Mike Thornton

I loved listening to this. I was so gutted when th...

2021-12-01T10:20:17.449+00:00

I loved listening to this. I was so gutted when they took it off catch-up. I don't suppose you'd be able to share a copy of the programme?

Your website is really cool and this is a great in...

2021-06-12T09:19:14.247+01:00

Your website is really cool and this is a great inspiring article. y2tube.net

You know your projects stand out of the herd. Ther...

2021-02-11T14:46:59.944+00:00

You know your projects stand out of the herd. There is something special about them. It seems to me all of them are really brilliant! Buy Youtube Views

Update, going out on 5Live and BBC London at 8pm o...

2011-04-11T20:16:18.171+01:00

Update, going out on 5Live and BBC London at 8pm on Thursday.

Progrmme going out now and article on BBC web site...

2011-04-11T20:14:16.390+01:00

Progrmme going out now and article on BBC web site is currently at no5 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/magazine-12933932 Also will be going out on BBC London and BBC World Service too. Well done Jo!!

Nice and flowing commentary on the event we attend...

2011-03-24T13:32:59.771+00:00

Nice and flowing commentary on the event we attended earlier this week. I was especially enthused with the event's cherry-topper which was a visit to MediaCityUK.

I'm not what you'd call a typical radio producer having cut my teeth in the podcasting world, but I admit I came out of it with a totally different perspective on what can be achieved through broadcasting.

I felt 'Wireless and the World' was a little misleading as a theme, however. For sure we got an insight into what happens at RTE, and learned about New Zealand and Kenya from a radio output standpoint. But I had hoped we'd also be looking at more practical ways to wake up the world with UK production.

I live in hope for RPIN 2012!

he Guardian selected it as one of their Radio High...

2011-03-24T08:18:14.561+00:00

he Guardian selected it as one of their Radio Highlights for Christmas Eve....

If the festive spirit is still proving elusive, tune into Merry Christmas Morris Minor! (Radio 4, 11am), one of the sweetest radio offerings over the holiday. The Guardian's Martin Wainwright celebrates the car's 50th birthday in this affectionate tribute, which includes a rendition of Jingle Bells played on a chorus of Morris Minor Horns. That moment really is enough to melt even Scrooge's heart.

It also made Pick of the Week on 19th Dec too.

2010-12-30T14:28:39.886+00:00

It also made Pick of the Week on 19th Dec too.

Nice review from Tim Adams in The Observer... Joh...

2010-12-30T14:19:51.728+00:00

Nice review from Tim Adams in The Observer...

Johnny Vegas used to be the ubiquitous clown of the moment but, having been promoted as the most unpredictable man in light entertainment, became slightly too unpredictable and now seems required to attempt reinvention as a character actor. The acute afternoon play he co-wrote, Cheque Book and Pen, conjured up the ghost of Les Dawson, with Vegas doing an impassioned impression of the comedian in his awkward Blankety Blank days. Nicholas Parsons, who happily seems to have forgotten where self-parody lies, was the dame of the piece, playing himself as a devious game-show host rival.

Vegas's play discovered a moral of its own in the compromises Dawson was forced to make to become a prime-time star; in a bravura closing argument, he put the case that creativity had nothing to do with packaging or consumers but was all about "doing what you believe is right and doing it your way". Try telling that to Simon Cowell.

It's been a pleasure. Sometimes a paradigm sh...

2010-07-16T18:37:05.329+01:00

It's been a pleasure.

Sometimes a paradigm shift feels like jumping off a cliff, but it's not that bad really. The Sun still appears to orbit the Earth, you're just join the ranks of the heretics cursed with the knowledge that it doesn't...

Crosbie, Thank you so much for taking the time to...

2010-07-16T17:50:16.047+01:00

Crosbie,

Thank you so much for taking the time to explain this to me. It has certainly given me something to think about.

Mike, you may as well ask how on earth Jukeboxes m...

2010-07-14T11:00:47.045+01:00

Mike, you may as well ask how on earth Jukeboxes make any money when people other than the person who puts a coin in get the benefit of the music for free. This is only a conceptual stumbling block for those indoctrinated by copyright to believe that people should be prevented from obtaining value if they didn't pay for it.

However, 'paying for value obtained/extracted' is an aspiration of the unscrupulous. Economically, you pay for the labour of production, and then any value obtained/extracted thereafter is free. You pay for someone to make a basket for you, but you don't pay them each time you or anyone else finds it useful. The same thing applies to music. You pay someone to write a song, but each time you or anyone else on the planet enjoys that song (obtains value) there's no charge.

This is how it used to be before copyright, and now that the Internet has demonstrated how unnatural copyright is (and always has been), this is how it will be after copyright.

The free software movement has already migrated to this way of working. There is a free market in software and copies. Software cost money to produce, so coders are paid. However, copies cost nothing to make, and are free. People do still have problems getting to grips with the fact that the software that has already been produced is effectively free of charge, but software that hasn't been produced costs money (to those who want it produced - sooner rather than later).

So, yes, you may pay an artist to paint your portrait, and you get your portrait painted. But, what does the artist care if other people can look at it without paying? Or for that matter take photos and sell copies? Of course (you being in the position of a commissioning publisher), you may be very interested in a reproduction monopoly that would enable you to sell copies despite them costing nothing to make. And so copyright is revealed as a monopoly for the benefit of the publisher - not the artist. At this point many people say "Well, ok, we should keep copyright because it sounds lucrative". The trouble is copyright is no longer effective. We all have printing presses and we can't all sue each other for infringing our monopolies. The issue is not whether we keep copyright or not, but how artists make money without it. Publishers can't make money without it, sure, but that's not who we're concerned about. We're concerned about how the artist, the intellectual worker sells their work if there are no publishers to buy it from them. They sell it to their interested audience instead. And, remember, they sell their WORK. They don't sell copies. Copies cost nothing to make so you can't sell them (without a monopoly - which you don't have any more).

So, without copyright, you are commissioned by the interested members of your audience (aka fans).

The remaining problem is, there are very few mechanisms around today that enable fans to pay artists to work. http://Kickstarter.com is one of the few. I'm also working in this area (http://1p2U.com). Others have tried developing them for software (http://micropledge.com). There are various names for this, e.g. crowdfunding, micropatronage, subcription, etc. And the reason there are so few mechanisms is that all the money is focussed on saving the wealthy publishers (not enabling someone else to pay artists).

But how do the people you paid to commission you t...

2010-07-13T23:10:15.929+01:00

But how do the people you paid to commission you to write the article feel when other people get the benefit from it for free? Or alternatively paint a picture. Or is what you are suggesting more like a benefactor who commissions an artist to paint a picture. The artist is paid for painting the picture but then other people enjoy the picture when they visit the art gallery.

The $10 (or whatever price is arrived at) is a sha...

2010-07-13T21:34:12.231+01:00

The $10 (or whatever price is arrived at) is a share of the price you'll accept as a commission (or incentive) to produce another article. You might produce one for nothing (as a promotional loss leader), but you propose a bargain with your readers that you'll write an article for $1,000 (or whatever will inspire you to put pen to paper). Then, when a hundred or so readers consider the bargain reasonable and demonstrate they're good for $10 each, you produce and deliver the article to them (NB copyleft). I'd recommend you also publish it on your blog, and as many places as will take it (you want your good writing to spread far and wide to attract more readers who'll commission you even more to write more).

Remember, if people didn't pay you $1,000 you might take far longer (if ever) to write another article. That commission is provided by your most interested readers who can't wait a year (or more) for you to write for nothing.

You won't get paid by people who don't want to pay you, so try not to get too distracted by the copyright inculcated mentality that no-one should receive a copy of your writing who hasn't paid for the copy (or shared in the commission of your work). That's 'old thinking', based on the idea that copies are valuable. Once you've been paid for your work, your objective is to get everyone on the planet to read it (you'd pay them to if you could afford it).

And by the way, you produce writing for your readers (or art for your audience). 'content' is a derogatory term that publishers use to describe the stuff they purchase in order to fill their containers with (their pamphlets, books, newspapers, CDs, etc.).

Hi Crosbie, Thanks for continuing this dialog. I ...

2010-07-13T20:54:48.691+01:00

Hi Crosbie,

Thanks for continuing this dialog. I agree with nearly all of what you have written, but can you explain one thing? In your example, you have 100 readers prepared to pay $10 each for you to write something. So each of them gets the article for $10. But then you put it up on the internet and everyone else gets it for free. So what is the incentive for the first 100 people to pay for an article that everyone else gets for free? Or do you not make it available to everyone else without them paying a fee for the content too?

Mike, you aren't giving away what you've w...

2010-07-13T17:23:16.915+01:00

Mike, you aren't giving away what you've written. YOU'VE SOLD IT.

Instead of selling it to a publisher for $1,000 you sell it to your interested readers for $1,000.

Once you've been paid, you then deliver it to your new 'publisher', i.e. The Public. They then kindly (at no cost to you) perform the extortionately expensive work that publishers used to do, i.e. making copies for you, distributing them, retailing them (covering those costs), etc.

Remember:
1) Your writing is expensive. It's your intellectual work, and you'd like paying for it.
2) Copies are so cheap to make these days that people make them for nothing and give them away.

So, unlike publishers still trying to charge people for copies that cost nothing to make, and still trying to pay authors as little as possible, the writers of tomorrow ignore the stupid publisher and sell their work directly to those who want them to write it, i.e. their most interested readers.

And remember, you don't charge your readers for copies. Copies are free. Your readers can make their own. You're not in the business of making and selling copies. No, you're in the business of writing and selling it to keen readers (instead of traditional publishers).

Do you have a mechanism whereby your keener readers can commission you to write more articles? You'd only need a hundred keen readers willing to pledge $10 each for an article and you'd end up with that $1,000 a publisher might have paid you for it.

Of course, this isn't a magic wand. If you don't have keen readers interested in paying you to write some more, then you'll have no-one paying you to write. But, the better you are, the more interested readers you will attract, and the more of them will be impatient to whet their insatiable appetite for yet more great writing.

Hi Crosbie, Thanks for the post and the explanati...

2010-07-13T13:30:55.533+01:00

Hi Crosbie,

Thanks for the post and the explanation, much appreciated.

I love your description of today, most apt.

I take your point about the percentages the writer got, and so to get ahead, the income doesn't have to include all the publishing overheads. So how to get your interested readers to commission you to write if you then give away what you have written? Why would someone pay you to write if everyone else gets it for free.

Well, I did provide that answer in the rest of my ...

2010-07-13T09:58:14.392+01:00

Well, I did provide that answer in the rest of my comment you quoted from. ;-)

If the writer has traditionally seen only a tiny fraction of a share of the total copy reproduction/distribution/retail revenue for their intellectual work, then if you only have intellectual work to be paid for with all other costs reduced a thousand fold, you can look to your more interested readers to pay you.

BUT, not for copies - for your work.

If copies are free, then your work is all that's left that needs paying for. Once you've been paid for your work you have no care who makes (or even sells) copies.

YESTERDAY: publishers commission you to write, and then sell copies of that work you have done.

TODAY: headless chicken

TOMORROW: your more interested readers commission you to write, and then you publish free copies of that work you have done.

You get your commission as usual, but the public usurps the publisher.

In the words of Facebook "Like"!

2010-06-12T19:57:42.801+01:00

In the words of Facebook "Like"!

Glad to get an overview or the #cmc10 from you, Mi...

2010-06-09T20:55:26.902+01:00

Glad to get an overview or the #cmc10 from you, Mike.

Would love to have been there, but it passed under my radar.

J

Really enjoyed with catching up with you at the co...

2010-06-09T20:35:33.172+01:00

Really enjoyed with catching up with you at the conference Mike, and great to see the developments in your online presence - quick work!