The first speaker of the Research Workshop on Free Culture was Herkko Hietanen from the Helsinki University of Technology and his presentation was based on his paper titled "Honey I Took Out the Trash" which considers the issue of waste brought about by the misuse or non-use of Intellectual Property. Herkko's "one original thought" in his paper is to consider environmental economics and recycling copyright. He began his discussion with a few thoughts about John Locke's thesis that everything given by God can be made man's through the product of his work. Locke also emphasised that nothing be wasted or spoiled. Herkko presented an argument that copyright creates much of this waste by imposing too many restrictions on the use of the content from the perspective of people who may wish to make use of the content. A distinction was drawn between the effect of copyright on waste from the perspective of the copyright owner and from the perspective of a prospective consumer or user of that content.Waste is largely a social issue as well as a financial issue. Copyright imposes a transactional cost on the use of content protected by copyright and not otherwise licensed and that cost manifests largely in the costs users usually incur when they want to license content. Obviously, from the perspective of the content creator, the costs are minimal because copyright usually vests by default when a work is created.
Christopher Adams, a self-confessed amateur scholar, presented a paper titled "The Sovereignty of Free Culture: Georges Bataille and The Accursed Share". The fundamental economic problem is how to manage our waste. He cited Marcel Mauss and his book, The Gift. Mauss spoke about the gift giving culture of certain archaic societies. Christopher spoke about the Native American practice of potlatch which involved cultural gift giving which caused some concern for the American government of the time. Trade really has its roots in gift giving and this perspective reshapes the economic theory model. Christopher cited Mauss' thoughts about copyright further and how payment for artistic work is a relatively novel concept. Christopher's thesis received some criticism during Q&A, particularly by Herkko.
Leah Belsky was up next with a presentation based on a paper titled "Everything in its right place: Social cooperation and the production and distribution of creative works" co-authored by her, Byron Kahr and Yochai Benkler. She began speaking about alternative models that musicians use to distribute their content online. She used Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails as examples of these alternatives. Leah argued that traditional economic theory doesn't explain why people might pay for something they could have for free. Nine Inch Nails' Ghosts release is a good example of this. The paper was a result of a study of four sites that use a voluntary payment model. The four sites are Songslide (an independent music store which allows customers to pick how much to pay for a given song - the more people pay, the more is distributed to artists); Magnatune (the payment model is similar to Songslide but expressed differently); Sheeba (another music site that allows for variable payment options including a "creative currency" model) and Jonathan Coulton who sells his songs for $1 for many songs and allows for variations on this. Jonathan Coulton is particularly successful with his model. In the traditional music distribution market, music labels tend to pay about 6% to 10% of album sales to artists, of which only about 16% of artists break even. iTunes pays about 8% to 14% to artists by way of a comparison.
Jeong Min Choi spoke about how the Korean entertainment industry has begun litigating against individual users and how (or whether) this impacted on their attitudes. Self-regulation in Korea proves to be more effective than legal enforcement. That being said even slight infringements have been treated harshly so the question this raises is whether this strict approach has impacted on users' attitudes and behaviours. Most users are in their early 20s and were largely male and educated. Often copyright owners would seek payments from users instead of litigating although there have been complaints about the processes followed which included charges without warning and law firms charging outrageous interest on amounts payable. Improvements to the system include advance warning and public education. Changes in the legal environment had a significant impact on users' behaviour and their attitudes towards their illicit conduct. Interestingly the implication from many users is that service providers ought to bear some responsibility. There was more respect for copyright holders although more concern about law firms and commercial reporting agencies.
In all this was an interesting session which raised many more questions than the presenters were able to address in the time allocated.
