Free and the ‘Copyleft’ Movement
So, there’s an interesting trend going on because of the internet. For a lot of businesses, the availability that the internet provides is steadily pushing prices down towards zero. For instance, because of the internet and the abundance of music that it creates, it’s pretty hard to get people to buy music versus downloading it illegally. Thus, the most popular places to get music are the places where it’s either free (kazaa, limewire, bittorrent) or close to it (allofmp3.com). Legal sites like iTunes, as popular as it is, don’t even compare to the amount of files traded illegally. The same applies to movies and more. In publishing, some writers are giving away chapters of their books to hopefully get people hooked enough to buy. Others are simply giving away their books to potentially get noticed. In design, sites like oswd.org and openwebdesign.com are literally giving away fully functional web design templates for the unrestricted use of anyone who so chooses to use them.
So, it would seem, that ‘free’ is the new price point to beat. So how do you beat a business that offers it’s services for no charge? Companies like Google are beating that you can’t. They don’t charge for the services, they charge the advertisers who want to get to you while you use their services. Many organized governments have practiced this model for some years now, in things like free public transport where they monetize a service through something other than directly charging customers. This is where I see the future of business heading. Give away the product, monetize the traffic the product pulls in. Chris Anderson is currently working on a book about this trend it as it relates to modern business.
This is the business model that I’ve based my new business around. I’ve started a new graphic design service that offers 100% free graphic design services and free file downloads. My only source of income will come from my customers generous donations and advertising.
The site, goscreative.com, offers PSD downloads, fonts, finished designs, information and more all 100% free. I don’t really plan to make money off it because even if I don’t, I’m still benefiting the community at large. If the community appreciates what I’m offering, then it will take care of me. If it doesn’t, then it means my service is useless anyways and I’ll do this until I can’t afford to anymore and I’ll quietly fade away into internet obscurity.
‘Copyleft’ is a play on the traditional copyright that has been used for years to protect intellectual property. Wikipedia defines it as:
Copyleft is a form of licensing and may be used to modify copyrights for works such as computer software, documents, music, and art. In general, copyright law allows an author to prohibit others from reproducing, adapting, or distributing copies of the author’s work. In contrast, an author may, through a copyleft licensing scheme, give every person who receives a copy of a work permission to reproduce, adapt or distribute the work as long as any resulting copies or adaptations are also bound by the same copyleft licensing scheme. A widely used and originating copyleft license is the GNU General Public License (GPL). Similar licenses are available through Creative Commons – called Share-alike.
