Authors of content still need to eat (and so do their children)

In the old days (you know, a few years ago), if you wanted a piece of media content (song, book, movie, news article, database, report, you name it, any kind of media), you needed to give someone some money, and in exchange for that money, you got a physical object that contained your desired media content (a record or CD, book, videotape, newspaper, data CD, etc). The whole basis for the media economy was physical control: If you want my CD, you need to give me money. If you want my videotape, you need to give me money. Physical control of content was the golden goose of the media industry.

Then along came the internet and its annoying habit of changing everything: Everything is now digitized and moved to the internet. And in spite of all the King’s lawsuits and all the Queen’s paywalls and copy protection schemes, doing everything they can to control the flow of digital media, the notion of control is gone. Poof. Up in smoke. Napster led the charge. Without the control, people cannot be forced to pay. So now everything is free. Anyone can put up a peer to peer network in a couple of days that facilitates the free transfer of millions of media objects instantly to millions of people, anywhere in the world. Music, Movies, TV shows, you name it. Get it all for free now at places like BitTorrent.

How long do you think it will take for some 22 year old at RIT or MIT to crack the Kindle copy protection scheme and liberate all those digitized books? My prediction is two years or less. The iPhone lock didn’t even last that long. In a nutshell: “Anything that can be digitized WILL be napsterized.” Resistance is futile. If it’s digital, it’s either already free or it’s about to be free. Period. And because it has been free for nearly 10 years now, everyone under the age of 30 has grown up with all content being free, and no respect whatsoever for copyright laws. And every year we have another year’s worth of adults who insist that it be free (and do whatever is needed to share their library with the world), and another year’s worth of people who expect to pay are dying.

“Caution! The only thing protecting the movie and TV industries from the fate that has befallen music and indeed the newspaper business is the size of the files. The immutable laws of bandwidth tell us we’re just a few years away from being able to download an entire season of “24” in 24 seconds. Many will expect to get it free.”
– Bono in the NYTimes, 1/2/09

But people who create awesome articles, blogs, songs, movies and books still need to pay their mortgage and buy food for their family. How are they going to do this, if the physical control business model is gone? Well, you and I still value our news and songs and movies. But we are not OK with being forced to pay. What if there was an easy way to voluntarily pitch in a little bit of money each month and have it be fairly distributed only to the media creators that you value?

What if there was Kachingle?

KACHINGLE: COMING FEBRUARY 2010 TO A WEBSITE YOU LOVE!