Will the World depend on free culture?

Since the release of the animated film Elephants Dream¹ in 2005 the audiovisual Creative Commons arena with professional requirements remained almost deserted. Two and a half years later after computer graphics development, it is this documentary that makes its baptism of fire. Indeed, it has been some time since a project presents a set of professional documentaries dedicated to be released under Creative Commons licence(s), and entirely realized with free software. These documentaries under production will be for a total duration of 90 to 120 Minutes. New videos appear regularly on the website, with themes about recent and historical non-violent movements in India.

Producer: Ton Roosendaal ; Director: Bassam Kurdali ; License: Creative Commons Attribution ; Duration: 10 minutes 54 secondes ; Budget: 120 000€ ; Website.

But, if free creation is almost nonexistent in the professional circle, is it not because it is incompatible with professionalism? Isn't free culture rightly characterized by voluntary work?

Cultural needs are a fundamental characteristic of humanity, such as the needs to eat, breathe and drink. The interest for humans in culture is instinctive, so the voluntary side of culture is inborn, inalienable and primordial. But on top of the human society characteristics are added and interwoven with a multitude of activities, such as professional, commercial and industrial ones. Sometimes these activities can have direct or collateral disastrous consequences to the domains they fit over. Starvation, air and water pollution are the grim examples related to our eating, breathing and drinking needs.

Because voluntary work is the core of culture it is not opposed to professionalism, but through it, it can steer commerce and industries to prevent disaster, cultural this time.

These human activities can interconnect and depend on other activities. Because essentially based on voluntary work the free culture depends on time and money. So it evolves tossed about by its dependencies: free time, charity, patronage, grants, etc. However dependency is opposed to freedom, so contradictory to this culture that defines itself as free. But worth that being dependent with other activities, it also can be in conflict, as it is the case with the entertainment industry. This conflict is the result of a legislative and technical liberty killer oppression lead by the industry against the Internet users. This is a second contradiction with free culture.

To be up to its freedom ideals, free culture must seek solutions to face these interconnections that can be restricting, or even harmful. By developing activities for its dependencies, regarding time and money the professionalization seems to be an asset, and by finding a system to coexist with the conflicting activities, or compatibility indeed.

The business model of the entertainment industry is designed to make people pay to access the content by selling LP records or video tapes, and that's what it aims to do on the Internet. However we already have this access with the Internet, what we don't have is the right of use according to free culture principles: copy, distribute and modify without restriction. What's the point of selling us something we already have? Why not sell us what we do not have: the right to copy, distribute and modify without restriction? Then free culture would gain control on the situation because it's the industry that would become dependent of the latter. If this hypothesis could become a reality then the World itself would depend on free culture, that why this project of documentaries proposes solutions to materialize this hypothesis.

This is not a storybook view compared to underground and volunteer movement of free culture. There is nothing contradictory. On the contrary, by extending its influence the volunteer core of free culture takes away these threats from its shoulders. To pay with personal time or money comes to the same thing. It's the same motivation, with the same sweat, for the same freedom.

The traditional system makes people pay to access the content, which is done downstream from distribution. Indeed free culture that have a free access vocation cannot seriously consider this kind of approach limiting the access. So it needs a system that funds the creation upstream from distribution, to be able let it live its own life on the Internet, without restriction for eternity.

That's why this documentary project proposes different ways to participate, such as promoting, translating, video editing, software programming, etc. and at the same time, introduce an original funding model called "funding and licensing" by the Creative Commons team. This model has often been theorized but never applied to such a large project. The film's budget has simply been split in three steps, each time the total of money inflows (donations, partnership, etc.) reaches a new step, a more permissive Creative Commons licence is applied.

Like any professional production, these documentaries generate incompressible expenses. But a significant reduction of the total production cost could be allowed by collaborative work, bypassing numerous middlemen and exclusive usage of free software. The wrong side of these saved expenses is that some bypasses takes away traditional funding possibilities, such as television licence, blank media tax, royalties, television advertisement profits, etc.

As this project directly defends the public and its freedoms, the idea that the public directly returns its supports viability makes sense at first sight. The public directly teams up with creators so there is something in it for both parties: free culture because of Creative Commons' licences, and free culture in terms of freedom of speech through creators' independence. Not to mention that the money saved by bypassing some middlemen would reduce munitions dedicated to handcuffing Internet users: less funds for parliamentary lobbying¹ (indeed directly in the parliament²), and less funds to develop technologies such as DRM.

Entities such as Vivendi Universal, BSA (trade group: Microsoft, Adobe, etc.) and SACEM (French royalties association) directly wrote a liberty killer section of the Internet French law DADVSI ("law on authors' rights and related rights in the information society") in 2005.
Virgin Records directly came inside French parliament with laptops to promote their toll based music platform, during "democratic" (49/3) debate about DADVSI law in 2005.

In spite of the common sense discussed above, there is a snag… free of charge. Despite the thousands of ads¹ feeding our respective brains every day, the costs passed to our daily shopping (upper than VAT², or a lot more³), that represents the World's first expense (1,200 billions Euros in 2004⁴), we feel that everything is free of charge. In fact we pay dearly for this feeling, and not only with available human brain time for TV ads and cubic kilometres of coke⁵. Because only a tiny part of these yearly thousands billions Euros – that all of us pay – is dedicated to what we care about, creation.

So inconsistently, accepting the idea that nothing is free of charge would make us save a substantial amount of money. To put the hand in the pocket is profitable! Add to that a cultural and qualitative gain, hindering the funding of universal mediocrity that sells coke, and sparing us liberty killer collateral damages.

"average we see 3,000 ads per day" ; Advertising: It's Everywhere (Media Awareness Network).
10% to 20% for hygiene products and 10% to 15% for food in 1999 ; La publicité (Patrick Hetzel).
Up to 8,653€ of advertizing fees per sold car in 2006 ; (Autoplus n°939).
(Collectif des déboulonneurs).
Patrick Le Lay, CEO of TF1 (biggest French TV Channel), declared: "There are many ways to speak about TV, but in a business perspective, let's be realistic: at the basis, TF1's job is helping Coca-Cola, for example, to sell its product. What we sell to Coca-Cola is available human brain time." (Editions du Huitième jour).

But who is supposed to contribute funding?

The answer should be: "those who have a deep desire to make this creation existing". It's very unfortunate to say, but in the case of non-violence in India it represents so few people.

Let's take the example of the traditional music industry. Out of ten people each buying a music album, how many did so motivated by a deep conviction? One or two, maybe three? One fan who cannot imagine living without this album, the "great fan", and two others are just avid fans. The seven remaining people just buy it to get access to it, but by having access to it on the Internet, they would download it illegally if it was not free, or wouldn't be concerned by a "funding and licensing" funding. Not mentioning the thousands of others who would never consider buying it for the access. After all they can download it, store it among some others terabytes of music, some songs of the album may come across a random playlist sometime, but that's all, most of the time.

So that's counted on these three fans. That's difficult to compare a budget with a selling price at a variable number, but let's do a rough average. On an average sales number in the traditional system, rounding up generously, the artist's salary represents 15% of the selling price¹. Just as generously the incompressible logistical budget represents 15%. As this project of documentaries demonstrates, salaries and logistics are enough to support creation, with direct funding. Let's suppose that the selling price of this album is 20€ in the traditional system, these ten people would have paid a total amount of 200€. In the "funding and licensing" case the three fans should meet the expenses of 30% so 60€. The great fan is ready to pay a little bit more that the usual price: 30€. Because he is a great fan, knows that his money is well invested, and gets closer contact with his idol. This contact can be provided by dedications, credits on the cover, previews broadcasting, etc. Finally the two other supportive fans are ready to pay, but a little bit less than the usual price: 15€ each. This approach sounds quite reasonable, and that's the right amount.

Detailed cost of Thomas Fersen's CD ; Production cost: 555,000€ ; Selling price: 17€99 ; (Epok Magazine):
- Sound recording: 13,500€
- Editing: 7,000€
- Mixing: 19,000€
- Equipment rental: 450€
- Meals: 1,625€
- Supplies (blank CDs, hard drives): 3,000€
- Salaries: 75,230€ (4 musicians, one choir, audio engineer, singers, backliner...)
- Graphical creation: 31,500€
- Launching budget: 12,000€ (mini concerts, trip to television)
- Advertising fees: 140,000€
- Shops's presence points: 25,000€ (corners, point of sale display, listening points)
- Poster campain: 22,000€
- Concerts communication: 45,000€
- Music video: 40,000€
- Television spot: 5,000€
- Press pictures: 3,000€
- Production company: 110,000€ (25% of the sub-total of 443,305€)

Why would the fans pay for others?

Any of us exists through its personal tastes, they take part of our flesh and identity. We don't necessarily pay for others, but to make our tastes existing, to make them known, to share them and be recognized as individuals. That's the question we don't ask ourselves when we are a fan. If we like soccer for example, it's natural to support our favourite team, we appreciate the style of play of every team, but we don't support them. We are all the more happy that other fans are getting interested in our team or sport. Other teams are themselves supported by other supporters, and everybody is all the more happy to enjoy the show. That's a kind of creative competition, good-natured: "Who will know how best to support his/her team?". Any of us would be ready to support free creations, but only the ones that we especially love. The tastes of any individual are unique, so we would need a very large range of choices to make such a system existing, equitably for the whole public, and economically viable.

But in terms of free audiovisual creations with professional requirements the selection is really deficient. That's why in the current situation the answer cannot be: "those who have a deep desire to make this creation existing". To make this selection exist a demand of freedom is necessary, the latter being almost nonexistent we have to make it. Thus it is not only to the fans but firstly to everyone who wishes not to be victims of the Internet repression any more, not to waste their money, and hope that free culture will no longer be the exception but the rule. Now everyone should support free creation, beyond personal tastes. This is until the selection proposal becomes varied enough for us not to contribute by common sense, but by instinct, as great fans, only for the creation we really love.

Lawrence Lessig, the Creative Commons founder has supported this documentary project since the first day, becoming the first online donor. Ton Roosendaal, the Elephants Dream producer expressed his encouragements to the team that he qualified as "pioneer". Also, Mark Shuttleworth, the Ubuntu leader who qualified the project as "extremely worthwhile". And finally Richard Stallman, the godfather of free software and theorist of the free encyclopedia which became Wikipedia, announced to the team that he will support it for the last steps, more free. Because of its youth the project seems to remain unknown to those out of the initiated circle, but the Fondation Wikimedia announced to the team that a section will be opened to spotlight this kind of project, that's a lead.

"How surprising that any healthy man can go without food for two days - without poetry, never".

Charles Baudelaire (Conseils aux jeunes littérateurs, 1846).

How long without freedom?

thenyouwin.yooook.org

A free documentary project.