Advance One Time Payment for Digital Content - A Possible Payment Model for Digital Content

Content publishers and distributors want the Congress of USA to pass a law to protect their income stream for years. The digital technology has enabled certain practices which are making the earlier copy right concept obsolete and uneconomical. Society has to think of new models of digital content creation and distribution. The basis of  current models of content creation and distribution is destroyed and the current businesses are only trying to salvage the situation for their benefit. Digital content distribution capability can be monetized. Like Wikipedia, donations can be raised to create and distribute content. Commercial and government organizations can finance their digital content sites. Government and Philanthrophic organizations can finance third party sites. Digital content can be easily copied and distributed across net. This makes digital content available to many people and thus it is good for the society as a whole. But popular content creators need huge amounts of money and there has to be ways in digital content distribution to provide money producers of content. Advance payment for digital content could be one option. In this option, producer gets his main money through advance payments that are made before the release of the content. Thus a film has an assured income stream for its first world wide digital screening. A book has its assured income stream from readers who make an advancement payment. A news paper or a magazine has the assured income from its subscribers to the digital content. Once the content is released into the digital space further monetization is uncertain. Then onwards distribution takes over and the space becomes free for all and income opportunity becomes very small.

So the content producers have to make money from the one time distribution event over which they have control.

SOPA is an ill-thought move. To protect 180 Hollywood producers, US Congress should not stifle the 180+ million digital content creators. US Congress must support  content creation  under creative commons rather than promoting unsustainable copy right content under SOPA.

Metaphors and Norms - Understanding Copy Right Law in a Digital Society - PhD Thesis Information

Thesis author: Stefan Larsson

 

Lund University

 

2001

 

Can be downloaded from

http://lup.lub.lu.se/luur/download?func=downloadFile&recordOId=2157989&fileOId=2158125

or

http://www.lunduniversity.lu.se/o.o.i.s?id=12683&postid=2157989

 

 

In the foreword, the use of metaphors to describe concepts is given. Love is described as journey. The expressions,  "We have reached crossroads", "We have hit a dead end" etc. are the results of such a metaphor.

 

 

 

A paragraph in the conclusion

 

Legal and social changes

A common theme in the sociology of law can be described in terms of “the gap problem”. This refers to  value based differences between law and social norms. This can give rise to the idea or construct "law’s illegitimacy", and has often been the conceptual basis for studies of divergence between legislative promise and its performance (Nelken, 1981).

The importance of social norms for the enforcement of law is often emphasised. Consequently, legal enforcement that is performed without the support from social norms risks creating an unstable state, likely leading to directly dysfunctional consequences, and to ultimately fail its manifest purpose. In general explanation, laws are made to provide state support to social norms.

The importance of informal systems of external control, early recognised by Ellickson (1998, p. 540), is indisputably relevant also for copyright in a digital society.

 

It is an interesting thesis to be read by active internet participants.