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A fiendish experiment...
Jul. 24th, 2000 11:42 pmIt's always a pleasure to catch Stephen King on the tube, and this morning, it was particularly interesting, as King has embarked on an interesting escapade in publishing.
Basically, King is making the first parts (or part, depending on your source...I understood the whole to consist of three parts, but I digress...) freely available to the public, but not for free...exactly. The idea is that King expects at least 70% of downloaders to fork over one dollar in exchange for the story, or else he won't publish the ending to the story (he'll "pack up his guitar and go home," to use his words in his interview with Diane Sawyer this morning).
Slashdot quotes King as saying "we have a chance to become Big Publishing's worst nightmare." As the Slashdot article points out, what King is doing is something like `shareware', but with a little something extra. In fact, they call it a "real-world test of the Street Performer's Protocol."
What I found most interesting was King's take on the issue of intellectual property. He started out by noting that we've grown up with things like Napster and MP3s, at which point I stop and pause. While these are certainly topical issues, they aren't old enough for anyone to have grown up with them, but maybe I'm simply picking nits. Maybe what he meant to say is that a lot of us have grown up with audio and video tape recorders and photocopy machines and that, as the ability to reproduce information increases (i.e., the expense decreases), there is an increasly prevalent attitude that says: it's okay to obtain the fruits of someone else's intellectual labor (stories, songs, films, etc.) for free.
I find an interesting parallel here between software piracy and the commerce in pirate sound and video tracks. I recall back about 10-15 years ago, there was a phenomenon where individuals would collect pirated software that ended up unused (`shelfware'). Apparently, a number of folks were happy enough to be able to brag "Well, yeah, I've got the latest version of Blorg," or to have various programs on hand "just in case" (e.g., someone offers a juicy consulting contract, but the deliverable has to be in the Blorg data format).
Today, there are a number of people who are downloading tracks from places like Napster, and these are tracks that normally, the individuals involved would not go out of their way to buy. (I base this on personal experience...don't ask me why or how, but I ended up downloading `Dueling Banjos' the other day.) The only difference that I see, however, is that sometimes, listening to a track will cause the listener to go out and buy a CD. (Again, I base this on personal experience, having bought a Janis Joplin CD after downloading `Me And Bobby McGee', and remembering how much I liked her songs.)
At any rate, King made no bones about how things like Napster promote stealing; he used the word "steal" several times during the Sawyer interview. And yet, says the Slashdot article, King is "not really offering a transaction with his readers - he's testing them." And the test, concludes the article, is guaranteed to fail, as it represents not the "Street Performer's Protocol," but a one-shot "Prisoner's Dilemma" played among thousands of people.
You'd have to be crazy to send in a dollar, goes the reasoning, because if an insufficient number of people fork over their simoleans to King, then your dollar will be wasted (no ending published). The same result obtains if you don't pay and the overall percentage falls short. On the other hand, if enough people pay without your contribution, then you get the whole story for free. So why - aside from, perhaps, moral scruples - should one pay?
The Slashdot article predicts a 15% return rate for King.
On the other hand, just because King's model is flawed (or appears to be), doesn't mean there isn't a workable model out there somewhere. Whatever it is, It'd be good for it to be a model that even modestly talented writers (instead of just mega-name authors) could use.
Cheers...
Basically, King is making the first parts (or part, depending on your source...I understood the whole to consist of three parts, but I digress...) freely available to the public, but not for free...exactly. The idea is that King expects at least 70% of downloaders to fork over one dollar in exchange for the story, or else he won't publish the ending to the story (he'll "pack up his guitar and go home," to use his words in his interview with Diane Sawyer this morning).
Slashdot quotes King as saying "we have a chance to become Big Publishing's worst nightmare." As the Slashdot article points out, what King is doing is something like `shareware', but with a little something extra. In fact, they call it a "real-world test of the Street Performer's Protocol."
What I found most interesting was King's take on the issue of intellectual property. He started out by noting that we've grown up with things like Napster and MP3s, at which point I stop and pause. While these are certainly topical issues, they aren't old enough for anyone to have grown up with them, but maybe I'm simply picking nits. Maybe what he meant to say is that a lot of us have grown up with audio and video tape recorders and photocopy machines and that, as the ability to reproduce information increases (i.e., the expense decreases), there is an increasly prevalent attitude that says: it's okay to obtain the fruits of someone else's intellectual labor (stories, songs, films, etc.) for free.
I find an interesting parallel here between software piracy and the commerce in pirate sound and video tracks. I recall back about 10-15 years ago, there was a phenomenon where individuals would collect pirated software that ended up unused (`shelfware'). Apparently, a number of folks were happy enough to be able to brag "Well, yeah, I've got the latest version of Blorg," or to have various programs on hand "just in case" (e.g., someone offers a juicy consulting contract, but the deliverable has to be in the Blorg data format).
Today, there are a number of people who are downloading tracks from places like Napster, and these are tracks that normally, the individuals involved would not go out of their way to buy. (I base this on personal experience...don't ask me why or how, but I ended up downloading `Dueling Banjos' the other day.) The only difference that I see, however, is that sometimes, listening to a track will cause the listener to go out and buy a CD. (Again, I base this on personal experience, having bought a Janis Joplin CD after downloading `Me And Bobby McGee', and remembering how much I liked her songs.)
At any rate, King made no bones about how things like Napster promote stealing; he used the word "steal" several times during the Sawyer interview. And yet, says the Slashdot article, King is "not really offering a transaction with his readers - he's testing them." And the test, concludes the article, is guaranteed to fail, as it represents not the "Street Performer's Protocol," but a one-shot "Prisoner's Dilemma" played among thousands of people.
You'd have to be crazy to send in a dollar, goes the reasoning, because if an insufficient number of people fork over their simoleans to King, then your dollar will be wasted (no ending published). The same result obtains if you don't pay and the overall percentage falls short. On the other hand, if enough people pay without your contribution, then you get the whole story for free. So why - aside from, perhaps, moral scruples - should one pay?
The Slashdot article predicts a 15% return rate for King.
On the other hand, just because King's model is flawed (or appears to be), doesn't mean there isn't a workable model out there somewhere. Whatever it is, It'd be good for it to be a model that even modestly talented writers (instead of just mega-name authors) could use.
Cheers...
