Content Creators’ Association
Since a Pirate Party is being born in Romania as well and I’m trying to work up to posting my ideas about a future copyright law in detail, I might as well start by briefly explaining another idea that has been running through my mind for some time, which has to do with something that I tend to call the Content Creators’ Association. I wrote a little about it in an e-mail I sent some time ago, but not much else…
I know that creating and maintaining such an organization would be a truly massive undertaking and it would require a lot of cooperation between content creators all over the world. It’d also require quite a bit of courage on their part, especially from those who currently have lucrative contracts with distributors, because they’d truly reap the benefits of their work from that point forward, which means that nobody else would take the money that their work has earned, but also that nobody else would provide a safety net in case their work fails to generate the expected income. This sounds far better for those who aren’t yet famous, those who create just because they want to or those who are just trying to climb through the ranks, than for the big names, but I certainly have no problem with that. Actually, that’s exactly how it should be and you can even say it’s designed to level the playing field a little.
I started by saying those things because anyone reading this is likely to wonder if I’m aware of how difficult and unlikely it is for something like this to happen. Some people could be inclined to stop reading before reaching the end, so it can be better to have such explanations out of the way early on. But now they are out of the way and I can actually get to explaining exactly what I mean.
The Content Creators’ Association should be an international organization created in order to act as the intermediary between the content creators and those who enjoy their work, therefore eliminating distributors, or at least relegating them to a niche. The main function would be to make it easy for people to send some money to the software developers, writers, musicians, painters or other artists whose works they obtain for free through file-sharing, especially once this will be completely legal. It would also make it much easier for content developers to work together, improving the quality of their work, and to promote each other, ensuring that their work reaches more people. It would emphasize quality over marketing and would also ensure that the money end up where they should be, namely in the content creators’ accounts and not in those of their distributors.
It’s important not to allow the Content Creators’ Association to become yet another distributor, which is what would likely happen if it would have its own management and be an independent entity. In order to avoid that, it should be managed by the content creators themselves, with people hired only for the less important positions which they themselves wouldn’t be able to fill. It would also have to be a strictly non-profit entity. This would ensure that the content creators would fully benefit from their work and that no other interests would take precedence.
In order to make it easy for everyone to send money to the content creators of their choice, this organization would work a little like a bank. People would be able to create accounts and put money in them through any means, such as credit or debit cards, bank transfers, SMS, prepaid cards or making cash deposits in certain locations. It’s very important to have all these different methods available because everyone should be able to easily charge their account. Then, each account owner would decide who they want to send their money to, and they’d obviously decide how much to send to each content creator as well. As I said, this applies to the content which is obtained for free through file-sharing and is a means of allowing content creators to make money while also eliminating distributors and distribution costs. The organization could also be used to sell hard copies, making those accessible to people regardless of their geographical location as well, but this system obviously couldn’t apply to those as well.
Because content creators would be spread all over the world, it’d be very easy for this organization to have representatives everywhere. Its representatives would be the content creators themselves! There could be a little booth where people could make cash deposits, buy prepaid cards or pick up the products they have ordered on-line set up in the headquarters of every software company, every concert venue, every movie set or theater… The content creators would no longer depend on anyone else and the consumers would no longer be restricted to what their local distributors offer. Not to mention the opportunity for free self-promotion whenever a customer would automatically notice the work of a certain content creator whenever they’d come to charge their account or pick up a hard copy of a product, even if they had previously been completely unaware of their existence and only picked the location because it was nearby.
But, even with distributors out of the way, there would still be costs to cover. These could be much lower than expected if the content creators would do as much of the additional work, such as manning those booths, maintaining the servers and providing assistance, themselves, but they would still exist. The fact that the organization would work a little like a bank could help somewhat, as some profit could be made by investing the money people have put in their accounts but didn’t yet send to content creators, but that couldn’t possibly cover it all. Still, it shouldn’t be a problem to express the operating expenses as a percentage of the total income and take that percentage out of the money meant for each content creator, therefore ensuring fairness.
That way, the content creators would receive as much as possible for their work, with those who benefit the most from this system also supporting most of its operating expenses, and the consumers would know that as much as possible of their money would actually reach those who create the content they enjoy. Restrictions and conflicting interests would be reduced as much as possible and the direct connection thus created between the content creators and their audience would also be a great help, certainly. Everyone wins except the distributors, which is exactly the point.
