Intellectual Property in Bloggerville

Dan Robles — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 09:00:37 +0000

Most bloggers invite you to share their content far and wide on any one of many aggregation sites. But some people get really upset if you post that article on your own aggregation blog (even with full credit and back links).

I am always amazed when I get that proverbial chest thumping quasi-barrister “cease and desist” letter, followed by remedial citation of copyright law, and always ending with some pathetic accusation of irreparable damages and criminal violation. They get upset if you change the content and they get upset if you don’t. The worst is when it comes from a self-proclaimed social media guru who touts all ‘dat social media Kool Aid in their consultancy propaganda.

Reality Check:

1.   Ummm…nobody is an island in SM, you get ideas from someone else too.
2.   If you are pissed off – this means that you have nothing else to offer.
3.   Social media is a conversation – you have no claim to my response.
4.   So you think you are better than Wikipedia?
5.    Maybe your content is not so great – just convenient.
6.   Your feed is public, your content is public.
7.   If you’re not giving it away – lock it up.
8.   Implied Copyright? Go ahead, sue someone.

Regarding ‘my own’ content, If I feel that I earned the right to request that my reader spend their valuable time to promote my stuff across their hard earned social networks on TWT, MS, FB, LI, then they also have the right to share whatever, wherever, and however they want (with full credit and back links, of course).

To those who participate with others in this great journey – we will bend over backwards to help you along in any way we can now or any time in the future. Give us a call next time you’re in Seattle. Need a contact of LI? A referral?, Book review? PR shout out? let us help out! Thank you.

David Meerman Scott provides qualified research that demonstrates how authors that offer free downloads of their whitepapers and books (with the minimum of barriers), enjoy readership success increases several orders of magnitude over restricted content. If you love it, set it free.

The moral of this story is give, give, give, and the magic of social media will return your royalties- otherwise, thanks for the C&D letter – now I can delete you from my blog, social network, and corporate referral list – with full credit and back links, of course.

By the way, our research would cost millions to reproduce – all of it is committed to the public domain through Creative Commons. Go ahead, take it – it’s yours (apply full credit and back links, of course).

Picture credit

Is a social contract legally binding…and who cares?

Dan Robles — Mon, 13 Jul 2009 17:18:21 +0000

Trillions of dollars in play:

The Ingenesist Project posits that trillions upon trillions of dollars worth of value that is being transferred to social media from a legacy economy stifled by insurmountable debt. These numbers are indeed spectacular because they account for the value “lost”, and most importantly, the calculations provides clues on how to “find” it again.

What is a Social Contract worth?

According to Legacy Economics, the term “social contract” describes a broad class of theories that try to explain the ways in which people maintain social order. The notion of the social contract implies that people give up some rights to a government or other authority in order to receive or maintain social order. Otherwise, we would each have unlimited natural freedoms, including the “right to all things” and thus the freedom to harm all who threaten our own self-preservation; there would be an endless “war of all against all”.

Take me to your leader

By contrast, Social Media begs the questions: who or what exactly is that authority? Isn’t the greatness of the Internet the lack of an all powerful authority? So why aren’t we at a war of all against all? What keeps social media at peace instead of an endless flame war? Whatever this alien is, it is capturing and storing trillions upon trillions of dollars of value away from the legacy economy, but where?

Separating facts from fiction

According to the old economy, it is a “fact” that human knowledge is an “intangible asset” of which there are only two types defined:

1. Legal intangibles such as trade secrets, copyrights, patents, and goodwill (brands).

2. Competitive intangibles such as knowledge activities, collaboration activities, leverage activities, and structural activities.

However, when we consider social media;

1. There is no law governing the phenomenon – so there are no legal intangibles.

2. Collaboration, leveraging and structural activities are not being conducted in a competitive environment (the context of one “Company” against another).

So, the definition fails to account for knowledge assets in social media. The Ingenesist Project discovers the lost trillions simply by treating the social contract like a legal contract.

Tangible assets are managed by contracts

Technically, any oral agreement between two parties can constitute a binding legal contract. The legacy economy limitation, however, is that only parties to a written agreement have material evidence (the written contract itself) to prove the actual terms uttered at the time the agreement was struck.

But social media, email, and blog posts, etc., all constitute vast “written” agreements and material evidence as far as most people are concerned. So what is missing? Are we waiting for permission from government, Wall Street, corporations, attorneys, or the Federal Reserve to say it is OK for people to stop competing with each other or to renegotiate the terms of the social contract (and currency of exchange)?

The mystery is no mystery

Guess what, there is nothing there. Absolutely nothing except philosophical barriers carried over from legacy economics built upon political division. The mystery is that there is no mystery except using social media to unite people. After all, the biggest Brand in the world is a Community Organizer. Such calculation provides clues on how to “find” value again.

The Ingenesist Project » copyright

Intellectual Property in Bloggerville

Is a social contract legally binding…and who cares?