Transcriber: Robert Tucker Reviewer: Ariana Bleau Lugo
300 years ago a piece of legislation revolutionized the lives of writers.
It transformed them from penniless hacks to professional men.
It transported them from Grub Street to, well, relatively Easy Street.
Its name was the Statute of Anne.
And it gave shape to the concept that we today understand as copyright.
And this is defined as the legal right to control the production
and selling of a book, play, film, photograph or piece of music.
The act was subtitled "An Act for the Encouragement of Learning"
And if we put this together with our definition of copyright,
we essentially end up with two things.
We end up with a motive and a mechanism.
The motive of Anne was to enable authors to profit from their work,
and, by enabling them to do so, to encourage them to make more.
And the mechanism that was put in place to facilitate this
was putting control over the copying of their work back into their hands.
Up to this point it had been exploited by manipulative publishers.
And for several hundred years this system worked pretty well.
Anne ushered in a great age of writers,
among them Daniel Defoe, Alexander Pope and, of course, Doctor Johnson,
who famously remarked, "No man but a blockhead ever wrote except for money."
Yes, okay, some work was still copied without the authors' consent,
maybe in lawless, backward places like America.
But, by and large, enough was produced legitimately
to enable writers for the first time
to make a living from their intellectual property.
And soon enough even women were doing it.
This is Jane Austen looking very determined.
But then along came the Internet
and, what up to this point had been quite a small problem,
became a much, much bigger one.
Why was this the case?
Because essentially copying lies at the heart
of what the Internet is and what it does.
You could say that it's defined by its ability to be
all things, to all men, at all times.
Suddenly copying things had become much, much easier.
And the idea of trying to stop people copying
started to look less effective.
And it didn't seem so crazy to start asking questions like:
Does copyright have a place in a digital world?
And in trying to answer this question,
the dominant rhetoric so far has been about this word: Control.
If we go back to this mechanism–motive idea,
we focus so far very much on mechanism.
The big questions that we've asked so far are how do we stop people copying
rather than what are we doing it for.
And this has been the case in legislation as well.
Here in the UK, the Digital Economy Act 2010,
passed last year, but now under judicial review, interestingly enough,
was very much predicated on this idea of trying to control copying,
that it could and should be limited.
But what if this is the wrong question,
what if we're taking the wrong approach on this?
Is there another way of addressing this question?
And this is where we're at now.
If we think about the Internet, we can see it as a giant conversation
and, as such, an environment almost ideally suited
to enabling authors to do what they do best, to communicate.
As one of the most successful writers living today,
this is Paulo Coelho, said,
"An author wants his work to be read, he wants to be part of the conversation,
and ideally he wants everyone to be talking about him."
And the Internet gives writers an almost unparalleled opportunity
to engage not just with their readers and potential consumers,
but also with each other, to participate in creative exchange across borders,
across disciplines, through a host of different channels.
And this is the thin end of the wedge.
So far so good, you would think, but, there's always a “but”,
the quid pro quo for this increased connectivity
is a decrease in the amount of control we have
over how information and, crucially, content is disseminated and spread.
And for content producers, for whom this is their living,
this is a pretty scary prospect,
especially if you rely on this equation: Cost = Value
And the assumption that arises from this
is that if you allow content to be free, it becomes valueless.
But if we look at the evidence for this, it suggests that the picture
is much more complicated than this simple equation initially implies.
If we take some examples, the author Neil Gaiman
recently made his work available for free online through his website,
and a month later his sales had increased 300%,
particularly actually in countries where piracy was most prevalent.
This is a classic example of disintermediation,
this idea of cutting out the middleman and going straight to the core.
And if we take this idea a little further, it's something that you would assume
would have a negative effect on traditional channels,
you know, the old structures, publishers,
who always used to manage this gap between creator and consumer.
But, in the same week that a 26 year old
became a millionaire self-publishing through Kindle,
two large traditional publishers
published end-of-year results which showed significant profits.
If we look at the world of print journalism,
just as “The New York Times” announced plans to go behind a paywall,
“The Huffington Post”, an online, open-access site, free content,
was sold to AOL for $315M.
So what conclusions can we draw from what are apparently conflicting examples?
Well, perhaps, that the biggest challenge, that the digital revolution offers
is to the way we frame the debate altogether.
That in a digital world, there doesn't need to be just one success story,
there can be many.
The crucial word here is "and" rather than "or".
And if we use the analogy of a forest,
the big hitters, the superstars and the bestsellers
are still very much there, but there's a lot more rustling around
in the undergrowth than there used to be.
And these new business models which are doing the rustling
can survive with far fewer resources than the taller trees can.
So you end up with this scenario
where there's a sort of much more grassroots action going on.
And so it seems from this that we can start to question
this rather negative rhetoric of control that's been dominating talk
about this area so far,
and reach for a more inclusive rhetoric of capability and capacity.
If we go back to the Statute of Anne, where we started
and think about this dyad of mechanism and motive.
The motive is very clearly still there.
We still want to recognize and reward our creators for their content,
but the original mechanism that was put in place to give effect to that motive
is now just one part of a much bigger picture.
Copyright is only part of the answer, today.
And what this huge expansion in the market has really brought about
is enabling us to move away from this idea of a Holy Grail of content distribution
and towards a model where there are multiple business models
making money from content.
Yes, from straight forward sale,
but also from a whole host of other sources,
from subscription services, from added value,
advertising is obviously a big one, events, apps, merchandise.
What seems pretty clear at the moment is that all content producers
are likely to see diversification
in the way that they monetize their content.
And the business models which deliver that content will diversify too.
The ways that they will change, coming back to our theme,
they're likely to be smaller, more agile, more specialized.
If I steal Jeff Jarvis's advice, "Do what you do best and link to the rest"
As these traditional boundaries between creators and consumers,
distributors and producers break down,
we're likely to see that they'll be more hybrid, more collaborative,
bringing together professionals and amateurs,
individuals and communities.
And we're seeing this already, in the music industry,
but also other industries,
we're getting platforms popping up all over the place,
working on a perks for pledges basis.
So you pledge however much money you want to give
in return for a perk of your choice,
whether that's a free copy of a book or concert tickets.
So, if we come back to Anne, which is where we started,
and is framing this whole debate,
that 300-year-old motive,
the desire to recognize and reward creative output,
is still alive and thriving, but the mechanism is changing hugely.
Faster than we can really keep track of.
But amid all this change, there are some constants
that we can keep hold of.
Things which retain their value, which can't be copied,
and which are likely to continue to define
the way we consume content in the future.
I've identified some of these.
The first one is premium.
In an environment where everything is essentially a copy,
and those copies are increasingly free,
we will pay more for premium copies,
for the special editions, the rare, the original.
Personalization. Faced with almost bewildering,
often bewildering, array of content,
the services which cater for our particular needs,
our specific interests, will become even more valuable than ever.
Patronage. This is coming back to this perks for a pledge idea.
Now you don't have to be a wealthy philanthropist
to buy into an idea, you can do it to the tune of a book or a record.
Proximity. We always want to get closer
to our favourite artists or our favourite writers.
Hopefully, not too close!
Priority. We'll want their latest book, their latest record first.
Peace of mind. Knowing that the content that we do have
is safe, is reliable, bug free.
Omnipresence. Having it everywhere we want,
however we want it, whenever we want it.
And crucially, last but not least, the company of our peers.
We'll want to be part of communities, of like-minded individuals,
whose opinions we value, whose ideas we admire.
And that, of course, is why we're all here tonight,
it's what TED's about, it's what tonight's about.
Thanks very much.
(Applause)