[okfn-discuss] More on the non-commercial issue: discussions with playshakespeare.com

[Saul Albert]

On Fri, Nov 24, 2006 at 01:23:15AM -0500, Benj. Mako Hill wrote:
> It's frusterating to have to have this conversation over and over with
> creators -- especially since it's not sure when someone really does feel
> strongly about an NC license and when they just have not thought it
> through yet. At the moment though, it seems that it's the best thing we
> can do.

But it's interesting to see people's arguments are being sharpened
through repetition and refinement. I've heard lots more sense on this
issue over the last 6 months - from yourself, Mako and Rufus, and at
different times from Adnan Hadzi (deptford.tv) and Joerg Baach
(copycan.org) in specific situations that have inspired me.

I think developing these arguments and documents like the OKD provide
very useful reference points to point people to when explaining this
issue. However. I don't think it's necessarily going to get the message
across to the 'creative' class - partly because of their social
conditioning to picket-fence their IP, and partly ingrained
misunderstanding of their own work conditions - and the economic
possibilities of opening up their practices.

The open oepnshakespeare.org project is a great demo of open knowledge
principles. I think that a successful economic proposition for open
knowledge would be a useful demo of open knowledge in practice.

This is what Mikey and I have been trying (slowly, slowly) to do with
our projects at The People Speak (http://theps.net - site now horribly
out of date). We've been using some of the ideas Chris Cook put forward
at the World Summit on Free Information Infrastructures (wsfii.org)
about using Limited Liability Partnerships (LLPs) to create mutually
beneficial networks of 'business operators', interest groups', investors
and trustees based around putting shared knowledge into business
practice.  We've been working with local authorities to start training
young people to do Talkaoke (http://talkaoke.com), hopefully starting
the first Talkaoke 'cell' of the network in the next few months - the
idea being something like an open franchise, where no dues are paid for
IP - but finance flows between productive partners in equitable and
sustainable ways... 

When searching for a description of what we're doing (which we're hoping
to document on llp.theps.net), we've been using the term 'zero sum
culture'.

Basically, we see what we're doing as creating a set of small businesses
that pay people for the services they provide in the production of
shared cultural products, but don't necessarily make a profit on their
operation. We don't see this as 'non-profit' (Mikey calls non-profit
companies 'just for salaries' companies). We see these as 'zero-sum' -
where the costs, services and outcomes balance to zero. Each project
(eventually, we hope) is documented and packaged in such a way that
others find it easy to repeat and build on it.

I think, from my involvement with very successful 'zero-sum' cultural
projects like dorkbot.org - that people have an innate sense of when
they're paying 'over the odds' - or where the ideas are being 'rented'
over and abov ewhat they're paying to subsidise a production. The
feeling of 'zero-sum' is more one of participation - that you're making
it happen - either by contributing financially, or volunteering, or
doing a mixture of those things. For us, having a whole, lively network
of zero-sum cultural activities that we've helped put together will be
the most amazing infrastructure for building and developing new ideas.
It gives us limitless opportunities for reaching new groups of people,
testing things on them, finding new people to work with... and getting
paid for the work we put in to actually services ideas that are shared.

Of course our long-term survival strategy (I don't want to be a roadie
for Talkaoke for ever) is based on the consultation work we'll be able
to get based on our experience - gained in helping to build the zero-sum
infrastructure we're talking about.

This is how we're thinking about open knowledge as part of what we do
at the moment - a way of doing 'participatory' projects that don't
become vampiric, and that actually provide us with a means of survival
- creative and financial.

Eep. I've been ranting again :/. Right. Friday night.  Time for Adnan's
pirate cinema in Greenwich. Arrr!

X

Saul.   

-- 
The People Speak   | 17-25 Cremer St.  London E2 8HD | http://theps.net
studio +44 (0)20 76133001 | saul: +44 (0)7941 255210 | ms at theps.net