VentureBeat

csven said:

I don’t expect Raph to say it, but I suspect he knows I will.

“Why does this matter?”

This matters not just because of the impact on virtual worlds and intangible content, but because that digital data is effectively no different than the information we use when manufacturing tangible goods. Rapid manufacturing is on the horizon and it too will be vulnerable to the same issues that face the virtual world.

Nicholas said:

in what way has the cost to create a minute of content risen exponentially?

i would suggest that the cost has not risen exponentially — has not, in fact, risen at all — it has _fallen_, mostly due to technology (examples include blog platforms, video editing software, digital cameras, software synthesizers, digital audio devices, etc. etc.)

there is still an argument that the marginal value of a minute of content is falling even _faster_ than the cost of creation — I think it is a decent argument, in fact — but on the face of it, the key statement in this article seems to cry out for a revision…

Raph said:

While the cost to create amateur content has fallen, the cost to create professional content has risen dramatically in all audiovisual fields. In computer graphics, film, television, audio recording, and so on, the costs to create mainstream mass market entertainment content is quite a lot higher than it used to be. And that’s the sort of content we’re talking about when we’re talking about “the content business.”

Even in the amateur market, there’s a quality arms race. The new tools and platforms are never going to be closed to the amateur, but as the more moneyed creators move onto those platforms (like pro filmmakers moving onto YouTube) you see that they are radically outspending the lone amateur — and reaping the rewards. Most hot viral clips are professionally produced these days, even if only by film students — Helsinki complainers, Eric Mongrain concert footage, etc.

kim said:

Agreed with Raph.

Nicholas, there’s another variable to consider. The cost may be falling for a given quality level of content, but the market expectations of quality are rising rapidly. The consumer wants much better, and expects to pay less for it.

Add that to Raph’s point about this being rapidly commoditized and it’s a scary picture.

csven said:

I’d add that creating virtual world 3D content usually requires tools still far more complex than “blog platforms, video editing software, digital cameras, software synthesizers, digital audio devices”. Writing or capturing media (images/sounds) is usually much less time-intensive than creating from scratch; the difference between photographing a person and painting them realistically.

The big change in 3D has been SketchUp, but professional modelers creating highend content (which approaches CAD complexity; especially when generating models for the various displacement mapping techniques) still use Max/Maya/SoftImage. SketchUp isn’t even close. Those apps have *not* gotten simpler to use. In fact, the additions of features have made them more complex in some ways (and has opened up the market for more specialized apps like Modo).

And as Raph said, those professional tools do land in the hands of amateurs, but those with talent (and patience) go professional and those without stay amateur (or run out of patience). Most people won’t spare the time to learn to paint like da Vinci if there’s a camera handy. And if it were fast and easy, then the game industry wouldn’t be so eager to see how “Spore” - with it’s procedural system - works out. Procedurals should help, as might some other things like 3D scanning, but they’re not likely to solve every content-creation issue facing virtual world builders.

Nicholas said:

guys, I think that the cost to make a professional =videogame= may have increased exponentially over the years — but it just isn:t true in other media.

Prokofy Neva said:

Raph, there’s a number of flaws in the concept of the historical event that shook the world:

“It was the sudden appearance of the capability to instantly replicate three-dimensional objects, suddenly in the hands of the common people.”

No, the “common man” did not gain CopyBot and still doesn’t have CopyBot. The makers of CopyBot were in a select, privileged group of reverse engineers sanctioned by Linden Lab even in spite of their own TOS restrictions on reverse-engineering. These few reverse engineers decided to release the device into the world with malicious intent, as the released chat logs of their discussion of the creation and release revealed; the founder of libsecondlife also connived to sell the CopyBot itself for a high price through an alt, and also paid a source to deliberately mislead journalists about the complicity involved in CopyBot. There’s no “common man” in this equation.

Indeed, any “common man” who happened to buy a CopyBot quickly found themselves getting a warning of banning as the Lindens moved to make ‘unauthorized use’ (not well defined) a TOS violation.

“Everyone’s intellectual property was up for grabs, and the very notion of manufacturing under attack.”

Not quite the case, but let’s accept that for argument’s sake (prim shoes were easier to copy than textures which didn’t render as well evidently; actual hard cases of actual theft *and* re-sale haven’t really emerged yet).

However…one thing remained uncopyable! Scripts! Now why are you not surprised?!

>Small business owners who relied on handcrafting luxury goods found themselves completely vulnerable to perfect knockoffs.

Yes, and in one fell swoop, the Lindens, through their designated reverse engineers that they had let loose to crowdsource solutions to bugs and finding improved client someday, undid their nation of shopkeepers and landlords (because landlords can’t expect to sell or rent land for stores or mall space to people struck immobile with fear of CopyBot).

I suppose it’s a tribute to human persistence in its suspension of disbelief and it’s ability to withstand even huge blows like this that life goes on, most people keep making, selling, buying, renting with no big discernible whack to the economy. The geeky stuff you’d need to know to work CopyBot; the sanctions the Lindens now have put in place (weak, and mainly rhetorical) have at least reinforced the sagging social contract.

Of course, the lesson is not lost on some giant content creators who will likely fold their tents or change their business models in the coming year. The winners of CopyBot are third-party shopping sites who take commissions or advertising and can now ensure a tamper-free container for people to sell their goods. To be sure, the owner of those goods is still vulnerable to CopyBot and that ultimately erodes the IP of the sellers, but it’s one break on the flow. There will be others. Big companies will just sell subscriptions to enter servers where they have rich content produced daily by scores of programmers and designers who don’t care about IP; they aren’t paid in micropayments, but paid by normal checks even coming in snail-mail — the companies who commission this content production will view the arranged bytes as little different than the arranged Legos or Tinker Toys you make into a car or house — then topple when you are bored.

Linden Lab will sell the Tinker Toys or Legos or access to the creation of them, to be more literal; the big companies will sell the rights to enter servers and view and play with them; there will be less and less “commodities” made by independent actors unless they have RL lawywers and RL patents.

Raph said:

Nicholas, I recommend reading “The Big Picture” for an illustration of how costs in the film industry have risen over time. The picture in the music industry is similar.

Don’t get confused by the explosion of cheap and easy to use tools for indies. It’s absolutely true that the barriers have gotten lower and lower for new entrants into the industry. For example, musicians can now set up a home recording studio superior to what the Beatles had by getting a computer and ACiD, Audacity, Garage Band, etc.

However, the cost of a pro-level setup is in the tens of thousands of dollars. A single rackmount soundbank can run to well over $1000.

So yes, while the low end has proliferated, the high end has continued to get fancier and more expensive.

Nicholas said:

thanks for the tips!

dmx said:

I’ll repeat a comment I made over on Ralphs blog, because it appears the conversation lives over here. Consider this a heresy:

——————-

I actually think copybot is the best thing that could happen to SL.

The problem with SL, is that its utterly gripped by what bugs me abour RL. Socially constructed limits to subjectivity based on wealth. “I’d love to be a hoverboat owner, but I cant afford it”. Well, in my take It’d be nice to be able to drop into a virtual world and hoon about in a hoverboat, but damn it if I cant afford to in SL either.

Of course I *used* to be able to go;-

@create hoverboat

And in the old currencyless Mush’s I could go “Yo, queegle, copy me your battlefrog and we’ll go nuts on each other”.

Richard Stallman talks alot about distopia for him being a world based on intellectual property, and whilst RL is not quite there.

And I got to be honest, I think its going to strangle the hell out of the game. Currently theres alot of discontent within SL about the intrusion of the corporates into the game. I dont blame its residents. Walking around and seeing boring IBM and NISSAN signs plastered everywhere seems to invoke everything negative about baudrilares (spelling?) hyperreal I can think of. But the growing distopia in SL is a creation of the culture of the place itself. Talking about building librarys of open source items and whatnot can draw looks of almost horror out of residents “You’ll undercut my market!” and so on. Im tempted to reply “Well, why isnt that a bad thing. Its a game, and more stuff means more fun”, but then I remember that many of these poor sods are attempting to actually make a living in it. Its like some sort of bizare categorical error made intentional. Well of course IBM and NISSAN will turn up. Theres a buck to be made. But wheres the fun?

Now, I dont necessarily disaprove of ingame currency. Heck, eve online is my favorite game by a mile, and the buck rules the show there. But the core undercurrent is NOT “If I move x widgets, I can trade my lindenbux for realbux” , its “man, if I pwn the band of brothers I can wave my doodle around in 3D and be the he-man I dreamed of as a child”.

But I can imagine a 3d world that isnt shooty, but more social buildy, and frankly Im more inclined to imagine that as one based on a set of freedoms that precludes exploitation and constraint by wealth and intellectual property.

Well, I really hope copybot succeeds and forces some freedom into that game , because frankly if online world makers might get the idea that SL’s monetisation of fun really is a good idea.

Only the cyberpunks will save us now!
————–

Now. Onto Prokovsky’s comments;-

The “select elite” you refer to is infact an open source developer group that got somewhat insanely hounded by certain questionable members of the SL community for doing something I consider really really admirable. Put in free labour into creating an open source product that lets people interface into the SL world outside of the proprietry SL client.

You’ve been hammering on about the “evil intent” stuff, by virtue of a little IRC chat, that only appears to show geek humor at worst. You keep painting the quest for freedom programmers engage in against proprietry enclosure of human creativity as if its some sort of communist plot.

The curse of SL is its DRM system. Information *wants* to be free, and the stunning lack of creativity I frankly see in SL compared to the amazing mushes and Muds of old really seem to have everything to do with the distopian system of intelectual property built in to Linden Labs software. I mean, one walks about SL and its like freaking suburbia. Hurr! Look I made my house!

SL needs a few things to do before it can flower in to the place it should be. First off stop stifling creativity with this stupid IP system. If I see a car and think “Man that’d be awesome with a pair of crazy wings and a pair of mech legs”, then it’d nice to be able to copy it and modify.

This is the reason that one of the most productive areas of IT innovation is in Open Source.

It worries me that the most creative forces in SL get stigmatised and attacked. I can think of the insanely creative builds of W-Hat, the libsecondlife people , and many others (perhaps the furries?) , that get treated like outside wierdo’s and bandits, whereas SL seems to portray greasy business folks who seem keen on forcing people to pay real money (that could do stuff like , say, buy food) for innane replicas of junk on the outside world.

Buggered if I want to buy another cheezy mansion model, I want to steal your car and attach an a jumpjet to fly to the moon.

dmx said:

Argh. Sorry about my grammar and unfinished sentences.. I get fast-typey-no-reading when Im irate.

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BESTREFINANCEMORT said:

It’s the bills at the end of the month, the Tar Baby

Create Your Star Wars Legos 2 The Video Game said:

Great, aonther post about lego. Thanks, I\’d nearly forgotten about it.