Trent Reznor on music industry

I found this recent interview with Trent Reznor from Nine Inch Nail talking about his decision to publish his latest album under Creative Commons licenses.

This interview is from the Digg Dialogg show, where the digg community is asked to submit and vote question to be ask.

Reznor's answer to the first question is quite insightful on the way internet may change copyright and intellectual property in the future:

"Trent - you've embraced Creative Commons and file sharing, but your business model (aside from touring) still primarily involves selling music either digitally or physically. Why haven't you embraced advertising as a business model, e.g. placing ads on your torrent tracker? Why let Pirate Bay take all the ad revenue you deserve? Furthermore, why aren't you building a brand new record label based on a modern business model?"

Check out the video for his answer.





You can check the whole list of questions here.

EDIT: video doesn't fit well on the blog, visit digg dialogg web page to see it all.

Choice - F/OSS Community

Finally, I am fixed on one subject. Sadly, to choose one, is to let go many others. I guess I can't help it. If anyone of you is desperate to find an idea, I could provide a few ones. Maybe a dozen...

* * *

I will focus my ethnography on the free/open source community. Briefly stated, free/open source community is a grouping of developers and users of free/open source software (F/OSS). The particularity of such software is that they are distributed under terms that allow a user to use freely (as in free speech) his software.

The concept of freedom with computer software can be hard to grasp at first. To illustrate it, here's what I can read at the back of my Ubuntu CD, an open source operating system based on Linux:

"You are encouraged and legally entitled to copy, reinstall, modify, and redistribute this CD for yourself and your friends."

The focus point here is the community behind those software. These people, situated everywhere in the "meat world" regroup themselves on internet to work over project that they share with the rest of the world. This ideology contrasted with the mainstream business model of large software corporation such as Microsoft. Moreover, many members of this community see more in this movement than software development. Many see a way of life, a fight against propriety software, copyright holder and such. I want those members of the open source community to be at the center of my ethnographic project.

Open Source Ad on Youtube

The F/OSS community may be reach in a vast array of locations. For the purpose of this ethnography, I will start with the community section of the Ubuntu forums. Those forums were set up by community members that wanted to support fellow ubuntu users, and help each other improving their ubuntu experience. I chose this forum in particular for three reasons. I will then extend the research to the IRC chat room associate with this part of the forum.

1- As an ubuntu user, I am already familiar with other part of the forum (mainly the support part) where I asked for help and shared my little knowledge on the matter. I can't say that I am a very active member, I made a little over 100 posts over the past 3 years and my friend list is still empty.

2- The ubuntu forums in general are well regarded in the open source community. The members take pride in their openness and are really helpful. Harsh response to question such as "RTFM" (Read the Fucking Manuel) or "Google it" are frown upon, and most of the time, author of such comment get moderated.

3- I am not a programmer, nor a developer, let alone a hacker. I have absolutely no knowledge in the matter. On the other hand, I know that I will still have a place to participate in this community because of their respect for others and for their openness.