Clinging to the past. Good luck.

Mike Masnick of Techdirt, Australian Artists Upset That Australian Tourism Campaign Crowdsourced Images:

Reader mick writes in to alert us to a group of photographers in Australia who seem absolutely livid that the government’s latest tourism campaign sought to crowdsource photographs that could be used as part of the campaign. To me, that seems like a perfectly reasonable idea — in fact, a good idea in engaging people and getting them to take part in the campaign.

Makes sense to me.

But it seems that many arts groups in Australia are upset that Tourism Australia aren’t paying contributors:

Artists are being ripped off by copyright rules applied by the federal government’s latest tourism campaign, arts groups claim.

Tourism Australia has been sourcing images and photographs from the public free of charge for use in its latest Nothing Like Australia campaign.

The government agency has previously sourced artwork from commissioned and library-stock photographs, generating income for the copyright holders.

The National Association for the Visual Arts, the Australian Copyright Council and the Arts Law Centre of Australia are protesting the conditions.

They are demanding the agency relicense any photographs used in the campaign to pay royalties to the artists.

Pardon?

Mike nails it,

Let me get this straight. Even though the whole thing is completely optional, and photographers, who don’t like the terms, have every right to just not participate, they’re pissed off that others can participate — of their own free will — by letting the Tourism campaign use their photographs freely. If the photographers don’t mind the terms, why should others? The reality is that these groups are trying to stomp out amateur competition. This whole hissy fit is about limiting the market to professionals, and keeping the amateurs out.

#1, citing “copyright laws” obscures the arts groups’ real position and interest. It’s not about copyright, but about money. #2, claiming that Tourism Australia is “ripping off artists” is a poor argument against crowdsourcing images. They aren’t “ripping off artists”, they’re paying attention to new economic realities and making a good business and marketing decision.

Incumbents, clinging to the past and fighting the losing battle to keep the crowd out of the game, rather than building business models that fit new economic realities. Good luck.

Continuing the line of thinking about personal APIs and personal RFPs, components of the broader trend in using algorithms to aid human decision-making.

Wings, Outstretched, Margaret River Mouth, Western Australia

Continuing a line of thinking from Powering Social Search through Personal APIs, referencing Scott Adam’s note on broadcast shopping, Doc Searls, Advertising in Reverse:

Here in the VRM development community we’ve been talking (and in some cases working) for several years on the Personal RFP. Technically an RFP is a “buyer-initiated procurement protocol” for businesses doing business with businesses: B2B as they say. With VRM the buyer is an individual. Hence, Personal RFP.

… In business, RFPs use an open protocol (essentially, formalized paperwork and bidding processes). Anybody can use it. We need the same for broadcast shopping. Any of us should be able to broadcast, in a secure and selective way that protects our privacies, specified goods we’re shopping for.

Why?

Every retailer and intermediary should be interested because the promise of the Net for buyers is not an infinite variety of closed silos, but a truly open marketplace where any buyer can do business with any seller — and on the buyer’s terms and not just the seller’s.

This, of course, is based on a subtle yet important mind-shift; Doc, on The Intention Economy:

I also believe we need to start viewing economies, and markets, from the inside out: from the single buyer toward the surrounding world of sellers. And to start constructing technical solutions to the buyer’s problem of getting what he or she wants from markets, rather than the seller’s problem of getting buyers’ attention.

Of course, the difficulty is in applying concepts for a better future to today’s practicalities; Alan Patrick, The contradiction inherent in the (Social Mediation) system :

The reality … is that no one individual yet has the market power to extract anything like sufficient surplus back to themselves to make this a rational economic instrument. In order for this approach to work it needs an aggregation system which is on the user’s side, and big enough to aggregate large numbers of users – and that means the aggregator ultimately must derive its funding from the user, not the commercial entity.

Not yet. But that’s why networks and communities matter, by creating the structures and relationships necessary to shift market incentives. That’s my hope.

—

(More on the topic by Doc Searls: Intention Economy Traction).

Dreams of Horizons, Cape Leeuwin, Western Australia

Robin Sloan, The Future of Media? Bet on Events:

What if the mag­a­zine arti­cle of the future, the album of the future, and the novel of the future are all the same thing?

And what if they’re all events?

…The great virtue of events today, in the dawn­ing 2010s, is that their value seems durable in a way that the value of super-abundant copies of dig­i­tal media does not. They pro­vide “embod­i­ment,” to use Kevin Kelly’s taxonomy—and that’s some­thing you can still charge for.

…But the 2010s demand more than that.

Read the rest for ideas and examples, worth the time and thought..

The views we endure on our journeys, for the views we enjoy at our destinations.

Horizons, Home, San Francisco, California

Horizons, Abroad, Cottesloe Beach, Perth, Australia