So you posted the useless, pompous-sounding Facebook Privacy Policy Notice, and now you feel silly? Okay. Let me tell you a story.
How You Got to This Place
A long time ago, in a galaxy far, far away, a man bought a printing press. But because he was busy running the printing press, or perhaps because he was more interested in the wonders of the rising mechanical age than the whimsy of making things up, he did not write books to print with his press.
He bought it because it was readily apparent that he could sell books, if he printed them. So he offered others money on a profit-sharing basis if they would send their writing to him.
He then talked to the general stores in many towns around him, and wrote letters to others, giving them lists of the books he had to offer their clientele. He became a publisher (packager) and distributor of other people’s content.
A long time ago, in the next galaxy over, the phonograph was invented. Something similar happened between those who realized they could make and sell recordings, but couldn’t sing worth a bent penny, and those who could sing like larks, but couldn’t tell a phonograph needle from a bent penny.
The idea of “media” is that it’s something that mediates between the creator and the consumer. These are the key components:
- The creative expression
- The physical package which carries the content, in single or multiple copies
- The system which delivers the package from creator to consumer
That’s the basic need-to-know for all media and the weird stuff that happens with them. Including the medium of the internet.
Copyright Versus Licensed Rights
Since neither publishers nor creators could do for themselves what the other could, or at least, very much not as effectively, laws and contracts developed to govern this situation.
1) The content belongs to its creator automatically. There is nothing the creator needs to do to assert this right. It is inherent. The creator has the right to determine who may make copies of the content to sell to others. The duration of the copyright expires when Mickey Mouse dies, and not a moment before.
That’s copyright.
2) In order to use the works of a creator, the publisher will pay the creator for license to make copies and sell them. The publisher may also buy the right to sub-license the content: to have someone else use or reproduce it. Or the right to have someone make a story into those newfangled things called a moving picture.
That’s the license of rights.
As people interacted over these matters, some chaos and the occasional lynching ensued from time to time over who could do what with whose contributions to the various partnerships.
And somewhere in the middle of it all, the contract lawyers quietly smoked a cigar.
Creation, Packaging, Distribution
There was no other way. Printing presses were too expensive for individual writers to own one, and record producers never did learn how to sing.
Besides, there was that sticky bottleneck called “distribution.” Writers and musicians could, of course, spend a lot of money to get someone to turn their creations into physical products using expensive machinery. But they would only ever sell a few copies to their own distribution network, which mostly consisted of Mom and Aunt Joan. Cousin Fred tried to hide whenever the topic of “the new book” came up. He was no help at all.
Distribution — the art of putting the desired content, pre-poured into the desired packaging, in the hands of multiple recipients who wanted it — was a power held by those who had spent the time building connections. A hundred years and more of letters sent to general stores, then bookstores, then big-box stores, letting them know what was available for their clientele to listen to and read today.
The Imbalance of Experience and Knowledge Base
The publishers also had a hundred years’ practice designing and tweaking contracts to allow them to repackage the content in every way possible, for as little profit-sharing as possible. (That is business.)
It is fair to say that, as creators weren’t the ones dealing directly with sales and competition and cost risks, their community members didn’t necessarily make themselves as educated about the ins and outs of rights, licensing and contracts as the community of publishers.
Intergalactic Revolution
Eventually, intergalactic communications were invented. They called it “the internet,” and quite naturally it destroyed everything for the galaxy of printing press owners and the galaxy of phonograph recording.
Except, not really.
That’s because the internet is not like the telephone or the post-box. Those delivery systems involve transmission without reproduction of or monetary gain from the content itself.
On the internet, you’re not merely paying a fee to have someone else carry your message. (Well, you do, to your internet service provider. But.) You also communicate by signing over the right for another party to replicate and transmit the data you type on your computer screen. Replication is copying the content you create. And that requires a license of rights.
That license is called the Terms of Service, or TOS, and its adjunct is the Privacy Policy.
Change, Opportunity, and Intergalactic Space Trucks
Non-sequitur time!
There is a third galaxy out there, and it’s called long-haul trucking. Imagine that a truck is full of books. It takes them one way only: from the publisher to the store. There, people who are not content creators consume the books.
But what if every person who bought a book also created something and loaded it onto the truck, and sent it on its way? What if the truck was made of electrons, and it could go anywhere, to as few or as many of their contacts as they wished? Wouldn’t people look eagerly for the truck? It would bring them something of value to them, and send something of theirs back.
All they would have to do is sign a contract licensing the shipping depot to reproduce and distribute their content.
That sounds like a postal service, but it’s not. It’s acquiring the right to reproduce content and distribute it to many endpoints. The internet has intergalactic space trucks with onboard replicators and multi-port teleporters for your content.
But that’s not all. There are also the invisible gnomes.
The Truck-and-Delivery-Depot Shell Game
The intergalactic space truck is also a shell game. Remember, you can use the depot and the trucks as long as you sign the content rights deal. While you’re focused on the free content delivery truck — waiting for it, sending it, making happy driving noises — the content packaging and delivery gnomes (otherwise known as tech developers) are invisibly rearranging the shipping depot around you, terraforming your internet environment to their advantage.
While you’re waiting at the depot (let’s call it, say, Facebook) and constantly checking for a delivery or sending one out, the invisible gnomes can measure your unselfconscious, peer-generated consumer behaviour. This is like a producer/consumer petri dish, giving unprecedented insight into how to sell us what we already want.
Because we trust our friends. We’ll tell them what we wouldn’t tell a company. We tell them using the free trucks.
But no matter how many vroom noises we make, the trucks belong to the depot. They are in league with the invisible gnomes.
Social media — Facebook, Twitter, et al — is publishing and distribution, on steroids, with intergalatic space trucks and gnomes, hooking you in with free postage that isn’t free and pulling a bait and switch on what the real goods are.
So don’t feel stupid. It really is that confusing.
And yet, if you remember the three components of all media, and the difference between copyright and licensing, it gets simple. Because it’s always been the same.
Some Things Don’t Change
– There are still plenty of clauses in rights contracts today which are not favourable to content creators.
– Packaging (publishing) has become immensely simplified. What used to be canvas and paint, or paper and ink, or vinyl and grooves, or 35 mm film, is now all one thing: electrons.
– Distribution is still a power held by those who control the networks. In prehistoric times, it was the roads and city gates. Then it became the telephone lines and radio frequencies. Now it’s the servers, satellites, cables and cellular towers.
– And, most content creators still don’t have a clue about intellectual property laws.
…And Some Things Do Change
The content creator is no longer just artists, writers, filmmakers and musicians who make a living from being semi-educated about this stuff; it’s not the kind of people who may use agents and lawyers and have a team to help them navigate the question of rights and licensing.
The content creator is now you.
It’s now your thirteen-year-old child with a camera phone and no concept of what Terms of Service means.
It’s now your grandma, who thinks the internet is a very fast post-box for free.
Online privacy isn’t about copyright. It’s about who holds the permission to exploit that copyright, and to what extent. The best kind of licensing contract, from the licensee’s point of view, is the one that gets signed by content creators who don’t read it and/or don’t understand it.
Enter the convenient and tiny Terms of Service checkbox. Click here to play.
That’s how the internet works. Now everyone’s both consumer and creator. Their creative product is little bits of their existence in words, photos and videos. In the intergalactic milieu, the private citizen is no more. The rights to the details of his life — your life, your child’s life — have been licensed out by the user for corporate reproduction and distribution.
That’s what you really need to know about copyright and privacy. End of story.
Packaging (publishing) has become immensely simplified. What used to be canvas and paint, or paper and ink, or vinyl and grooves, or 35 mm film, is now all one thing: electrons
Ironically enough, “canvas and paint, or paper and ink, or vinyl and grooves, or 35 mm film” are all made of–electrons. So what’s changed is just the presentation. We’ve gone from relatively stable collections of specific electrons to volatile representational collections of electrons that can be replicated in a fashion that is indistinguishable from the original. Now the idea is what matters, not a fixed representation of it. An author can sell 10 downloads of a .99 cent non-physical e-book on Amazon and make significantly more money than from one hardcover book selling at Barnes & Noble for $14.99. The idea is now more profitable than the physical representation (but I think most authors still want to hold a tangible book!).
Sir, you are made of awesome. Very cool observation.
The thing is, the medium still defines the message in a variety of ways. So, although we say the idea is what matters, and there is indeed far more flexibility to publish a 200,000 word novel, for instance, we’re still dealing with design constraints imposed by the form the internet takes. It’s just a much more fluid, quickly evolving form, full of adventure and fun.
This was an ingenious explanation. Tell me you stole it from a team of lawyers, ma’am, lest you humble me. The other thing we now have to consider is that content has no value. All these tech giants seem to be worth cash but they don’t make money. With all the blogs, all the news, all the free poetry, [fan] fiction, and music, there’s no need to actually purchase anything. We have entered a point where nearly all media entertainment is, virtually, free (pun intended). When it’s not free it’s cheap. $8 per month gives me endless streaming movies from Netflix. This is why concerts have gone up tremendously in price. In 1996 I went to one of the largest concerts in North America, HFStival in Washington DC. $20, over 20 bands, two stages, and a rave tent. Nowadays a small indie band is a $30 ticket with a local act opening. That’s not inflation, that’s the price of content shifting. If I upload a concert of, say, Radiohead to Youtube and sign the TOS, who owns the content? Well, probably Radiohead. But if they fail to exercise their copyright laws and Youtube continues to host that video for years…? Youtube may not legally own it but certainly there is a transfer of “ownership” taking place. If Radiohead never claims it and it’s reproduced endlessly? We’re entering a time when digital media is owned by whoever can possess it. A legal claim might be valid on paper but if it’s unenforceable is it valid at all?
“Tell me you stole it from a team of lawyers”
Well, thanks. I just try to keep up on the basics of intellectual property law as it relates to publishing. It seems like the thing to do for my writing career.
http://thepassivevoice.com is a great clearinghouse of relevant info from an IP lawyer.
“The other thing we now have to consider is that content has no value.”
Yes and no…tix to Great Big Sea in Winnipeg this winter are still running just under $100 each for prime seats.
It seems to me that experiences that can be replicated easily have no value; those that are less replicable, have value. (The inimitable The Oatmeal can sell posters and T-shirts and has book deals about your cat’s plot to assassinate you. Girl Genius is free online every week and yet sells in print for $17 – $25, plus other merch.) But I think valuing the unreplicable has always been a human thing. The internet magnifies it, as with other human things.
Most of the content the crowd produces is highly replicable and has no value (we talk about our pets and our coffee a lot); but not all of it. I think that skilled artists suffer more from traditional marketing and thinking than from the internet.
“…Nowadays a small indie band is a $30 ticket with a local act opening. That’s not inflation, that’s the price of content shifting.”
Yep. But it’s also scaling and spinoff income, where the door price is the loss leader and the merch, concession income, etc is the real take. Indies can’t command the same sheer volume of buyers interested in wearing their T-shirt, and so they can’t absorb the same level of ticket discounting. I think, too, the band has their gig fee and the event organizers have their plan for structuring the income to cover that.
“If I upload a concert of, say, Radiohead to Youtube and sign the TOS, who owns the content? Well, probably Radiohead. But if they fail to exercise their copyright laws and Youtube continues to host that video for years…?”
Well, not a lawyer here, have no awesome answers. But I think that’s more of an exclusivity enforcement thing, where if the label has an exclusive right to produce and distribute, they get ripped about how unauthorized, nonexclusive use cuts into their profit margin and will chase down rights violators.
In signatory countries to the Berne Convention, copyright is automatic. It does have to be proven where a dispute over who is the original creator arises. Fan uploads don’t dispute that Radiohead is the creator, but they dispute that the label has sole distribution rights.
I suspect, from what I recall reading from others who know better than I, that the difference between trademark maintenance and defense and copyright enforcement is what confuses people over this one. (She says at 3 am, when the brain is not exactly sharp…perhaps others can add better thoughts.)
Well put
Brilliant explanation, but for the sake of fun (and future sharing) I must ask: Where did you find that Batman cartoon? It’s chock-full of awesome…
Via a Facebook buddy. I’ve seen that one recaptioned all kinds of different ways lately. Very entertaining.
Yes, not entirely pompous or useless: http://thevibes.me/2012/11/27/copyright-or-wrong/
This was actually a really great post, I love how detailed it was and it was well explained and it carried a fresh bite of truth. I had to sit back and focus to read and understand this but once you do – amazing. Sad part I came to realize is that creators basically make zero money in this equation or very little compared to publishers and developers. I am full of ideas too and I’m sure like many others all our ideas are just being exploited (sounds harsh, how about outsmarted) by our publishers and distributors. I think this post would have been nail in the coffin if you finished with this idea (even though that’s not what your post was about!) – what do creators do in this? I’m one for change and this system does not really agree with me, can we come up with something here?
Techdirt has a good article on how PSY has monetized Gangnam Style while embracing and using internet virality: Sell associated scarcities.
http://www.techdirt.com/blog/casestudies/articles/20121209/07431921317/psy-makes-81-million-ignoring-copyright-infringements-gangnam-style.shtml
Hey, thanks for taking the time to find an article related to my comment! It was useful, think it is the best way to reap if you look at it.
ALL OF THE LIKES! Seriously, thank you! That was not only illuminating, but 500 metric tons of fun to read.
Congratulations on one of the very best blogs. You are a gift and I look forward to discovering more about your work.
This is why before I publish any of my works through Amazon and Smashwords, i’m planning on getting a copyright. Oh, and great metaphors, by the way. Really inventive.
Congrats on FP! Great post, very informative. Mccrackenlove.wordpress.com
Reblogged this on Parrots, Prose, and Peanuts and commented:
Good stuff.
Reblogged this on The Boston Harbor Picayune.
Thank you, rebloggers! I appreciate you sharing your space with me.
Wow, brilliant analogies. It all adds up. I am working on creating a magazine currently and haven’t been able to fully understand these terms until now. When Google runs out of answers I will come to you.
Thank you.
For clearheaded info specific to publishing, two great blogs to follow are thepassivevoice.com (by an intellectual property lawyer) and kriswrites.com (by a seasoned publishing veteran who has embraced the new digital publishing world). Best wishes with your magazine project!
It is so sad to me how there are so many hoaxes out there. What is the world coming to?
I…feel kinda smart now. Informed, at least, in a weird way. Yeah, read the fine print!
Im not a fan of Facebook anymore. I tend to stay off of it as much as possiblr
Informative post! We all need to look at the terms and conditions!!
I’m a third year Public Relations and Communication student. For our ethics unit have set up an ethical blog ‘Ethical Angles’ As a popular blogger, I would really appreciate it if you could read our latest post ‘Who can see your photos?’ and possibly give your opinions on the topic, as you are clearly well informed on the topic. The post is about the privacy of social networking sites (Facebook) and who can see our photos.
http://ethicalangles.wordpress.com/2012/12/09/who-can-see-your-photos/
Thanks,
Saby (Ethical Angles)
Brilliant post! And so funny. Congrats on the FP.
Glad to read your thoughtful post!
Well done. This IS important for people to understand. Glad it got Pressed- congrats!
Thank you, everyone, you’re so very kind!
How right you are. The Internet has become an open shop where anyone can lift just about anything, be it legal or not.
I’m a freelance cartoonist and I wrote a brief blog on this a few months ago, as it is a concern to many freelancers.
I’m sure people may have copied cartoons from my blog without permission, but what do we do about it if we wish to display the style of work we do?
Thanks C.L., nice post.
http://cartoonmick.wordpress.com/2012/08/17/take-it-or-leave-it/
Cheers
Mick
I know, right? I post photos as an avid amateur, and even without relying on them for a living, it bothers me to wonder where they may wander off to.
Google’s working on this with their drag-and-drop image upload search function. I’ve seen a few artists post about using it to locate unauthorized image use.
Over here in the text-based creative pond, we’re constantly having to educate writers about fair image use, because they’re all told “you need to get a platform, go start a blog.” A high number of them don’t know about Creative Commons and authorized use, all they hear is “your blog will get more readers if you have pictures on it.”
Flickr’s advanced search with Commons license filters is a blogger’s friend.
Love your art style, btw.
Ah-ha! Creative Commons! Thank you. I was about to ask around for a source of non-copyright-infringing images for my blog (am running out of my own photos to use); serendipity brought me to your page!
Reblogged this on Oyia Brown.
Reblogged this on njgarrell and commented:
I WISH THAT THEY WOULD JUST STOP CHANGING THE POLICIES.
I will continue to be annoyed by people who simply copy and paste everything they see on their Facebook status. They are not doing it because they are well informed about TOS; quite the opposite actually.
Reblogged this on Matrix Vortex.
Hello CL Dyck,
Not doing copyrighting for my Blog, (full of plagiarism anyway) but I am offering a collector (s) the opportunity to bid on a key (inanimate) character from my story.
ridicuryder.wordpress.com
I’ve always though getting slapped by Batman would be kinda cool.
RidicuRyder
Reblogged this on Haunting Amberleaf.
Reblogged this on skinbis and commented:
LOL
Orwellian shudders. Thanks for this.
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Reblogged this on Walkabouts and wonders and commented:
An excellent and amusing explanation of the hidden commercial face of the internet.
Reblogged this on My Blog.
Good explanation. I’ll have to pass your post on to some of my Facebook friends – the ones who suddenly realize their thoughts went places they didn’t want them to go.
Awesome post! Putting everything into a fun simple conversation for those who care but didn’t understand it in its original complexity. Congrats on FP btw.
Thank you for posting this. It is very informative and I enjoyed reading it.
Reblogged this on and commented:
I attended a networking dinner recently. A guest speaker presented on Internet safety. This post harks on the issues raised by the guest speaker when social media users fail to read the TOS of that site.
Know what you’re signing up for.
Be aware of your privacy online.
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Reblogged this on The Ladder and commented:
just stay off the fb or deal with it
I love comics!
Reblogged this on Habari Gani, America!.
nice post