Users and Producers: How Much does Social Media Profit from Your Content?
Gregory Donovan has posted a great critique of Rupert Murdoch’s World Media Summit speech. Here’s Murdoch, as quoted in Donovan’s post, on “stealing” content:
“The Philistine phase of the digital age is almost over. The aggregators and the plagiarists will soon have to pay a price for the co-opting of our content. But if we do not take advantage of the current movement toward paid-for content, it will be the content creators, the people in this hall, who will pay the ultimate price and the content kleptomaniacs will triumph.”
And part of Donovan’s critique:
“Like Gates’ before him, Murdoch willfully ignores the unwaged labor that he so handsomely profits from. Murdoch sees News Corp, AP, BBC, Xinhua, and the like, as the only rightful (and thus recognized) producers of content – just as Gates sees Microsoft’s hired programmers as the only rightful producers of his software. But what about the millions of MySpace users who freely produce untold volumes of content that News Corp then monetizes for a hefty profit? What about all the blogs that News Corps’ journalists read and take information from without so much as a citation, never mind compensation. What about all the people that freely participate in beta-testing Microsoft’s software and the millions of software “users” who report problems and freely contribute their time and energy to improving Microsoft’s content? If it’s obvious that “there should be a price paid for quality content” — which I’m willing to support — then how much will News Corp be paying for all the free quality content it uses, and how will it compensate all the unwaged labor it uses?”
One response so far
Michael
Elizabeth Housley
This is a hugely important issue, Michael — thanks so much for highlighting it. My favorite critique comes from game scholar and designer Ian Bogost in his post Bloomsday on Twitter:
It’s the huge, dark underbelly of the Web 2.0 phenomenon.
Sidenote: Why isn’t Gregory posting (or reposting) that blog entry on the Commons?!!!