[Commons-Law] Dmytri Kleiner: Interflugs, Kulterwertmark (a new, radical concept of 'digital rights managment')

[Patrice Riemens]

bwo nettime-l/ DK

Interflugs[1] is a student managed lecture series organized at
WestGermany[2], an underground event venue located in a former doctor’s
office near Kottbusser Tor.

The Interflugs series is initiated by students of Universität der
Künste. The event was well attended, and discussion flowed freely as the
crowd had many questions as well as views and interpretations of their
own. The topic was "The Price and Value of Free Culture." Obviously, a
question that's deeply relevant to artists looking to develop their
practice in the age of digital reproduction and social media.

Constanze Kurz and Frank Rieger of the Chaos Computer Club presented
the "Kulturwerkmark."[3]

The Kulterwertmark concept is a developing model of democratic cultural
production where fans of artists commit to a monthly flat rate to
participate, and distribute this amount to individual culture producers
by way of micropayments. Simular in principle to way flattr.com[4]
operates.

However, the Kulterwertmark envision this model a much broader social
level, where the management of the system is not a private firm, but a
foundation made up of the artists and the fans. And more ambitiously,
the Kulturwertmark project hopes to get the approval of the major rights
holders, such as the record labels and movie studios, to participate,
indemnifying the subscribers for persecution for downloading and sharing
cultural works, in exchange for money funded by the flat rate paid by
the subscribers. The Project also hopes to get approval from other
organizations that represent rights holders, such as regional collection
societies like Germans notorious GEMA[5].

Even more ambitiously, the project hopes to convince rightsholders and
cultural producers to vastly reduce exclusivity periods provided by
copyrights, to limit them to 15 years, instead of the current
life-plus-x, and even provide an earnings expectation, which would waive
copyrights on the work even earlier once a certain level of earnings
have been exceeded. Also noting that even once a given exclusivity has
expired for a given work, the producers of the work would continue to
receive income, since income is directed by fans micro payments, not
royalties.

On one hand, there is a lot to support about the system, the collective
funds provided by the subscribers flat rate create a kind of mutual
capital, that can not only be used to support cultural production, but
also cultural preservation and promotion.

The system is inherently democratic, as members of the foundation, fans
an artists control the system, and the remuneration of individual
culture producers is subscriber-directed, by virtue of the micropayment
system.

The use of the micropayment system is an important distinction over
other "cultural flat rate" proposals, since the subscriber directed
micropayments eliminate the need to track usage and downloads , thus
eliminating the surveillance needed to allocate payments in flat rate
systems driven by downloads or views.

However, the idea of rightsholders and their representatives buying
into such a system is extremely dubious for the simple reason is that it
only compensates them for the value of their current stock of cultural
works, yet their business model is predicated on controlling the value
of future cultural works, which a system that lacks user controls does
not provide.

The idea of a flat rate is nothing new to the cultural industries.
Spotify and Nokia's partially eliminated "Comes With Music" service both
offer all-you-can-eat subscriptions to music, and both have the support
of the rightsholders. The rightsholders are not opposed to flat rates,
what they are opposed to is exactly the democracy and user freedom that
the Kulturwertmark seeks to provide.

It's not just a question of getting fans to pay for music, it's much
more of a question of being a position to control which artists fans
will want to pay for. The labels don't see themselves as merely holders
of existing rights, they see themselves as Star Makers. Their promotion,
distribution and hype generating capabilities is what they want to
protect. Platforms that don't allow them to promote their artists are of
no interest to them, in fact they are a threat to them. For this reason
they will happily allow a centrally private platform where user
interactions and data are controlled to offer a flat rate, or even have
access to some of their assets for free. So long as the platform
delivers what they want most of all: Control. They require the ability
to dictate which users can do what with what content on a central
platform where their usage can be monitored, advertisements can be
shown, search results manipulated and "sponsored," etc. Without such
control they worry that the next generation of stars will not be their
own, and that is what they fear most.

Therefore, Kulturwertmark is a pipe dream. It makes the mistake that
all the labels want is money. What they really want is to maintain what
they already have: The ability to control culture.

The many interesting ideas in the Kulturwertmark model can only have a
future if they abandon the idea of attracting capitalist righstholders
into the system, and instead focus on building a platform that can
attract and sustain the next generation of cultural producers, who do
not and will not transfer their rights to the labels.

As I wrote in a Rap commission by the 2008 Oxcars: "If you really want
to fuck the recording industry stop downloading their shit!"

You can find the entire rap here: http://wp.me/p24fqL-1J


[1] http://www.interflugs.de

[2] http://berlin.unlike.net/locations/305905-West-Germany

[3] http://www.ccc.de/de/updates/2011/kulturwertmark

[4] http://flattr.com

[5] http://bit.ly/wAeQM1

-- 
Dmyri Kleiner
Venture Communist