr or a similar service mandatory might solve this problem, but only if there is fierce competition between such services and citizens can choose which service to use.
Secondary currencies: the Culturo
Turning the flatrate into a voluntary system might make a lot more sense. People get a certain amount of their wages not in euros, but in 'culturos', which they can spend on any free culture product - directly rewarding the producer. Instead of some disengaged institution "redistributing" wealth to the head of the long-tail, people could directly decide what they want to support and possibly support more cultural producers on the middle of the long-tail. From a decentralization fundamentalist view, this is way more attractive.
The fashion business
Johanna Blakely made a very convincing argument, that the fashion industry is thriving with innovation exactly because the lack of protection. Big fashion houses are producing new collections every half year. While these do not last very long, there is also a high degree of reuse, we can see the same motives and designs coming back every once in a while. Let's not forget this model, it will come handy in combination with the next one:
Free Software business models
As far as free software development goes, if development is renumerated at all, then usually only the invested time spent is compensated as a normal hourly wage. This is great, insofar as it motivates the developer to create more. If free software would copy the 'rock star lie' for compensation, the results would be much more bleak. So combining this model and the fashion business model could solve as a general solution to reward sustainable production of free cultural goods. The fashion industry model is very much similar already to free software, as it enables copying after the creation of the product once, this is quite peculiar as it transcends the virtual space and is applied to physical goods.
We have seen some exciting models, interesting theories have been discussed, now we need to come up with some general guidelines how to make free culture not only sustainable from wealth generated outside.
Az idei 26c3 kongresszuson a legnagyobb lokális visszhangot az első nap Wikileaks előadása (
Az ötlet az, hogy olyan törvényeket hoznak, amelyek más országokban már bizonyítottak. Ilyenek például a belga újságírókat, a svéd ISP jogait védő törvények, vagy 
HAR: "hacking at random". Pár napos hackerfesztivál, kempingben. Nagyon jó előadások, csomó érdekes workshop (pl lockpicking, forrasztás, 3d nyomtatás, etc) és rengeteg aktív ember. Nem nagyon volt idő unatkozni. Ha benyomást akarsz szerezni milyen lehetett, nézd meg ezt az 
Sajnos eddig nem jutott időm egy beszámolóra, kárpótlásul most ez. Ki 
...vázlatos (angol nyelvű) leirata elérhető 
