don’t make the mistake of assuming that this argument around intellectual property is black v white - this isn’t capitalism versus communism, as much as some might wish to portray it that way.

few if any of those who espouse the values articulated by the Creative Commons would argue that your wife’s work should be free. musicians - like any other profession - need to get paid for their work, or pretty soon we have no musicians.

so i think we can easily agree that your wife - and the thousands or millions or other hardworking musicians, and artists, and sculptors, etc - should be compensated.

but many critics of the Creative Commons assume that money is the only compensation. that - to me - is wrong.

sometimes you have to give something to get something. much of our content that we spend a lot of time on, for example, is freely available on our blogs. why? because we receive many benefits besides money: marketing, insights, networking, etc. we’re not giving our work away for free, but neither are we receiving any cash for this.

or, to make it closer to home, if your wife offered a sample track or two for free for downloading, i might get hooked and buy some of her music.

at RedMonk we have that distinction, b/c we have free content (blogs and selected papers) and paid content. we’re not landed gentry - we need to pay our bills like anyone else.

ultimately, i don’t think we disagree on all that much.

we both agree that artists should be paid - although we may differ on what form that compensation takes.

we both agree in intellectual property - we just differ on how closely it needs to be protected.

and as far as DRM goes, i live with what iTunes requires. i don’t like it, but i can live it.

my point, however, was that if it were just up to Microsoft, big media would have the control that they wanted, because Microsoft views themselves as just a provider of tools. DRM is just like a hammer or a screwdriver to them; they seem to not view it as a technology with frightening implications for their massive installed base.

well, maybe you can deal with it, but the RIAA/MPAA kind of DRM i can’t live with. and i’m not the only one. if i’ve legally purchased music, for example, i believe i have the right to create my own burned CD. it was only once the record industry loosened their grip - only slightly - that Apple’s iTunes has sold a few hundred million tracks (with around 70 cents of each dollar going to the record industry), and opened up a massive new market. a new market bringing new dollars to the same artists we all want to get paid.

the lesson for me? nothing here is black/white. it’s all grey. that’s where i disagree with you, as i don’t think Gates will accept that. absolute DRM control is in my mind a bad thing, and perhaps a DRM-less world for you is a bad thing. so we probably need to meet somewhere in the middle. i think Apple’s got us going in that direction.

My wife is a working musician. She isn’t Big Media. She reacts viscerally to the thought of her recordings being downloaded for free.

Theft discourages innovation and invention, suppresses effort and capital formation, and increases risk. It is the enemy of technology, of the arts, and of free people.

but no, my advice to bill gates is not to become a marxist, nor release their entire product portfolio under an open source or Creative Commons license.

instead, my advice is to recognize that when big media gets their way, everybody loses - including big media.

lock everything down, and consumers stay away. work with consumers, and there’s money in it for everybody. remember, big media has at times been against VCR’s, CD burning, cable television, televised sporting events, and more.

their fear often obscures massive financial opportunities.

here’s an entry i wrote a while back with a few examples. http://www.redmonk.com/sogrady/archives/000053.html

i might believe Gates would be better off with a bit of open source, but accept that that’s unlikely to change.

but when it comes to choosing between the RIAA/MPAA and consumers, i’d strongly argue that it’s in Microsoft’s best interests to choose the latter.

Is your business-analyst advice to Gates that he should pay more attention to a quasi-marxist anti-property-rights perspective, otherwise he will either face consumer backlash or be swamped by winners like Jobs or Gillmor? “Putting the ‘red’ in RedMonk.”

guns dont kill people, people kill people. (make it easier though, eh?)