Today I thought (Am thinking) a little bit about digital bookstores in a copyright free world.
For our purposes we are going to have to make a firm distinction between digital and physical goods. Our courts have made many distinctions, I don't think this one is that difficult to make.
We can imagine two online sites selling the same digital goods. One charges for their digital goods, while the other gives them away. We will call these stores authentic and inauthentic respectively. One of these stores (the authentic) is preferred over the other, why?
Feedback is a fixture of the authentic store.
The authentic store will offer a forum for the creators of books to interact with their readers. Feedback is an integral part of creation and is crucial for new and developing creators. Feedback allows the creator gauge how their work is affecting their users, and will give the creator much to consider for their future creations.
The authentic store will offer a much higher royalty rate than the inauthentic store. We can assume that the authentic store will offer a near 100% royalty rate, excepting for administrative costs of the store. The inauthentic store might offer royalty payments as well, both stores might rely on advertising for revenue, but for the inauthentic store, this will be the sole source of their revenue. We would expect that advertising plus user purchases would enable higher royalty payments through the authentic store.
At the moment, I don't know how many people take royalty payments into consideration when purchasing their digital goods, but in the future I expect the number of people who consider this to increase. Teaching the children about the fundamentals of arts creation and dissemination would be akin to teaching them about copyright I suppose. Albeit slightly different, and perhaps better.
Authors and other digital creators will attach themselves to a specific store (reverse patronage) that has shown itself to be benevolent towards other creators and thus the successful authentic store will grow.
The user will want to patronize the authentic store for its authenticity. It's nearness to the creator.
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