I Wrote a Story for a Friend - By Julian Gough

I came of age in the Napster days, when only fools spent money on anything digital. Early on, we decided that we’d rather pay for the internet with attention instead of money. This seemed like a good idea at the time, and at first, it was!

It was like having a big party sponsored by Mazda, and all that meant was having the Mazda logo on the Solo cu... See more

Copyright nearly killed the open web, in fact. Until the 11th hour of international decision-making on the subject, copyright law in both the US and the EU was going to make all intermediaries on the web, from search engines to internet service providers, liable for all copyright infringements that traveled over their networks, whether they knew ab... See more

Behind these conversations is a fundamental change of the digital age that applies to essentially every creative field: in the past, consumers bought and collected physical editions of creative work, creating a direct value exchange between fans, artists, and producers. Today almost all creative work is digitized and essentially rented — lowering

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Intellectual property rights are sometimes hailed as the mother of creativity and invention. However, Marshall Brain points out that many of the finest examples of human creativity—from scientific discoveries to creation of literature, art, music and design—were motivated not by a desire for profit but by other human emotions, such as curiosity, a

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By contrast, consumer software tools that enhance human agency, that serve us when we are most creative and intentional, are often built by hobbyists and used by a handful of nerds. If such a tool ever gets too successful one of the Marl-serving companies, flush with cash from advertising or growth-hungry venture capital, will acquire it and kill i... See more

licensing inside the walled gardens. We wanted flexible licensing tools that would enable creators to share with strangers, and make money if they chose to do so. Those tools now exist, albeit in a form that’s far from ideal. Creators on TikTok and YouTube are making money, sharing stuff they create, and doing so in a relatively frictionless way. T... See more