[projectvrm] VRM For authors - was "An author's personal IP store in the cloud "

["Crosbie Fitch" < >]

[New thread, as tangential to previous.]

 

If the author is the vendor who are their customers?

 

For the last two or three centuries their immediate customers were printers (or publishers, with a largely effective monopoly over the production of copies), who were vendors (of copies) in turn to their customers, the readers of their publications (purchasers of copies).

 

The Internet, the instantaneous information diffusion mechanism many folk are still having difficulty getting to grips with, cuts out the printer as middleman.

 

Today, the author's customers are their readers.

 

Unfortunately, authors are still trying to sell their readers copies (even though their readers can easily make their own for nothing), and when they realise they can't sell copies they try and keep their work secret, and sell 'look but don't copy' access to their wealthier readers (who haven't got the patience or inclindation to further disseminate the author's work). Hence the WordPress retrograde not-much-of-a-business-model they call the 'paywall' or variations thereof.

 

VRM comes into play in providing the author/vendor and his readers/customers with facilities to commission the author to write (to propose an exchange of the customers' money for the author's work). Thus instead of 10,000 customers paying $1 a copy (or peek through a paywall), they collectively offer the author $10,000 for their work.

 

Maybe WordPress would develop such facilities? Maybe someone else would? Maybe IgnitionDeck is it? http://ignitiondeck.com/id/ Maybe it's not quite there yet? Maybe I'll complete my Contingency Market one day? Maybe not?

 

Now, VRM isn't just about the purchase, it's also about the conversation. VRM facilities would also facilitate a dialogue between the author and their readers - should the author be interested in having one. Perhaps the author would like their readership, current or potential, to express their desires for work the author may be able to produce for them?

 

The author, as any of their readers, can remain pseudonymous, thus there is no need to worry about controlling any personal data that may be revealed in the process of their CRM/VRM conversations. Moreover, given there's a simple exchange of intellectual work for money (as opposed to copies for money), the author can encourage their readers to disseminate their work, to make/share copies (to promote the author and build the size of their readership).

 

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From: Phil Wolff [mailto: ]
Sent: Tuesday, 3 February 2015 3:23pm
To: Larry W. Smith
Cc: ProjectVRM list
Subject: Re: [projectvrm] An author's personal IP store in the cloud

Crosbie, could we try a little thought experiment? WordPress is the world's number one platform for authors. They host millions of sites - both personal and commercial - and share their software for self-hosting. In a very real sense people trust Automattic (the company that publishes WordPress) with their IP. WordPress's data model includes a mode for private publication; you must be a site member with a particular role to see a particular post or collection of posts; often used to erect paywalls or to limit who sees family photos. So: trusted agent; IP data storage; ACLs; blogging social broadcasting.

What features would you add to WordPress or alter in WordPress to complete your vision of a VRM for authors? What would be in your spec sheet for the VRM plug-in and theme?