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Re: Tip Jar
Doc: Just trying to use your weblog and am thinking about the things you have posted about tip jars, renaissance patronage, the future of intelletcual property, etc. By the way I have been blogging as well (results at http://www.afterink.com/blog.html ) Here is my problem with Dave's comments on the Tip Jar -- has he ever worked at a restaurant? Waiters and waitresses see the tip as an important (if not the most important) part of their compensation. While this practice is not universal, and has a lot of variations in the way it works around the world, we wouldn't think of eating at a nice restaurant in the US without paying at least a 15% if not a 20% tip. The point is that the bill the restaurant provides is for the FOOD, the tip is for the SERVICE. The tip amount is variable, because the quality of service is variable. This mechanism works extremely well -- people who are good waiters, and enjoy being waiters, can make great money (compared to activities of comparable skill). People who are bad waiters, tend to leave the profession, in part, because they get lousy tips. Thus we have a system that organically rewards quality. And if I were to fail to tip my waiter, the management of the restaurant would be likely to come and speak with me -- "was there something wrong sir? normally it is the practice to provide a gratuity for your waiter..." Thus the system has a built in mechanism for encouraging the tip system. The real issue in the evolution of this meme is in its applicability. Tips work in an economic transaction where there is a one-to-one connection between a service provider and service consumer. When you move to courtney love's 1 billion people leaving tips it stops making sense. Arkady's suggestion, as an alternative to the tip jar, is actually already in wide spread use. I can join the Matanzas Creek wine club, for example, and get discounts on wine and merchandise all year long. Having a club for a musician is really no different. All of these conversations about creative property end up devolving to examples of musicians and how they will get paid for their music once we all have Napster. The funny thing about this is that it seems to ignore a few basic facts: (1) less than 100 years ago it was basically inconceivable that you could "own" music. Even 50 years ago this was a new and unusual technology. Musicians made their money through the performance of music, not the recording of music. The Internet vastly increases the audience available for selling access to the live performance of music and these live performance can never be replaced by Napster. Recordings of the performances can be reproduced, but not the immediate interaction possible by "being there." Granted, virtual reality still has a long way to go, but that is the direction we are headed. (2) most musicians today STILL make whatever money they earn from music on the performance, not the recording of music. Widespread free access to recorded music hurts a relatively small industry - the recording studios - and a relatively small number of artists who live off of the royalties from their music, not ongoing creation and performance of new music. Applying these observations to literature results in a similar analysis -- the idea of "owning" books is a very recent phenomena and one that has been limited to an intellectual class until the past 50 years or so. In addition, most writers do not make sufficient money from their writing to support themselves. The group of people who have had the least amount of time to gain something of value from their creative work before the logic of the Internet destroys the notion of paying for intellectual property are software authors. In this way, I agree with Red Hat's fundamental vision that the money will be in the services aspect of the business. However, this model cannot succeed when the basis for the majority of economic exchange is still dominated by people protecting their intellectual property and insisting on payment for it. My point is that Red Hat's model is good, but they are trying to execute too soon. I have more thoughts on this, but I think I should get them in order before simply wandering around the topic... yours, Ted Shelton
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