Treat the Threat as an Opportunity
Instead of discouraging open source media, we should all be
embracing this social outreach of experimentation and expression. Companies are
treating open source media as a threat to their products, revenue, and ultimate
success. Matt Mason agrees that we should support open source media, in chapter
five of his book The Pirates Dilemma.
Mason argues that “society finds new ways to share ideas that advance the
common good, private interests move in to stop this from happening, to maintain
the old systems that benefit only the elite”. (Mason, 142) The problem with society
thinking this way is that the elites are becoming the minority, and in a
democratic society we are slowly showing ourselves as the majority. Pirates are
part of this majority and they are fighting to create a world of open source
media. This notion entails that anyone has access to the workings within a
program, or software, and recreation of something existing such as music, or a
better example is Wikipedia. Access to Wikipedia is easy, and allows anyone to
change content, to some this is an absurd new innovation, but to others it is
exceptional and mandatory. As Mason says: “nineteenth-century intellectual
property laws suited that past, but they are not quite right for the future,
and stifle creativity rather than encourage it.” (Mason, 142)
People are certainly grasping the idea of open source media,
the major influence that strikes their appeal is the no-cost factor, but there
are many other advantages to this increasing outlet of media.
This media can benefit everyone from the original producer,
to the manipulator and the audience, in more ways than cost efficiency. One aspect that is over looked is the lifespan
of these sources; they can live eternally through the expansion and changes
made to the original idea. Even if the original creator no longer supports the
system, odds are likely that someone will be able to maintain it for you (if
not yourself) and expand upon it. In the media industry competition in high and
if a company does not use open source media then they are the only ones who can
maintain your product and sell you upgrades. Someone like Bill Grates who
created the software program BASIC decided that he would not use open source media
because he felt his innovation was worth money, and not just for free public
distribution. What he failed to realize, but Linus Torvalds did was: “‘in many
cases businesses are losing out on opportunities because of their
information-hoarding mind-set. They don’t realize that their customers know
more than they do’”. (Mason, 150 and Linus Torvalds)
Gates didn’t realize this, and although he made a large
profit from his software, because he was the only one with access to the
interior no one could tell if there were flaws to perfect or unwanted code within
it. Today this is unappealing to the majority because people are extremely interested
in recreating their software to their own standards, as well as assisting other
with similar views and desires.
When Windows 7 came out with their campaign “I’m a PC and windows 7 was
my idea” they are not false advertising, however they did make it difficult
for their customers to be satisfied. If they had used an open source media they
could have evolved more quickly, and the clients could have become the assistant-creators.
Often when a company uses open source media the original producer can see when
they change it and upgrade it to their desire, the more people who flock to the
new idea, the more likely the company is to change their overall product with
societies hands-on help.
Change is a good thing, cliché as this statement is, it
holds true to the media industry. Open minds and open source media are part of
the growing desires in our supply and demand society. In order to succeed
isolation from clients is not the conscientious direction.
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