An un-designed law (posted by Fabien Villard)
Here and everywhere
Here in France we have to face a very dangerous bill [fr] that may break some fundamental principles of the internet. It is a quick and dirty answer to those who claim that exchanging files on the net would lead (and in fact would have led) to big losses for music and movie major companies: the solution is called the graduate riposte and authorizes non-juridical organizations to arbitrary close personal connexions and sue users without any proof.
This is an example of an un-designed solution. Rather, it is an epidermic reaction to profound changes in the way human culture pieces are both created and transmitted. Instead of designing new business models, old companies try to reproduce in the digital world what used to work in the physical one. And to achieve this out-of-reach goal, they consider all exchanges as a priori unauthorized, making all people pirates and felons. However, it is particularly astonishing, because a lot of brilliant researchers have written and talked about new business models and some companies have even tried some with success. Even some musicians have deployed new strategies to increase both their fans number and their incomes by using new principles of the digital age.
How did they proceed ?
By carefully analyzing both the fundamental being of their creations (digital work) and the different ways they can use to push their work to people that could be interested in it, they have been able to design exchange protocols and new offers to reach the correct compromises to sell their work, while in the same time increasing the number of people ready to buy it. They have found that far from creating losses, the exchange of music between teens is an incredible way of increasing the awareness of their production, leading to an increase of their sells, provided that the music is available easily and that the bought song can be played on any of the devices a buyer may use (which makes DRM systems a very bad thing to waste money on).
Fundamental being of digital creations and transmitting protocols between humans using internet. Sounds like “semantic” and “pragmatic” studies, doesn’t it ?
To learn more about how and why Praxeme separates these aspects read first this paper: and then dive into the Praxeme Institute web site.
