Re: paying the artists: the spike

From: Zero Powers (zero_powers@hotmail.com)
Date: Tue Aug 01 2000 - 01:43:52 MDT


>>From: Spike Jones <spike66@ibm.net>

>>Please, napster fans, how do we motivate people to do things
>>like writing The Spike if their blood, sweat and tears can so
>>easily be copied free? How much thought do you put into
>>your extropian posts? Very little if you are anything like me.
>>Would you want books that were no higher quality than what
>>we read on our chat groups? Have any of you chat groups
>>that are *not* brainy ones like extropians? I do: a motorcycle
>>enthusiasts group. The writing there is so poor and the thoughts
>>so shallow it is scarcely worth the effort to hit the delete key on
>>most of them. Is our literary future to be like that? Napster fans?

How about let’s give the “new economy” a chance to do its thing. Yes there
was once upon a time called now when you could only make money by moving a
commodity that derived its value from the fact that it was in limited supply
and could not be duplicated without some prohibitive degree of capital
investment. But jump ahead to the future called now where people are
earning money from little more than the fact that they can garner the
attention of other people. Yes John and Jane Doe can set up a webcam in
their home and thousands of people a year will drop by just to take a peek.
Mr. & Mrs. Doe can then sell ad space, or post MLM links on their site and
make enough money to more than pay for the computer and high-bandwidth net
connection.

So sure, there’ll be a lot of low-quality crap floating around where content
creators are not assured of big bucks from the traditional fancy packaging /
marketing blitz form of distribution. But that will just make the high
quality product that much more enticing (and profitable). Methinks J.K.
Rowling could put up her works on the net for download fee of a dollar per
person per chapter and do quite alright for herself. Sure some would say
that she wouldn’t have garnered all the attention in the first place if it
wasn’t for the marketing machine of big publishing. But I say there is no
better marketing machine than the internet, if used properly. Think Blair
Witch. Time will tell...

-Zero

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