

Nina Paley: The More You Share, the More Valuable Your Works Become - grellas
http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20110113/00440012646/interview-with-nina-paley-more-you-share-more-valuable-your-works-become.shtml

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AlexC04
I once wrote a letter to the publisher of a scientific journal asking him why
his information wasn't free. I was in Uni. at the time a bit idealistic and I
spent a long time explaining how if it was free he'd get money from people 'in
thanks'

The publisher was very generous and took the time to write a thoughtful,
considered response to my letter in which he said something to the effect of

"Thanks Alex for your feedback, I respect your point of view and it would be a
wonderful position to take, however - under your proposal, we sustain our
business off the chance of public generosity. Wheras under the current model,
we are guaranteed to get the revenue, which makes it a much safer bet"

He worded it much better than that, but the premise holds that sometimes the
guarantee of a little money is better than the hope for a similar amount (or
possibly more).

All respect to the anecdotal evidence of "I give it away and stay in
business". But it's a heck of a gamble. I'm sure there's a lot of anecdotes
out there of people saying "I gave it away and people took it. End of story"

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jordanb
Science journals are parasites. They don't pay for the research they publish
-- nor do they pay for the refereeing (which is done by volunteers). Their
costs amount to the administrative details of the journal, like emailing
copies to referees, and the actual printing costs, such as they are.

They're able to maintain their position because of the prestige effect, as
getting your paper into the Journal Nature is worth a hell of a lot more for
the researcher than getting it published in No-Name Open Access Journal.

Journal publishers are aware that their position is a lot like that of the
music industry. They're middle men between producers and consumers of science,
and are becoming increasingly redundant. This has made them highly
conservative, reactionary, and litigious as they try to maintain their white-
knuckled grip on what they have.

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kiba
I happens to sell arts for microtransaction and put my stuff into the public
domain. What do ya know? I actually make money.

Nobody thought my artwork was good enough to spread it though. (One guy got
around the server's security and view the artwork for free for a while, but he
didn't do anything to spread it.)

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ximeng
How do you make money? If it's in the public domain, what do you sell?

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kiba
I sell pictures. That all I do.

I simply put it behind a paywall and put up a preview image to entice people
to download.

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stephth
Does she actually explain _why_ in the full interview?

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kiba
The more an artwork is shared, the more people know about it. The more people
know about it, the more likely they will visit the artist's site. The more
people visit the site, the more likely that the artist will make money, either
though selling swags, advertising space, or even begging for donation.

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stephth
I'm not arguing against or in favor, I'm just interested in understanding, but
the claim here seemed broader than tied to a specific business model like
you're suggesting. Did you get that from the full interview? The long quotes
in the article made it seem like she presented the claim as a simple fact, and
so I wondered if the full interview was worth reading.

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kiba
It's not a long quote of anything. It's me reasoning out why it might be so.

The business model work for her. I myself have validated some aspect of the
business model or at least invalidated some of the worries though actual
experimentation.

But it's up to people around the world being brave and test out some of the
claim for themselves.

