The following is the text of an email I sent to Lawrence Lessig yesterday:

Dr. Lessig,

I attended your discussion at SXSW here in Austin, but did not get a chance to suggest my idea for helping to reform copyright's greatest abuses. Basically it is compulsory licensing. When I buy a single copy of your work, I also buy a license to distribute a single copy of a derivative work, as long as I include your copy with it. So if I buy your CD, I can distribute a remix CD as long as I include your original CD with my remix, without having to seek further approval. For every one of my derivatives, I must buy and include one of your originals. We have the option of negotiating a lower price for the license to my derivative work, but you cannot charge more than what is charged at retail, and you cannot deny me the ability to build upon your work as long as I pay. I also want to emphasize that this should allow any retail purchase. If I get your CD legitimately from a used CD store for $5 instead of the $15 new, it still counts.

So what does this mean? If nobody wants to build on your work, you get exactly what you had before. If, however, it turns out that my derivative is at least 10% as popular as the original, all of a sudden you have the equivalent of a 10% increase in sales, without doing any extra work. Remixing is huge in the electronic music world, with many songs' remixes greatly surpassing the popularity of the original. If we could apply this to music (bedroom remixes), film ("The Phantom Edit" or the Utah video chain distributing "cleaned up" DVDs), short stories, poetry, or any other kind copyrighted media, the potential is vast. As a content producer, you have the advantage of other people testing out ideas. If there is potential in my derivative, you can offer me cheaper licensing terms to encourage higher sales, or to get a bigger chunk of the added revenue. If there is no added potential, there is no loss.

Another, more subtle benefit would come in the long term, when this is a more common way of working. If you expect that others will build upon your work, the onus is not nearly so great to provide a complete package. You don't have to provide pretty pictures in the liner notes, or a second disc of remixes, or get that Senegalese tribal drummer into the studio. You can put out a less-fully articulated expression because you don't have to be complete or authoritative. In that situation, your up-front investment can be considerably reduced.

One could even take this further and use creators of derivatives as a "farm team." In the electronic music world, a new, potentially hot talent can start out with remixes to prove their ability, and then move on to original works (or, given the low cost of home production, the reverse). The computer gaming world has been revolutionized by the success of the Counterstrike mod of Valve Software's Half-Life, a mod which was so popular that it was packaged in a retail box and sold on store shelves long after Half-Life itself had grown stale and irrelevant. The threshold for both publishers and creators is considerably reduced, because the latter can take baby steps into the field, while the former can audition candidates for hire with real portfolios and minimal investment. Perhaps the producers would even get into the habit of distributing the raw source material, such as individual, unmixed tracks, which would be even further lower the level of difficulty in producing a derived work. Like the GNU movement, this would blur the line between a producer and consumer.

Of course, I see several problems with this proposal, as I mentioned initially. If you can create derived works for a fee without other restrictions, there is less impetus to fix what is wrong with copyright in the US in the first place. I would argue that might not be the reality as this plays out. Once the big media publishers get into the habit of seeing their customers as potential co-producers instead of enemies, then their strident calls for copyright regulation would quiet. It would also open up potentially greater revenues for them while reducing their costs, taking the wind out of the financial argument for extended copyright.

The other problem that I see is with works that are subsidized or outright paid for with advertising. Since there is no retail price for those, derivative works under this system wouldn't be possible. It's also conceivable that big media would then embed advertising in some form into all works, just to make it impossible to create derived works. Given the revenue potential, I don't expect they'd be that short-sighted, but then, I used to work at Audiogalaxy and should know better.

The big picture here is that this system would separate money from creative control and eliminate much of the economic friction that exists in licensing today. This wouldn't eliminate that source of revenue, though, as you could always negotiate a cheaper license for a derivative work; in fact, it would often be in the best interest of the producer of the original to do so.

I feel the strongest part of this idea is that the cost for becoming a "remixer" is the exact same as the cost of being a consumer. Further, the copyright owner has no control over the derived work, but is still fully paid. If you have a flawed production of an essentially good idea, someone can realize it to its potential. Society at large benefits from the best expression of a particular idea. And the creativity of other producers is not stifled. I recognize that there are flaws with this idea, but if we waited until our ideas were perfect before revealing them to the world, they would never be revealed and they would never be perfect.

I especially like the phrase I coined to end the email. I feel so smrat.

¶ 508 Posted at 10.59 AM ⇒ No Comments ( copyright | letters | sxsw )