Lessig

Beautifully put by Fred Benenson:

NIN's CC-Licensed Best-Selling MP3 Album

Fred Benenson, January 5th, 2009

NIN's Creative Commons licensed Ghosts I-IV has been making lots of headlines these days.

First, there's the critical acclaim and two Grammy nominations, which testify to the work's strength as a musical piece. But what has got us really excited is how well the album has done with music fans. Aside from generating over $1.6 million in revenue for NIN in its first week, and hitting #1 on Billboard's Electronic charts, Last.fm has the album ranked as the 4th-most-listened to album of the year, with over 5,222,525 scrobbles.

Even more exciting, however, is that Ghosts I-IV is ranked the best selling MP3 album of 2008 on Amazon's MP3 store.

Take a moment and think about that.

NIN fans could have gone to any file sharing network to download the entire CC-BY-NC-SA album legally. Many did, and thousands will continue to do so. So why would fans bother buying files that were identical to the ones on the file sharing networks? One explanation is the convenience and ease of use of NIN and Amazon's MP3 stores. But another is that fans understood that purchasing MP3s would directly support the music and career of a musician they liked.

The next time someone tries to convince you that releasing music under CC will cannibalize digital sales, remember that Ghosts I-IV broke that rule, and point them here.

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Citizens' Funding of the Nation's Elections made it into round #2 at Change.org. Here's 7 minutes about why it needs to be in the final list as well. Voting runs from today till January 15. Vote here.

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Robert Sand wrote this thesis as an undergraduate at Brown (he is now a law student). Roughly put, it models the effect that the view that "money buys results" has on political participation. The idea he wanted to test is this: that the more you think "money buys results," the less effective you think your own participation in the political process is, and thus, you participate less. And, by contrast, the less you think "money buys results," (for example, because of citizen funding of elections), the more effective you think your own participation is, and thus you participate more.

He's got an enormous range of data for this, and he finds statistically significant results supporting the thesis.

Sand wants to work on this more and eventually publish it. He has included his email address if you'd like to see the data. Obviously, there's tons more work to be done here to verify and understand the model better. But I wanted to share this here (with his permission) because it is precisely the dynamic at the core of the concern that I am talking about: The expectation of illicit influence drives people to disengage -- even if there isn't any such influence.

If this model stands up, it will be an important contribution to this debate. Whether it does or not, quite a contribution from an undergraduate.

Meanwhile, less than 12 hours to vote on the Citizens' Funded Elections proposal at change.org. At this moment, we need 6 votes to get into the second round.

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While most companies have cut back on their support for the Commons, wonderfully and amazingly, the most constant and forceful support continues -- Sun ($50k). We're now within $12k of making our goal -- something that seemed impossible just 2 weeks ago. Massive increase in small time contributors. Thank you to all. And please help put us over the top.

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Type "Apple Store Chestnut Hill" on your iPhone in Boston, and you get the map on the left. Follow the directions and you end up on a back alley -- about a mile from the Apple Store in Chestnut Hill. Frustrated. And cold. And no longer in the holiday spirit.

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We're in the top 3, but there's still over a week of voting. Consider this carefully, and then register and vote.

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Joi Ito's new book is now available, Free Souls. The book is an amazingly beautiful (since Joi's the artist) and smart (since Joi knows the subjects) collection of photographs of many souls in the worlds Joi knows. All of the images are freely licensed (CC-BY) and all have signed model releases. So these are souls Joi has set free. As Joi's site puts it, "A celebration of all the people who are willing to share."

Still time to order for Christmas...

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According to the Wall Street Journal, the RIAA has declared peace in the "copyright wars," and will stop its suits against individual fileshares. This is important progress.

Above, the latest (and among the last) remixes of this story about Remix, emphasizing especially the call for peace, now.

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