There's this classic economic model of "making money by selling copies
of the content I've developped" ; this is what Brian Clark, and Richard
Gaskin, for example, have been defending.
I believe this model is outdated, and not suited to the internet age.
First, because it's so hard to protect your content while at the same
time making it available (ease of copying is the very essence of this
medium) ; but most important, because there are better things to do !
A better economic model (a better business plan for your activity) is :
make money by selling your expertise, your ability to develop new
content, and *give out* free content as a demonstration of what you can
do. It's advertising !
After all, *visibility* is the big problem on the Net (why else would
you want to get the #1 listing in AltaVista ? why would you help robots
index your web site ?). Encouraging people to make copies of your work,
and to distribute it, is the best way to make yourself known. So when
someone needs some work to be done, and is willing to pay for it,
they'll come to you...
Human expertise, unlike computer files, is not easily duplicated ; in
fact, it's rare, it's precious, it has *value* : it's something people
will be willing to pay for. Content ? there's gigabytes of it, free,
on the net, why would I pay for it ?
Esther Dyson's "Intellectual Property" article in Wired 3.07, June '95,
says it all, a lot better than I can. http://www.cygnus.com/ is a good
example of a successful company using this approach (they sell support
for GNU freeware).
So let the copyright-minded people worry about protecting their content,
and deal with the intrincacies (:-) of copyright law ; let them worry
about crypto-sealed digital envelopes or whatever ; let Digimark develop
ever more complicated, and costly, watermark systems : these are the
dinosaurs of the net ! The future lies with free content.
Joao
-- Joao Moreira (Axime I.S., Paris, France) e-mail joao@axime-is.fr