[ExI] The Street Performer Protocol

[Emlyn]

"We introduce the Street Performer Protocol, an electronic-commerce
mechanism to facilitate the private financing of public works. Using
this protocol, people would place donations in escrow, to be released
to an author in the event that the promised work be put in the public
domain. This protocol has the potential to fund alternative or
"marginal" works."

http://www.firstmonday.org/issues/issue4_6/kelsey/

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I was interested to come across this paper, because I've been thinking
about the same idea for some years. I think that the whole concept of
selling copies of creative information works is busy failing currently
and will fail completely at some point in, say, the next 10 years.

This concept, the idea of moving payment to pre-release, is the right
way to replace selling copies, imo. If you think about it, it actually
makes more sense in a way; the creator is paid directly for what is
created, rather than for copies, which are an indirect product of the
work.

I think there are a few errors in the focus of the paper, or at least
my opinion differs.

Firstly, I think the escrow/publisher party is better thought of as a
big time website. Think an Amazon or EBay. It'd track two major
things: Creator track record (inclusing ratings by sponsors and public
generally), and Sponsor donation history. Also, it'd provide all the
functions for creators to create & manage projects for sponsoring, and
sponsors to subscribe, etc etc, to projects. Some central organisation
is needed, not for trust reasons, so much as for marketting reasons -
the concept of donating prior to creative work release must be sold to
the public. It's not something that single artists in the wilderness
(even someone of say Steven King's fame) can do alone.

There is an idea that you need to bind the creator somehow, to ensure
they release the work. I'm not sure that matters too much. Creators
will be bound by their own reputation. Taking money and delivering
nothing will end up with a trashed reputation.

So, I think in many cases the idea of releasing money only on release
of the product into the public domain (let's be more realistic and say
"under creative commons licensing") is unnecessary. Over-engineered.
Let creators get the money up front. They might need it to live on
while creating the artwork!

I think the focus on small creators is wrong (even to the point of the
name, "The Street Performer Protocol"). Who are people going to donate
to, unknown people or known people? No matter how much we might like
the ideal of unknown creators getting a go, people aren't going to
part with their money without knowing they will get something for it.
I think that implies people will lean toward paying those with some
measure of fame (reputation). In fact, I think people will mostly
donate to people who are the most famous. I'd like to hope that the
overall curve of money vs fame would be less spiky than it is today,
but I can't prove it :-)

I don't think they address how you actually get people to sponsor
creation in that paper. I think this is surprisingly easy to answer...
it's via status. I think people generally spend their money to
increase their status with their social circle (friends, family, ...).
So, if you can promote the idea of sponsoring as a high status thing,
you should be able to get people to do it.

What creators will need to do to sweeten the deal is to make their
sponsors into a priveleged elite. A big name band should make the best
tickets to their gigs available to sponsors only. They could have some
special sponsor-only shows. Authors could offer signed paper copies of
books, or acknowledgements in the text, to the sponsors. Many types of
creators could offer prizes like inclusion of a sponsor as a minor
character (eg: in a video game) to the winner of sponsor-only
competitions. Etc.

This kind of stuff is actually rightly the domain of the traditional
publisher. The problem of soliciting donations is a problem of
marketting. Marketers have been selling us a brown fizzy drink for far
less substantive benefits for many years. If someone can get the core
concept off the ground, market the overall idea, then selling
individual creators / creative groups is just the new job for the
existing middle men.

How do you kickstart it? You take existing famous creators
(musicians/writers/artists/movie makers) en masse, and get them to
flog their work this way. How do you convince them to try it? Um, you
probably need to be their existing publishing company.

Why would a big company do it? Because copyright is going to die.
Their profits are already falling. Gotta do something! And, there'll
be a tipping point, where the public understands and supports the idea
to such an extent that they will no longer pay for a copy of anything.
At that point, the small handful (1 -> 5??) of publishers who went out
and owned the new space will own the revenue generation potential, and
the old guard will fall to bits.

Did I mention that there's no reason to consider that all the money
must go to the creator? You could properly fund entire projects this
way, paying all the same people who get paid now. Publishers,
advertisers, twenty zillion faceless people along the way. For
example, you could entirely fund a big budget movie this way. Just
imagine the money you could raise with some big star's names on the
project, big name directors, maybe a known franchise (Die Hard 8.0,
"He's really dead this time"). Sponsor only pre-release screenings. 10
lucky sponsors get to appear as extras in a crowd scene. Marketed
world wide. How much money could you pull in that way?

So how about it, Sony? EMI? Warner??

Emlyn