[MUD-Dev] Future of MMOGs

[Adam]

From: "Crosbie Fitch" <crosbie at cyberspaceengineers.org>
> From: Koster, Raph

>>"Information must be free" just leads to proprietary information

> Noo. That's wrong man.

> The meme is this: "Information wants to be free"

> Like 'ideas want to be free' like 'birds want to be free', like
> 'secrets want to be told', that kind of thing. Just like Open
> Source needing to get across 'Free as in Speech, not as in Beer'.

> There's nothing stopping anyone selling a piece of software to the
> public domain. Look at Blender. That was a proprietary piece of
> software and after receiving $100,000 from 'the interested
> community' the proprietary owners released it to the world as Open
> Source software.

> Similarly, there's nothing stopping a company or individual
> selling information to the world.

> You create a game. You say "I'll sell this to the world for X
> dollars". As long as enough people come forward with a few dollars
> willing to represent a proportion of the world, such that 'enough'
> times 'few' dollars is X, then you got a deal. Sold to the world
> for X dollars!

> So, "Information wants to be free" turns into "Information wants
> to be sold" cos it has to go via "Information wants to be free and
> if the only way it can be free is if the owner sells it, well,
> then the information wants to be sold".

[...]

>   The people is the tide.  The sand is intellectual property.
>   Copyright/IP law/etc.  is the line in the sand.

> Commerce is the gyroscope.

> People think it's going to get pushed over and that when it falls
> to the ground dead, we're all going to starve because no one can
> make any money any more. But it won't fall over.

> So, you're right, commerce will get pushed into precession (rather
> than recession) by the failure of copyright, or in other words, it
> will adapt to make money no matter what the circumstances. If
> there are artists that need money, and there are people with money
> that need art, there's a market, there's commerce.

> I really don't know how people can worry about commerce. Sure, you
> can worry about some of the big publishers that may be too
> gigantic to adapt to the change in prevailing conditions, but
> change happens - the big and old die out, and the nimble and young
> prosper.

> Commerce has a big voice and you're going to hear the agonised
> roars of those dinosaurs for quite a while as their 'oxygen' of
> copyright disappears.

> But, the world isn't ending for the little guys who just want to
> make art and get paid for it.

It seems to me that Crosbie is perhaps over-simplifying the issues;
whilst that sometimes works (if there is an underlying trend that in
practice will prove so strong it in effect brushes the more complex
issues aside), I can't see it in this case.

To add to the melting pot, an article from theRegister yesterday
[twice in as many days - I'm obviously getting too lazy to write my
own posts ;P]

   http://theregister.co.uk/content/6/27687.html

(Note that the context to the article is primarily copyright issues
within the IT and music industries, although the example given
(quoted below) is from the book-publishing industry. In typical
theRegister fashion, its a pretty opinionated article, but its the
example thats important.)

(brief snippet from the start of the article, explaining what its
about)

  "Copyright is being abused by well-heeled special interest groups
  with the cooperation of a corrupt Congress; there's no question
  about that. But that hardly means that copyright is a good thing
  only for special interests and a generally bad thing for the
  public, which seems to be the assumption on which the Eldred
  crusade is based."

(from the third section of the article, by Thomas C Greene)

  "Spending lots of time losing lots of money:

  Let me break it down to you. First off, a copyright is not a
  single right but actually a bundle of rights that you grant to
  publishers for a limited time in exchange for money. To make it
  simple, I'm going to approach this in an exemplary manner.

  Let's say you've spent three years researching and writing a book
  -- hardly an unusual investment of time and effort. Your agent
  suddenly announces that he's lined you up with a publisher, and
  you've just spent more money on the case of Champagne you bought
  to celebrate your achievement than the book is going to yield. But
  you don't know that yet. You think you're going to make big bucks.

  But when the much-anticipated contract arrives, you'll wish to God
  you hadn't sprung for the '89 Roederer Cristal.

  The publisher has done a bit of a cost analysis. He's going to
  print 30,000 copies of your magnum opus and he reckons he'll sell
  20,000. Those that get returned or sold at remainder, well, you
  don't make any money on them. He figures he'll bring in about
  $300,000 gross. He figures printing, promoting and shipping will
  cost him about $250,000. That leaves $50,000. He wants to make
  about fifteen per cent on his outlay, or $37,500, which leaves you
  something like $12,500 when all is said and done. Now your agent
  takes ten or fifteen per cent of that, and you end up with less
  than $4,000 a year for your efforts, positioning the illiterate
  teenage Martian at McDonald's who stuffs up your lunch order
  considerably higher on the economic food chain than you,
  Professor.

  Now, who's the real dummy?
  
  Unfortunately, US sales of your magnum opus are inadequate to
  inspire the publisher to exercise those paperback rights he
  insisted on buying. But fortunately, your agent isn't half the
  moron you are. The publisher bought a slew of rights for that
  lousy $12,500, but your agent (you can go kiss him now) made sure
  that they would revert to you within two years if the publisher
  failed to exploit them. These include translation rights into
  numerous languages, English language rights abroad; paperback
  rights, second serial rights, and performance and dramatic
  rights. Your first serial rights were exercised, with profound
  futility, trying to get America interested in your tome when the
  publisher managed to wedge Chapter One into the New Yorker.
  
  The book sells poorly and the publisher's estimate of returns and
  remainders proves horribly accurate. You think maybe you'll give
  up writing.
  
  But lo and behold, two years later, when you get your translation
  rights back, your agent makes a fresh deal and you find that your
  book -- maybe it was you; maybe it was the translator -- is a
  smash hit in Japan. Everyone is reading it. Soon you're selling
  the Japanese paperback rights for several hundred thousand
  dollars. Riding on the Japanese buzz, you manage to sell the
  French and UK rights. The book sells well in both markets and goes
  into paperback again. Finally, you're making some decent money.
  
  Several years pass and the book goes out of print. Again your
  agent proves himself an invaluable asset. He's managed to keep
  your contrats free of ambiguous language which would allow greedy
  publishers and blind zealots to claim that the book is in print
  merely because it's available as a Web object or a print-on-demand
  entity. Five years after it goes out of print -- meaning it's not
  available in retail shops thanks to your agent's intelligence and
  experience -- you get all of your un-exploited rights back. You'll
  likely sit on them for a while because you're busy right now, but
  in time you'll try to wring some more money out of them. Or
  perhaps your estate will, after you've died and become even more
  attractive.
  
  Meanwhile, your very decent return on investment on MagOp One has
  inspired you to write more books. You've got more talent than your
  original publisher imagined. The fact that you made decent money
  the first time around didn't tempt you to sit on your ass and suck
  your thumb as the Eldred crusaders pretend, but in fact inspired
  you to spend more time producing good copy because now you know
  there's money to be made. And it inspires others to do the same,
  because now they know there's money to be made.
  
  And so long as you have those rights to sell, your publisher,
  whoever and wherever he is, gets a little short-term monopoly
  which ensures that there's money to be made for him, too. And this
  is how excellent, seventy-year-old books like "Good-Bye to All
  That" manage to stay in print in handy little paperback editions
  which we can read conveniently on the subway."
  
Adam M
  
  
  
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