But publishers have to give it away with the "ad selling engine" embedded right in the content or else they make no money because... no one will honor their copyright and funnel advertisement earnings to the rights-holders.
Look at FM radio. They run ads. The songwriter is entitled to royalties on that income because of our copyright laws and accounting infrastructure. Funny enough, the recording artist is not entitled to royalties because at the time this stuff went in to action it was assumed that radio airplay was a good advertisement for the record, and that's how the artist would be compensated!
The way we're doing thing right now with social media is if the songwriters didn't get any money from radio play. Facebook isn't paying anyone for the content they monetize. Neither is Google. They just index and aggregate and profit and ignore copyright. Imagine FM radio if it was like this. Every song would have to be an advertisement for something else for anyone to make any money.
That's exactly what's happened to our content. They are filled with advertisements and there is no way to remove them! This "web cruft" is a perfect example of this effect! Why can't I just get pure, clean content anywhere? Because then anyone could link to it, and in the process, sell some deodorant on someone else's behalf.
Facebook has realized this and, much like Apple, they've decided to act as a private monopoly of a content industry where they get to set their own royalty rates. They'll take 30%, the "content creator" takes 70%. They'll decide what is worthy of publication and what isn't. We figured out hundreds of years ago that this monopoly should absolutely not be run by a private entity.
Not only would it be much better for individual liberty, but it would be much much easier and apply to ALL content if we could just include royalty payments to rights-holders. That way I just put "content" on the Internet and then if someone happens to be slapping ads on it directly or indirectly, money is making it's way back to the people who made it or paid for it to be made.
I'm not really talking about anything novel here, just looking at some recent history of examples of how copyright has been used in contracts to the mutual benefit of many different parties, including artists, publishers and distributors.
Facebook isn't violating copyrights when people share an article, nor is Google committing infringement when it indexes a website (excluding books and image search). All they do is provide a link. Telling someone where they can find an article is not the same as republishing articles without permission.
If media companies wanted to, they could raise a paywall and keep us from viewing their work without paying. And for sure, some piracy would occur. But there's no evidence this is happening on a massive scale. It's not as if people flock to the pirate bay to torrent articles from the wall street journal.
So why don't more sites have paywalls? Because it means less readers and less sharing. When you're in the business of selling ads, that means less money. But when you're in the business of licensing content, all that matters is what paying readers contribute. That should tell you how media companies see themselves.
Look at FM radio. They run ads. The songwriter is entitled to royalties on that income because of our copyright laws and accounting infrastructure. Funny enough, the recording artist is not entitled to royalties because at the time this stuff went in to action it was assumed that radio airplay was a good advertisement for the record, and that's how the artist would be compensated!
The way we're doing thing right now with social media is if the songwriters didn't get any money from radio play. Facebook isn't paying anyone for the content they monetize. Neither is Google. They just index and aggregate and profit and ignore copyright. Imagine FM radio if it was like this. Every song would have to be an advertisement for something else for anyone to make any money.
That's exactly what's happened to our content. They are filled with advertisements and there is no way to remove them! This "web cruft" is a perfect example of this effect! Why can't I just get pure, clean content anywhere? Because then anyone could link to it, and in the process, sell some deodorant on someone else's behalf.
Facebook has realized this and, much like Apple, they've decided to act as a private monopoly of a content industry where they get to set their own royalty rates. They'll take 30%, the "content creator" takes 70%. They'll decide what is worthy of publication and what isn't. We figured out hundreds of years ago that this monopoly should absolutely not be run by a private entity.
Not only would it be much better for individual liberty, but it would be much much easier and apply to ALL content if we could just include royalty payments to rights-holders. That way I just put "content" on the Internet and then if someone happens to be slapping ads on it directly or indirectly, money is making it's way back to the people who made it or paid for it to be made.
I'm not really talking about anything novel here, just looking at some recent history of examples of how copyright has been used in contracts to the mutual benefit of many different parties, including artists, publishers and distributors.