Beyond all of the iPad hype, beyond the lovers and the haters and the blenders, there’s a really serious question lurking, and Doc Searls nailed it in his brain dump response:
Do we want the Internet to be broadcasting 2.0 — run by a few content companies and their allied distributors? Or do we want it to be the wide open marketplace it was meant to be in the first place, and is good for everybody?
On closed systems
Searls, Cory Doctorow, Dave Winer, Mark Pilgrim, Alex Payne (cf. this post also), Tim Bray, and Peter Kirn, take the side of the open marketplace.
Predictably among the common complaints: the iPad is a closed system (one that is stacked to give the most power to whomever Apple wants).
Much like with the iPhone, all hardware and software must descend like manna from Cupertino—app approval, battery replacement, the Flash decision, the non-standard port, the fact that you have to sync everything through iTunes.
Sure you can write an open web app that runs on the iPad (because even a behemoth like Apple can’t close the open web), but you miss out on the efficiency and feature set that’s available in the native code.
And yes people are already working on a jailbreak, but if it’s anything like the iPhone, jailbreaking is technically illegal.
The concern is that the iPad, with its tightly sealed case and obscure software approval process, will greatly diminish tinkering. For Geeks, this is scary because without open systems that support, even encourage experimentation, we wouldn’t have the likes of Doctorow, Winer, Pilgrim…etc.
And the world would be a much darker place because of it.
As a society, we need more, not less, tinkerers.
2.0 Business Models
Perhaps what’s scarier than the closed box issue is the mentality of publishers. From the WSJ:
Magazine publishers see the device as crucial to their future as they scour for new ways to make money, with print advertising still under threat. Digital advertising has been a disappointment for many publishers, but with the iPad they feel they have a technology that best marries the splashy look and size of a full-page print ad with the cool interactive features of a digital ad…
Heaven help us.
Instead of shifting business models to embrace what the new technology enables (which, I would argue is simply increasing use of the open Web), companies are seeing the iPad as a digital way to keep doing what they’ve always done: as they “scour” to find revenue, they see the iPad as something that gives them “splashy look and size of a full-page print ad.”
We saw this same sort of thrashing when radio replaced vaudeville: people were scrambling, trying to figure out how to charge for access to radio programming (like people paid to see a vaudeville show).
But radio didn’t become vaudeville 2.0—it became its own business with its own business model based on ad revenue instead of charge for access.
Since we can’t force the internet to fit our business models, it makes more sense for us to change our business models to fit the internet.
The Ongoing Copyright Issue
Part of the reason that business models are so hard to change for traditional content companies—newspapers, magazines, book publishers, TV broadcasters, movie and record studios—is because they all still worship at the altar of copyright.
Look around and you’ll see them all trying desperately to bleed every last drop from the intellectual property they “own.” Stowe Boyd articulates the problem in his response to a recent NYT op-ed piece by Marc Aronson:
Aronson proposes a simpler model of managing the costs of copyright use [for digital rights], but never mentions creative commons, presumably because it is assumed that everything that can be copyrighted, will be, and those holding such rights will seek to maximize the amount of moeny [sic] they make from them.
I want to live in a world where the goal is maximizing knowledge, happiness, and understanding. And this isn’t it.
The Looming Battle
So here we have it, two issues that are inciting a coming battle:
1. An increasing acceptance, even celebration, of closed systems like the iPad.
2. The pervasive mindset that copyright should be handled like a proverbial gem, the only way a content company could hope to make money…because after all, it’s the way they’ve always made money.
So to go back to Searls:
Do we want the Internet to be broadcasting 2.0 — run by a few content companies and their allied distributors? Or do we want it to be the wide open marketplace it was meant to be in the first place, and is good for everybody?
I’m hopeful open systems will win out.
But that means crushing the idea of broadcast 2.0. That means that content companies are going to need to find ways to make money because of their content, not simply with it.
I’m certain that those brave content companies that open up their intellectual property will stand to gain immeasurably more than they stand to lose—they stand to overcome the problem of obscurity. Because the more open content is, the more it’s shared, the more ubiqutous it becomes, the more revenue they make as a product of scale.
And when content is open, we all stand to gain immeasurably more than we stand to lose—because money is no longer the goal. Our goal shifts to Boyd’s vision, “a world where the goal is maximizing knowledge, happiness, and understanding.”
What do you think?
Do you think publishers should open the gates on their intellectual property, making it less expensive and more easily shared?
How do you think they can make money if they do?
I’d love to continue the discussion…
-Andrew
