Value service over software
Whilst most discussion about digital creative tools and platforms focuses on the power, flexibility, accessibility and opportunity they bring; there is arguably a much more significant cultural and economic shift taking place. Certainly all the major institutions that either produce creative tools or deliver creative content (software developers, broadcasters, record labels and movie studios) are running scared and terrified. Why? Well their fearful claims range from protecting 'artist's rights' by way of copyright through to verbose assertions of pirate software and peer-to-peer sharing supporting organized crime and terrorism. (
Here and
Here and
Here and
Here)
But amid the much sprouted bullshit is the real threat... a threat that really is very simple and easy to see. The threat is simply the challenge posed by Digital to the established economic model that we've been so atatched to. The broadcasters and record labels and movie studios and software developers are terrified of having to re-jig and re-think the economic model that has served them so well.
It's that most tragic of ironies where all the major players for both creation and delivery have been pushing so very hard for us all the embrace the digital, to get all the digital devices we can as good little consumers. But now feel the urge to cry Foul when we use the computers and digital tools to do exactly what they were designed to do - copy, replicate and distribute. Funnily enough it seems they want to have their digital cake and eat it too...
Any debate in this reagard about Right and Wrong, Legal and Illegal, is null, void and irrelevant. A pointless exercise in futility.
The simple and unequivocal fact is that the traditional economic models based on the sale of a 'product' - whether it be for creating content or delivering it - simply cannot be sustained and have no long term future. Users will continue to use their digital devices for the purpose they are designed for - copying, replicating and distributing. Any attempts to convince the global users en-masse that this is somehow illegal or even immoral is farcical. Much like trying to tell ancient Romans that slavery was immoral; an attempt to exert one foreign set of ethical constructs onto a culture that fundamentally doesn't understand them.
A digital generation, what
Marc Prensky has referred to has the
Digital Natives (PDF) - simply don't understand the old industrial revolution premise of 'Ownership' of creativity and creative products.
So what are we to do? If all this really is rather obvious, and any one with half a brain can see that there isn't a DRM that can't be circumvented, no copy protection that cant be broken, no serial number that can't be cracked; why do the major players persist with their 'finger-in-the-dyke to hold back the flood' approach? The only logical conclusion to come to is that they are attempting to buy themselves time to figure out what the new economic model might be?
For software developers fighting the undeniably losing battle to prevent revenue loss from software pirating there is already a potential solution in the air and indeed many are already waking up to sniff the proverbial coffee. The answer lies in the culture of what users value; what do they value enough to willingly pay for?
Plainly what they do not value is the 'product' itself and frankly who can blame them? The creative software tools we use may be enormously clever and powerful but with a new version every year; ever changing formats, standards and platforms; often times unreliable hardware compatibility; and exorbitant costs for a product you don't actually own but only 'licence' and which has an incredibly short life-span, is it any wonder we don't value the product?
An alternative economic model lies in fundamentally shifting our perspective - if users don't value 'product' will they value 'service'. The answer an increasing number of software developers are coming to is Yes. Users may feel no need to pay for the product/tool itself but they may well be more than willing to pay for good service, support, resources and assistance in using, learning and implimention the product.
This is a model some areas of the software industry have functioned on for some time. Linux is the foundation of the overwhelming majority of the world's servers; Not Windows, certainly Not OSX, but open source and free (and stable and fast and efficient and flexible and scalable) Linux. And yet there is a distinct economic model here that has proven enormously successful. A free Linux operating system for your server might be all well and good but without support to help install, set-up and maintain it, its remarkably useless. Thus a great many software developers function on a model whereby you get the server OS for free but you pay for the service to support it.
Is this a model that might work for Creative Software tools? A model that circumvents the inadequacies and inflexibilities of old models in favour of one much more 'digitally' orientated? There are indeed a number of contemporary examples of exactly this model. Celtx is long one of my favourite applications (as much for what it conceptually represents as for what it can do - which is BTW just about Everything!) and it presents exactly this model.
Celtx is an open source software tool for screenwriting and production management. Being open-source, built on the Mozilla API and licensed under GPL, Celtx is free. Does this mean its pure good-will and altruism without an economic framework as a business enterprise? Not at all. Celtx is a tool that embraces a service-based Client-Server model where by the tool itself is free but (in the future once Celtx is out of beta development) users will be able to pay for on-line delivered services (collaboration, hosting, backup systems, sharing, hosting, resources, training and so on). The thinking is simple - Digital Natives don't value the product but they do and will value the service and extras. Value them enough to pay for them, and moreover a service is not something that can be so easilly pirated like a product.
We can see the concept behind this model in place across a number of different creative software systems, implemented in various degrees and guises. Sometimes its as simple as free upgrades for the life of the product (such is the case with dynamic DAW system FL Studio), other times an extensive rewards and bonuses program for registering the product. These may seem small steps but they are steps in the right diretcion, toward focusing on what users really value.
It seems now that the biggest creative software developer on the planet, Adobe, has a long term vision toward this model of Service/Support rather than Product development and delivery.
This article discusses Adobes long term plans for shifting the structure of its creative tools. (as does
this and
this) On the surface they specutale on moving the applications online rather than local. This is purely an exercise in technical logistics - will bandwidths ever be fast enough for cutting HD video online? Its hard to see why not considering that less than 20 years ago editing HD on a laptop was absurd. But it is a question of time and desire on the part of users to work on-line for big projects. In truth however ts is actually the leats interesting or profound element of Adobe's vision. Underneath this argument for on-line apps rather than local installs there is a much more significant conceptual element that relates to Service rather than Product; a case of realist thinking that is looking for a new economic structure for the company. One that has a long term future for the age of the Digital Native. One that aims to evoke what the digital native values.
It will no doubt be interesting to see how long the movie studios, record companies, broadcasters and other software developers can hold out in the face of the flood before they see the writing on the wall....
Posted at 12:00AM Oct 31, 2007
by Mike Jones in general |
