Should ideas be ownable?

The other day, in response to a comment on this blog, I wrote that “ideas should be ownable”. Another commenter disagreed, citing how laws that govern ownership of ideas are so complicated that the only beneficiaries are lawyers and how our Constitution only specifies protections for ideas that “promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts,…”.

All this got me to thinking.

First up, da law.

To get a better handle on how ideas are protected, I started reading up on patents and  copyrights, but mid-research I decided that there was a more important issue on the table than HOW ideas should be protected, which was SHOULD ideas should be protected. In other words, should my ideas belong to me, if I can establish that my ideas are indeed my own? I think the answer is YES. Granted, the process of establishing an idea as one’s own can get complicated, but that is not a good reason to simply deny anyone the ownership of his ideas (or ones he’s purchased or otherwise legally acquired).

Consider: If people like me were not protected by copyright and patent laws, then we would always be at the total mercy of those who had the most capital. Always. Say, for example, I wrote a song and Coldplay wanted it. Under current law, they couldn’t have it unless I let them. However, if ideas were not ownable, they could just take the song, use their massive capital to record it, distribute it and promote it and capture all royalty payments. I would get nothing. Or think about business: let’s say I have an idea for a fundamentally better approach to memory in a computer (think Rambus). Without patent protection, Intel could just take my idea and integrate with their latest processor design and reap all the rewards. I would get nothing

No, ideas must be ownable. Otherwise, those who own today’s best ideas would always own tomorrow’s, too. And our culture would stratify far worse than it already has, then stagnate, with those in the highest strata would always stay put.

Now, what about The U.S. Constitution, which states that The Congress shall have power… To promote the progress of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries…

Honestly, I have problem with this bit of Founding Father folly. Specifically, I don’t like giving the government power over subjective concepts, such as “progress” and “useful”. I mean, to the Taliban, “progress” is a return to the caveman culture and “useful” could be applied to the Koran, while the Bible, well, that’s not so useful. Instead, I think we would all be better off if ideas were simply ownable, provided one can prove beyond a reasonable doubt to jury of his peers that he indeed either came up with the idea in question or acquired it legally.

Stepping off my pedestal. Thoughts?

Oh, and here are some definitions!

PATENT

the exclusive right granted by a government to an inventor to manufacture, use, or sell an invention for a certain number of years.

COPYRIGHT

the exclusive right to make copies, license, and otherwise exploit a literary, musical, or artistic work, whether printed, audio, video, etc.: works granted such right by law on or after January 1, 1978, are protected for the lifetime of the author or creator and for a period of 50 years after his or her death.

The Fall of the Wall and the rise of the Internet.

On this day, twenty years ago, the Berlin Wall fell. I don’t really remember it. But a few short years after the Fall of the Wall, I moved to Munich, Germany, where I lived for four years. In 1993, just over a year before I returned to the States for good (it seems), I took the train from Munich to Berlin to teach English to former East German border guards. My two-week English class was part of a broader curriculum designed to help these former “shoot-first-ask-questions-later” types to become security guards department stores. The family I stayed with was headed by a former Volkpolizist, which translates as “people’s police”. My days were spent teaching from 8:00 AM to 4:00 PM. My evenings were my own, and every day after class ended I boarded the train for Zoo Station, the heart of West Berlin, or Alexander Platz, the heart of East Berlin. Through it all, I learned that while The Wall had fallen a few years before, there were many more walls yet to fall.

The highest wall of all was the wall between people: everywhere I went in the East people were quiet. There were no boisterous conversations on the trains and buses, pubs were nothing like the Biergartens in the West, my students didn’t talk about their personal lives at all. People were not about to share so much as a hello, for the culture they had grown up in made them afraid to share. If you said something someone else decided was anti-government, you were reported and life got bad fast.

Keeping to oneself the way East Germans did was deeply odd to me. More significant, however, was how at odds the East Germans were with the times in general. The whole rest of Europe was in thrall to the promise of unification via the European Union. Everyone basck in Munich talked about the Union, the freedom it would bring as border controls were relaxed and currencies combined, the work opportunities, change. Sure, there were doubters. The Germans fretted over the coming demise of the D-mark, the French worried about their culture being watered down, the Italians nervously sipped cappuccino and wondered how much more of their country would soon be owned by wealthy Germans. The English said bollucks to the whole thing and pouted on the sidelines. The doubters were wrong. From what I can gather here in Fortress America, Europe is more open and prosperous than ever, and East Germany is a borderline only in memory.

In fact, looking back on it all, The Fall of the Wall and the rise of the European Union, I now see it all as a prelude to the Internet Age. Call me an idealist, but The Fall of All Walls is coming. In our heart of hearts, people want to be free to engage with other people and to find happiness wherever it may be. Even East German border guards, who, twenty one years ago today would shoot you on sight under the right circumstances and today will happily tell you where to find the bathroom. In English, no less.

Look at this damn THIEF! (A few thoughts on file sharing.)

According the record industry, I’m a thief and a blight upon society. Why? Because I have occasionally used peer-to-peer file sharing programs.

I tried Napster in its heyday, but found Limewire years ago and have used it exclusively ever since. I also visit Dimeadozen with some frequency, where I can find all sorts of live performances, all in the lossless FLAC format for maximum quality.

When I first tried Napster, I felt a little soiled, it just did not seem right. All that music for nothing? Even though I had grown up trading cassettes with friends, there were always three factors present that were missing with Napster: 1) I knew the people I was trading with, and we spent hours talking music, debating guitar players, dissing lame “sell-outs: 2) the trades were exactly that, TRADES, in that I would let friends tape albums of mine and they would let me tape albums of theirs; and 3) it was WORK, taping was a real-time operation, so one hour of music took one hour to record, plus the vinyl record had to be cleaned, the noise reduction selected (Dolby B or C?), the tape bias set (high bias, metal?), and given that everything took so long, reading material was of high importance, so album artwork got scrutinized. Oh, and all tapes had to be properly labeled (artist, album, bias, noise reduction) and all tracks written in tiny type on the cassette label. But Napster? Well, all you had to do was point and click.

Limewire wasn’t much different from Napster, but I quickly discovered a key difference: Limewire contained bootlegs! Man, I have found so many killer performances on Lime, and most all of the performances I have downloaded are not available on any official release. More important, I make it a rule not to steal music I can buy and actually want. Sure, I have downloaded many a track to “try before I buy”, but if I like what I hear, I am off to Amazon.

So, am I truly a thief and societal blight? I don’t see it that way at all. 90% of the music on my computer (all in lossless!) also sits under my bed on CDs, CDs I purchased. In fact, a recent study, pointed out to my by my friend Dave Tutin and again by blogger Boby Owsinksi, reveal that I am not at all unusual, for according to the study:

“…those who admit to illegally downloading music spent an average of $125 a year on music  – that's $54 more than those who claim that they never download music dishonestly.”

If the survey is right, then going after illegal downloaders is to go after music’s biggest fans and customers. So, what of the occasional downloader? I dunno. I guess my attitude is this: people can get music for free, and from now on this is reality, so we need to educate people that illegal downloading is stealing and is not right. In other words, we need to extend current cultural beliefs about stealing into the musical realm. It will take time, but it can be done. Besides, what alternative do we have? Imprisoning anyone who downloads music illegally? Yeah, that’ll work. Just look at how effective our War On Drugs is.

Can rock and roll be crowdsourced or should you look inside your own head?

Since reading about the announcement of a new ad agency called Victors and Spoils last week, I’ve been obsessing over the idea of crowdsourcing, which Wikipedia defines as:

the act of taking tasks traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, and outsourcing it to a group (crowd) of people or community in the form of an open call.

Crowdsourcing is how VS plans to change the ad agency model, moving from one in which all ideas come from in-house teams and the occasional freelancer to one in which ideas are crowdsourced, meaning VS puts out a call for ideas over the Internet, and then sifts through the voluntarily submitted responses. VS hopes that this approach will lead to better ideas. I have my doubts, but here’s a question: can rock and roll be crowdsourced? In other words, is a band or an individual better off writing their own material or sourcing it from others?

To find the answer, all we have to look at is bands that write their own material, such as The Beatles or the Rolling Stones vs. bands that don’t, such as the Monkees or the Backstreet Boys. We can also look at individuals, such as Bob Dylan, one of rock’s most prolific songwriters, vs. Michael Jackson, also prolific, but not above asking others to write material for him. In my opinion, it’s no contest. Artists that write their own deliver far better quality and far more moments of sublime genius than those who do not, or who rely on a combination of their own gifts and their ability to attract ideas from others. Why would this be? I have to think about this. What do you think the reason is? Comments are welcome!

 

Can creativity be crowdsourced?

I’ve been thinking a lot about why the announcement of a new ad agency called Victors and Spoils got under my skin so much, and the simple truth is I don’t know.

Regardless, what of this idea called crowdsourcing, which is how VS plans to develop ad campaigns for its clients? Crowdsourcing is defined by Wikipedia as:

the act of taking tasks traditionally performed by an employee or contractor, and outsourcing it to a group (crowd) of people or community in the form of an open call.

Personally, I think crowdsourcing is a fabulous way to gather as many ideas as possible in the shortest amount of time, but there are major caveats:

1) Crowdsourcing will only work if you can attract strong efforts from talented people. VS, because of its ties to Crispin Porter + Bogusky, will absolutely be able to gather lots of great ideas for every call it puts out. Creative folk from near and far will voluntarily subject themselves to great agony, as they wrack their brains to submit an idea that might win them favor with the glory that is Crispin.

2) Crowdsourcing will fail over time, unless there is a clear evidence that the public good is somehow benefitting. For example, crowdsourcing for open source software is sustainable because the end product is shared by all. Another example might be tech support bulleten boards, which essentially crowdsource fixes for annoying, usually minor problems. VS, on the other hand, seeks to crowdsource for individual gain (theirs, their clients’s and their winning contributors) and over time, as people realize that not only are they highly unlikely to submit the winning idea, their compensation is a pittance (guessing here, but I doubt I’m wrong) compared to the “spoils” enjoyed by VS as its clients. As a result, participation in VS’s efforts will drop in quantity and quality, as talented people try less often and put forth less effort when they do try.

So, to answer the headline of this post, I would say Yes (if you can attract ideas from talented people) in the short term and No in the long. In my opinion, the best ad agency model for coming up with really killer ideas remains the independent agency, small or large, staffed by talented people who know how to work together as a team and who have personal networks that can be tapped when the amount of work exceeds the internal teams’ ability to do it.

What the hell does all this have to do with music? Answer tomorrow!