Free Ride: How Digital Parasites Are Destroying the Culture Business, and How the Culture Business Can Fight Back Paperback – September 18, 2012

I started Robert Levine's "Free Ride" with a deeply skeptical mindset. As someone who has followed the topics of digital innovation, the digital economy, and piracy in the news and blogosphere, I tend to be wary of anything that really amounts to obsolete companies trying to preserve an advantage through regulatory and legal means in the face of technological innovation.This is why I was pleasantly surprised by this book. It's a fascinating history of the rise of digital piracy as it affected (and affects) the major "content" businesses (Music, Newspapers, Publishing, Television, and Film), and particularly the divide between the digital technology companies (such as Google) and the content industries. Quite often, I finished a chapter of the book much more sympathetic to these businesses than I had been before, particularly when Levine really delves into the economics of the "content" businesses and the piracy affecting them. While I don't entirely agree with him (at times, I think he's a little too wed to the idea of keeping the content businesses large and stable), I strongly recommend this book to any interested in these topics.Levine focuses on those five main "content" businesses, but the real heart of the book (the most researched and detailed, including Levine's proposal for dealing with piracy) lie in the sections about the Music Industry. He goes into great detail about how digital piracy unfolded on the industry in the form of Napster, File-Sharing, and Digital Lockers, and how the Music Industry reacted to these changes (and the proliferation of digital technology plus the web). Particularly interesting to me was his writings on the economics of the Music Industry and each method of distributing music (such as CD Albums versus iTunes singles), as well as the details about the rise and fall of Napster in the late 1990s.It is from the Music Industry that Levine also draws his proposal for resolving the issue of getting rights-holders paid for the use of their content on the web: "Blanket Licenses", or the right for people to use all the music they want as long as they pay for the license to an organization that then distributes the revenue (or if they subscribe to services that do this). He points out that this is already a system in place for paying songwriters and music publishing, and that several European telecoms/Internet Service Providers (such as TDC in the Netherlands). There is increasing support for it in continental Europe, although the US music industry continues to be wary.This is not to dismiss the rest of the book. Levine also delves quite well into how e-books are changing the Publishing Industry, mostly in the context of the conflict between tech companies that want to sell book-reading devices using books as a "loss leader", and the actual publishing companies that are afraid that this "loss leading" will destroy any other retailers who can't afford to take a loss on book sales to sell physical readers. He makes a very convincing argument that it was foolish for newspapers to put all their articles online for free, instead of reserving most of them for subscribers (particularly the more profitable "print" subscribers that usually account for more than 90% of a newspaper's revenue). Levine points out that Online Video is a major threat to cable television, the heart of the modern television business (their reaction is "TV Everywhere", allowing anyone with a cable subscription to watch television shows and movies on any devices they own). And quite frequently, Levine points out the divide between the technology companies that have benefited from a "free web" that permits piracy (such as Youtube getting popular on the back of pirated video content that users post), and the content providers hurt by this. A great deal of his anger is particularly reserved for Google, which has been a major player in dampening efforts to strengthen copyright enforcement online.That is not to say that I agree wholeheartedly with Levine on these issues. His chapters on the newspaper business are very convincing, and I'm much more sympathetic to the television and music businesses after reading this book. Nonetheless, I think Levine has a bias towards high-priced, professional content output, such as high-priced shows on cable subscriptions. There are several points in the book where he's dismissive towards amateurs and "hobbyists", and I get the impression that he would gladly make the trade-off of higher cable prices for higher-priced (and presumably better) content such as "Mad Men". That's a fair opinion, but it's like complaints about how the quality of air travel degraded after de-regulation allowed cheaper airfare prices in the US: quality was lost, but far more people had access and the ability to enter the market. It's important not to get too wedded to the present state of the "content" market, fears about a "twenty-first century economy with a seventeeth-century content business" aside.Despite some of my disagreements with Levine, I DO wholeheartedly recommend that you read this book. It's an excellent piece, both readable and well-supported, from a perspective that tends to be dismissed as entirely self-serving and "luddite" in the debates over digital piracy.

Copyright protection has undergone a sea change over the last decade or so. What was once considered philosophically and legally axiomatic - that creators should have control over and benefit financially from their work - has rapidly eroded. Nowadays, in most cases there is not that much practical protection for musicians, authors, and other creative content creators; and their associated industries have thereby lost influence, resources, and prestige. Most popular legal argument cheers this erosion along, offering various self-serving justifications for it (e.g., that it's progress; that creators' business should change; that creators' work is of poor quality; that piracy actually helps creators' business, etc.).This book stands as a rare counterbalance to the pro-piracy chorus. It's obviously frustrating to be on the dissenting side of one of these trans-national cultural movements, but the author is able to make his case in a way that is nonetheless entertaining and insightful. He deftly meshes solid legal analysis with neat stories.The strongest part of the book is unquestionably his detailed analysis of the effect of copyright erosion generally, and specifically on the music industry. Indeed, the analysis here is far and away the best I have seen. Levine goes back to the Statute of Anne, and carefully traces several key cases, including Acuff-Rose, Sony, the extension acts, and so on, since. His legal analysis is spot on and accurate, and I was frankly quite surprised that he was not a lawyer. (Perhaps he ought to have pointed out that all most material is in fact copyrighted at the time of creation - sometimes he seems to use "copyright" for "registered copyright" in a few places, as when he talks about the percentage of copyrighted material among some network, but this is minor).He has a terrific historical analysis of the history of copy protection, attempts to copy protect CDs, and various failed industry standards. His treatment of the Metallica stance on copyright is superb if poignant. He carefully and accurately traces through things like Napster, Kazaa, and later iTunes, and the effect of all these on revenues. Overall, these chapters are certainly worth the price of the book.His discussion of film and movie piracy is also careful and persuasive. He also has a very good overview of book publishing economics and why, for example, Kindles are not quite the boon to authors that Kindle owners like to pontificate about.I did disagree with the author in a couple of places. First, I felt he made too big a deal about Boxee, some sort of television device I'd never heard of. (The author likewise doesn't discuss the possibility of desktop computers replacing TVs - only mentioning laptops, tablets, etc.).Second, I felt Levine's treatment of Google Books was unfair. Levine correctly notes that some publishers and authors objected because they might want to reprint books that are currently out-of-print. But Levine ignores the fact that these authors could easily opt out of Google Books if they wanted to. Levine also ignores the problem of "orphan books", where copyright is hard to ascertain and the owners don't care enough to bargain, which requires an opt-out system for Google Books to work. Levine cites the argument that Google Books should be disallowed from becoming a full library because doing so could prevent other companies like Microsoft from making a similar effort. But the companies leading the charge against Google Books have no intention of making such a project, nor will they ever. It seems odd to prevent Google from doing something with the argument that if Google succeeds, other companies won't in the future.One interesting point, by the way, that the book glossed over was how often antitrust considerations prevented the many relatively small content creation businesses or artists from joining together effectively to promulgate new standards or new partnerships. With the very loose confederations that are less likely to raise antitrust issues, it is extremely difficult to get the buy-in from the production and distribution chain required to make the standard effective.Still, overall the book is fun, it's entertaining, it's accurate, and it's fair.

This is quite a readable book on an immensely important subject.The author explains how our information economy is headed for a place where informationisn't worth anything in an environment of piracy.He approaches the subject in a fair way balancing his comments between user and producer.