Attention!
Tom Jennings
21 Feb 94

It's been obvious to many people that patents and copyrights don't
work real well for non-physical things. As Barlow points out in
WIRED 2.03, it really only works for print/image/etc because for
all of history protectable content was so attached to the physical
medium, that most people never made the distinction.

The basic confusion of form with "content" obscures where the
problem is; for centuries, paper and printed word were considered
one, the laws defaulted to cover the combination, habit considers
them one.

Instead of worrying how to preserve current turf, by trying to drag
things back into the flawed 19-century model which worked basically
by accident, it's more useful to ask: what sort of non-physical
creative thing can I produce, that cannot be taken from me? 

That thing is *attention* -- I can give it to you, but you cannot
take it from me. As much as you might copy my work (book, program,
etc) it is static. Changing a work requires more -- attention, from
the original author, or another who could put attention to it to
(hopefully, and subjectively) improve it.  Paco Xander Nathan
pointed out in FWR#2 that attention is the monetary unit in an
information economy. I think it's also a key to working out systems
that allow commerce in a non-physical environment.

Information flows and self-levels just like water. Trying to stop
it has obviously not worked, and copy-protection just irritates
users. This is vestigial, historical emphasis on medium confused
for content.

What is interesting is the transition -- from no information to
some information -- attention. You get my attention (money frequently
helps), you tell me what you want from me, I produce information
to satisfy your need.  Transaction complete.  This isn't new --
authors get commissioned to write magazine articles; musicians
hired to make soundtracks, fill out bands; artists do custom murals
on buildings; the list is endless. You can copy specific instances
of work, but you can't reproduce their work-generation process,
ie. their creativity. And in the cases where you can come close,
it's usually easier to just hire them.

Support, interaction, customization, design, fixes -- this is
attention.  You can't copy it. "Bits" are static. 'Way back when,
I sold Fido/FidoNet with a tiered pricing scheme. First, free.
Take it, run with it, have fun, ask no questions. Then two levels
of pay-for; hobbiest and commercial. That got you a printed book
with lots of details, and I'd talk to you on the phone. Finally,
for reasonably serious money, I'd make you a customized version.
Then you got pretty good support.

What I was selling -- and in my case giving away -- was not bits,
but knowledge.  You can't swipe that; bits are only it's partial
embodiment. Those who paid got it first -- timeliness still has
value. Those who didn't had to wait. Non-serious users and serious
cheapskates, and those with sufficient support already, never paid;
people who wanted the latest fixes, and not mess around with
downloading just mailed me a check.  Instead of rummaging around
in an echo conference (newsgroup) looking for the right answer,
they paid me -- for my attention to them. 

Some understood this process, and basically paid me for software
they were using just fine and didn't need my support, because it
got my attention and they knew it -- I would get suggestions,
why-dont'-you's, and so on.  

 * Attention is the generation of personalized information.

 * Communication is the medium in which attention grows.

When you pay money, you get the attention of the author. When you
tell them what you like, and back it up with money, it rewards
them, and provides feedback on what more things you might like (to
reward them for, etc).

While it's possible to get around the expense of dealing with
authors or their representatives or other author-ities, the benefit
devalues rapidly the further you get from the source.

And on paper it's not as clean and seamless as the laws in the
physical world appear to be. It will be possible to use a given
soft-thing "for free", though in a devalued manner, and this makes
legal determinists nervous. Just as it's possible to buy older-version
software at a discount today, you'll always be able to scrounge
aftermarket books, fixes, FAQ's, etc, as discard, archives,
second-hand, etc.  But who wants Wank 3.0 when 5.2 is current? The
briefest reading of PC trade rags makes the ills of older versions
well known.

This is no universal solution. Some kinds of soft-things need to
be fairly easy to useintentionally with little support, and many
copies of it are used at one time -- word-processing programs are
a good example.  This is the kind of software that's easy to swipe
and use without support, and older versions remain usable. But
these too fall to the timeliness factor eventually.