Hi Richard, hope you had a good trip to China. Let me see if I can try to address both of your valid points:
I think the whole notion of “selling the results” kinda undermines the intent here. Somehow there’s a perception that IDSA is some sort of for-profit business where there’s somebody “getting rich” from the hard work of our volunteers. But the reality is that running a professional organization does require a good deal of money. Money to pay the staff in Northern Virginia, money to pay for the office space, money to finance the design competition and events through the year, etc. All of that takes money.
So, when you say, “share the profits”, I’m all for that, as long as we determine what the true cost of these programs are to IDSA and the fair and equitable exchange in value on behalf of the author. I don’t think anyone want to be made to feel like they’re being taken advantage of, or that somebody’s “making money off them”. But the fact is that we as a design organization are immensely dependent on the efforts of our volunteers and contributors of content. Yours and my posts here on Core77 is, in a sense, work for free while the owners of Core (like Stu) are making a living off those efforts. They’re making money off us.
Now, personally speaking, I contribute to Core because I find it interesting and feel like I’m giving something back to the design community, much like I do with IDSA. I’m not planning to send Stu a bill anytime soon.
However, I am not so naive to think that someone who spends hours, days, weeks and/or months writing case studies or other types of reports (like the one CG did to show the value of design) doesn’t somehow expect to be compensated. The question is: Compensated how? I know that there’s a lot of folks out there who create tons of content to little more than some credit on a website. Some are trying to develop a reputation or credibility within a certain discipline. Or, (perish the thought) they might just want to contribute to the greater good.
But that doesn’t necessarily mean that they sign away their rights to the content they created. Which brings up the second point you made regarding IP. I have been asked to work with Cooper Woodring to help develop a better framework of policies regarding copyrights and ownership of all the content that are volunteers and contributors create. Somehow we need to strike a balance between outright paying our volunteers (they wouldn’t be volunteers then, would they?) for content and outright taking what they created without any consideration at all. One ways too expensive, the other just pissed people off because they feel like they’re being taken advantage of.
But I would like to return briefly to the first point, which is to say that IDSA really should be viewed as a business in as far as it’s generating money hand over fist (trust me, nothing could be further from the truth). I’d rather folks want to help IDSA, and in return, we will help you. What form that “help” takes is what’s up for discussion.
So we doing the IP ownership issue research and are open to your thoughts on the matter? What’s fair and equitable? What’s reasonable?
Thanks,
w