22surf: AN OPEN SOURCE BUSINESS PLAN FOR OPEN SOURCE CMS & DRM

It’s a Catch-22. Universally trusted DRM and syndicated commerce can’t work unless the business methods are open, and it is common wisdom that a business must keep its methods secret. Unless of course the business aims to build syndicable marketplaces with universally-trusted DRM riding on Open Source CMS.

This Business Plan Is released under the Attribution-ShareAlike Creative Commons License—you’re invited to add to it, to take it and change a few names, build it on your own, and become rich J. Or you can correct what we’re missing and send it on back to mcgucken@authena.org.

I. 22SURF ABSTRACT
Digital rights management (DRM) is the holy grail of the internet. It is a multi-billion-dollar, ever-expanding market, and an apt solution will be invaluable to the livelihood of all media companies. 22surf proposes that DRM will be solved with an Open Source philosophy such as that promoted by Authena. Security standards will only emerge if artist-hackers trust them. Over time, marketplaces that are best able to establish trust will prevail and snowball. The first mover in "trust" will have a lot to gain.

The business model of centralized conglomerates marketing the digital rights of a handful of artists is outdated. Both the artists and end-consumers have been flustered. A new model, consisting of a distributed network of thousands of creators hosting their content on Open Source CMS and syndicating it to trusted archives and marketplaces, is emerging. In order to build a trusted network of marketplaces supporting common standards for syndicated commerce, the business plan should be shared openly. The transparency provided by Open Source will foster the adoption of open standards for DRM and syndicated commerce. 22surf encourages artist-hackers to download our business plan for building profitable archives and marketplaces with Open Source CMS, change and build on it, and join in the following revenue streams:

1) sell keyword advertising throughout free OSCMS hosting services (blogs, galleries, etc.), 2) sell advanced hosting options/extra disk space, 3) charge 5% on content marketplace transactions, 4) charge 5% on Open Source Arts freelance services marketplace transactions, 5) manage/host media assets of large businesses (record labels/movie studios/etc.), 6) sell printing services (or partner with businesses) for hard-copy books, prints, CDs, DVDs, etc. 7) create a syndicable friendster/FOAF (friend-of-a-friend) network, 8) create a mobile FOAF service which alerts people when friends are in close proximity.

All of these revenue streams may be realized with a small team leveraging Open Source CMS such as vvgallery, oscommerce, cafelog, postnuke, and gallery. With common standards for syndication based on RSS/RDF, bands, writers, photographers, and friends will be able to enjoy syndication across multiple archives and marketplaces. Working together, trusted marketplaces utilizing open standards for syndication will prosper. Surf’s up!

The Financials/Exit Strategy: With an initial investment of $500,000 for a 20% stake in the company, 22surf aims to scale rapidly. With over 100,000 paying users in three years, as well as large corporate accounts, revenues are projected to be over $30,000,000. The exit strategy is to sell the marketplace and Open Source CMS to a larger marketplace portal such as amazon, google, redhat, or ebay.

The Opportunity: Build independent archives and marketplaces for content which support syndicated commerce. DRM is the holy grail of the internet.

The Technology: Utilize Open Source CMS connected by open Authena standards based on RDF/RSS and simple web services such as REST.

The Business/Revenue Streams: 1) Charge individuals for advanced hosting options and extra disk space, 2) charge 5% on all transactions in the content marketplace, 3) charge 5% on all transactions in the Open Source Arts services marketplace, 4) charge large businesses and institutions for managing/hosting their archives and marketplaces, and 5) sell keyword advertising throughout the free hosting services, 6) provide a friendster/FOAF (friend-of-a-friend) network which allows networking and personals with the help of RDF. 7) sell printing services (or partner with businesses) for hard-copy books, prints, CDs, DVDs, etc.

The Management: Elliot McGucken, who founded jollyroger.com in 1995 and has run it as a profitable web venture ever since will seek help from leading members of the Open Source CMS community. Anyone who wants to collaborate with us or wishes to join the Open Source CMS Renaissance is invited to set up their own 22surf network (call it anything you want, fork it, make it work better than anything we ever imagined!).

The Team: A group of talented, hard-working students is sought—CS. Studentes and business students alike! Blake Watters, who also works for ibiblio.org, will help recruit the team. Invite programmers from leading Open Source CMS’s to participate as marketplace leaders, contractors, employees, or any other way they see fit. Give them complete freedom, and always allow them to Open Source all their contributions.

The Timeline: 1) Starting yesterday, build the free archive with an RDF/RSS mechanism for the syndication of content and commerce. 2) Build the advanced paid-hosting services. 3) Build the marketplaces for syndicated commerce, content, personals (FOAF), and services. 4) Open source it all, and let the independent marketplaces evolve. 5) Sell the central, trusted marketplace to a larger portal.

The Investors: Anyone who wants to fund a small team of programmers, or any programmer who has the time to build a marketplace of their own.

The Need: The model of centralized conglomerates promoting and managing the digital rights of a handful of artists and authors is no longer proving profitable. A new model of a distributed network of tens of thousands of artists, hosting their content on Open Source CMS and syndicating it to various marketplaces, is emerging. Future business models riding on Open Source will rely on a robust open rating system, a philosophy for creating and defining parallel forms of a digital file with varying qualities and watermarkings, and standards for defining the rights associated with the content.

The Laws: By embracing Open source CMS and Creators’ Rights, 22surf finds itself on the right side of the laws: Metcalfe’s Law, Moore’s Law, and Constitutional Law.

22SURF will be built upon Authena which was presented at the 2003 Harvard OSCOM conference (http://authena.org). A fuller description is provided in Appendix II, and here’s the abstract:

By providing a set of modules and an architectural philosophy for generating RDF/RSS descriptions incorporating the Dublin Core and the extensible Creative Commons licenses, Authena seeks to marry a full spectrum of rights definitions to Open Source CMS. A second set of modules capable of reading RSS feeds and retrieving rights descriptions and content via a REST protocol will enable syndicated content distribution across a network of CMS. Modules capable of generating RDF rights descriptions and embedding them in media and RSS feeds allow media shops, galleries, and content repositories to syndicate media via a REST protocol. Individual creators, businesses, and institutions hosting content in Open Source CMS can syndicate it to OSS repositories or marketplaces endowed with transaction and royalty-tracking capabilities. Repositories and marketplaces can in turn syndicate their content to yet other markets and repositories while preserving rights descriptions and recording transactions, affording a decentralized distribution model that binds the rights description to the actual medium of syndication. Whereas RSS is generally used for syndicating newsfeeds, Authena uses RSS to syndicate rights information and links to digital media in different formats, including thumbnailed, watermarked, and high-quality originals in secure directories, so as to facilitate the indexing, harvesting, and selling of content on the semantic web in accordance with rights defined by the creator.

1. Photography: Jenny wishes to create a portfolio of photographs taken during her summer trip to Wyoming, and perhaps sell some. With a few mouseclicks, she launches a photo gallery powered by the Open Source gallery project at 22gallery.com. She uploads her pictures and enters the rights information, releasing a few pictures under Creative Commons licenses. A client-side Authena module at pnavy.com watermarks the pictures and embeds RDF license descriptions in the media using EXIF. The Authena module also generates an RSS feed containing the rights descriptions and locations of the images. Jenny then opens accounts at stock photography shops including westgallery.com and wyominggallery.com, both powered by Oscommerce with photography and Authena modules (vvgallery.org), and syndicates her pictures to the stock photography marketplaces. A server-side Authena module at wyominggallery.com (or 22stockphotography.com) reads the RSS feed residing on the same server as Jenny's portfolio, and using her Authena password she entered when registering, wyominggallery.com transfers and logs rights information, thumbnails, watermarked versions, and the pristine originals via a REST protocol over https. The originals distributed under the CC license are kept in a public directory, while the proprietary originals are encrypted and/or kept within a password-protected directory. A greeting card company in Ireland browses thumbnailed and watermarked versions of the pictures at wyominggallery.com, and after using a couple of Jenny's public domain photographs, they purchase publishing rights to her proprietary photographs, and download a zipped package of high-resolution originals off the wyominggallery.com server. Jenny is compensated accordingly by wyominggallery.com.

CMS Client Hosting Jenny's Pictures: Gallery/Postnuke/Phpnuke with Authena Modules

CMS Server Selling Jenny's Pictures: Oscommerce with photography and Authena modules (VVGallery)

2. Music: The Tain Collins Band records their first CD. With a few mouseclicks at 22band.com, they launch a postnuke-powered website devoted to their CD, making three songs available for download with the CC licenses. An Authena module generates the RDF/RSS rights description for the entire album. An Authena spider from freestreaming.com parses the rights information, and grabs the mp3s released under the CC licenses, preserving the Attribute license. The Tain Collins Band registers for accounts at cdworld.com and streamingbands.com to syndicate their CD's content, providing the sites with their Authena password. Authena modules at cdworld.com and streamingbands.com look back at the RSS feed at the Tain Collins website, and the digital content and rights are transferred and logged via a REST protocol over https. Thumbnails (10 second song clips), watermarked (songs with irregularities or lower audio quality), and the pristine originals, stored in the password-protected Authena directory, are transferred. People can buy physical CD's from cdworld.com (oscommerce powered), or they can subscribe to access streamed music from streamingbands.com (netjuke powered). Both cdworld.com and streamingbands.com compensate The Tain Collins Band in proportion to how often the music is listened to via streaming media or ordered via physical copies of the CD.

3. Books: Kelly has written a book about windsurfing. With a few mouseclicks at 22nuke.com she launches a Phpnuke portal devoted to her passion. She makes the first chapter of her book available for download off her site, releasing it with a CC license which is manifested in the RSS feed. She syndicates the entire book to niche CMS marketplaces including allsports.com and booksondemand.com. The digital files are transferred and logged via a REST protocol over https. David comes across Kelly's site, and after reading the first chapter, he wants a hard copy. He follows the link to booksondemand.com and finding another book on windsurfing, he decides he wants them both. Booksondemand.com lets David combine the two files into one book, which he orders and receives at a local Kinkos with a print-on-demand press.

CMS Server Selling Kelly's Book: Oscommerce/VVGallery with Authena and book-publishing modules

4. Film/Educational Repositories: Greg shoots a documentary pertaining to peoples' favorite great books. He creates a personal CMS portal at 22gallery.com/greg and uploads mpegs of his work. He releases it all under the Creative Commons Attribute license. The UCLA film school finds his technique amazing, and they add his work to their repository. This will bring some renown to Greg, so he's psyched. And because the Authena modules are already installed in Greg's Gallery, and the UCLA film school has an Authena-empowered repository at uclafilm.org, all they have to do is point it at the RDF/RSS feed at Greg's site. The UCLA Authena server modules read the CC licenses in the RSS feed on Greg's site, and seeing that they grant permissions to use the files as long as they cite Greg, the Authena module ports the film clips into UCLA's repository, preserving the CC licenses.

CMS Server Hosting UCLA Film Repository: Oscommerce/VVGallery with Authena or Netjuke with film modules and Authena

5. Corporate Repositories: Apple computer is creating a repository of all film created under a Creative Commons license. Having installed the Authena server modules, they employ google, searching for every site containing an authena.php file, which generates the RSS/RDF feed. They scan the RSS feeds, checking the Dublin Core "dc:format" tag for avi's and mpeg movie formats, and the cc:license tag for appropriate rights. Finding Greg's movies at the UCLA film repository, and ascertaining the CC licenses allow their use in the given context, the UCLA Authena modules upload the digital files into their own repositories, maintaining the digital rights descriptions.

6. Gaming: Independent game developers post their mods and original graphics on their own Postnuke sites at 22nuke.com. Many of them release their early work under CC licenses, to gain publicity. Opensourcegamer.org continually scans the RSS Authena feeds at gamernuke.com and several other gaming communities, downloading all the new mods and graphics released under CC licenses, so as to become a repository for public domain mods.

7. FOAF/friends/dating/personals: Greg, Tain, Kelly, and Jenny from the previous scenarios were also afforded a friend-of-a-friend (FOAF) profile at 22surf.com in RDF when they signed up for an account. They all elect to activate their FOAF profiles, and syndicate them to various FOAF networks, including 22newyork.com and 22sanfrancisco.com, and they end up meeting. Kelly and Tain get married.

Moore’s law fosters ever more bountiful bandwidth, falling costs of cpu’s and storage media, and the proliferation of a pervasive wireless network, while Metcalfe’s Law is fostering the Open Source movement. Together they are creating a Great Divide in the business world. Yesterday’s proprietary software goliaths such as Microsoft and Oracle are up against a global network of the best and brightest working away in research labs, within academia, and in garages. Yesterday’s centralized media conglomerates are up against the Open Source CMS renaissance and a global army of artist-hackers who are recording, publishing, hosting, and selling their intellectual property on LAMP-based platforms. Software and media companies which embrace the new landscape defined by software and connectivity as free and ubiquitous as air itself will make it across the Great Divide. Yesterday’s business models, which tend to be hype and marketing oriented, will meet with less and less success.

As software is fundamentally based on mathematical algorithms, and mathematical algorithms can’t be patented, the Open Source movement is free to deliver any major functionality needed by the end-user. Companies which seek to circumvent the natural and best algorithms in order to impose proprietary standards will not make it past the Great Divide. Rather, companies which sell expertise in working with open standards, and support the development of open standards, will benefit.

Nowhere is the presence of this Great Divide so apparent as in the realm of media.

Record sales have been plummeting, and the increases in computing power will also affect the media. Open source is positioned to take full advantage of Metcalfe’s law, because Open Source has a better chance of fostering open standards. The killer app of the open source movement may be Open Source CMS. It is the bridge between the operating system and the layman. Because Open Source applications tend to be hosted and developed on servers running Open Source operating systems, the open source CMS movement is moving away from proprietary platforms. The vast majority of people utilize the web for content, from reading news to hosting pictures to downloading music, and thus as the Open Source CMS movement progresses, proprietary operating systems will be less and less important.

Perhaps less money will made selling software, but the typical individual will be empowered, both as a creator and a consumer. Creators will gain a plethora of networked marketplaces, along with the ability to choose from a full spectrum of rights definitions, while consumers will be afforded a greater spectrum of content. No longer will centralized corporate conglomerates have a monopoly in publishing and disseminating content.

Businesses on the right side of the laws, including Metcalfe’s, Moore’s, and Constitutional Law, will cross the Great Divide. Such businesses will favor the individual over the bureaucracy. Marketing and hype from the PR department will be less and less relevant, and word-of-mouth shall be ever more important for these businesses built upon the Open Source CMS Renaissance.

22surf aims to build a network of independently owned businesses on the right side of the laws—Metcalfe’s Law, Moore’s Law, and Constitutional Law:

2. Functionality is as free as the basic algorithms behind it. Open Source applications approach the asymptote of optimal functionality and features. Open Source tends to use open standards based on higher laws and aesthetics.

Implications for 22surf: Use Open source Software to the hilt. Don’t try to out-guess the Open Source community or write proprietary applications, as not only do they require large overhead, but they will miss out on the trends of the future. Microsoft, ebay, amazon, and yahoo are largely proprietary systems, but that was then and this is now. Forget about Oracle—MYSQL and POSTGRES will be there.

Implications for 22surf: Use generic LINTEL hardware with plenty of redundancy. Architect a distributed network for scalability as google does. Disk space, processing power, and bandwidth will allow companies to triumph on inexpensive lintel hardware arranged in a distributed manner. Again, forget about Oracle—the hardware will allow MYSQL and POSTGRES to scale.

From the U.S. Constitution: “The Congress shall have Power To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries” Implications for 22surf: Respect the Creator. DRM is cool—give it back to the individual. The network bypasses the middlemen conglomerates and allows the true spirit of the Constitution to thrive.

22surf aims to build the world’s largest marketplaces and archives for content. This will be built upon the leading Open Source Content Management Systems (CMS) endowed with open standards enabling syndicated commerce across a myriad of Open Source CMS’s.

Not so long ago Google purchased Blogger. Blogger derives its value from peoples' passions, and Google’s fundamental philosophy is to mine the natural democratic intelligence of the web so as to foster high-quality searches throughout that great archive known as the WWW. In addition to fostering a more meaningful archive described with RDF, 22surf also aims to build a network of syndicated marketplaces to allow creators a new form of distribution.

When one ponders the sum total of passion hosted within Open Source CMS such as postnuke, cafelog, gallery, one begins to see that Open Source CMS could be the killer-app of the Open Source world—not by selling the software so much as archiving the content and allowing creators to sell it. As more bands, writers, artists, photographers, and teachers use applications such as postnuke, tiki, gallery, xoops, envolution, cafelog, and oscommerce to share and sell content on the semantic web, more and more value will be found within the Open Source applications, both from an archival and commercial standpoint.

Couple Open Source CMS with the open RDF/RSS1.0 standards and the Dublin Core and CC Licenses, and suddenly it seems the Open Source world has a good chance of establishing universal standards for syndicated commerce and DRM—not by fiat, but by democratic adoption.

And as Moore's law marches on, making audio and video-on-demand a reality, and Metcalfe's Law brings us better OSCMS each and every day, more and more passion will be contained within Open Source CMS.

In addition to providing an architecture for modules supporting syndicated commerce, Authena is a “Philosophy of Creators’ Rights,” and the 22surf archive and marketplace will be built upon the three pillars of Authena:

1. Full Artistic Control: Open Source CMS allows Artist-Hackers to get under the hood to change themes, graphics, UI, sound quality, modules, etc.

2. Distribution: Open Source CMS coupled with RDF/RSS fosters efficient searches and syndication on the semantic web, and thus effective distribution.

3. DRM: Open Source CMS coupled with an extensible rights language such as the CC licenses expressed in RDF/RSS allows a full spectrum of rights definitions in parallel with distribution. Open security standards and protocols afford financial transactions, secure delivery, and trusted ratings for marketplaces and content.

Why is a distributed network of content marketplaces so cool? Were it not for the poets and prophets in the Bazaar, there'd be nothing to build the Cathedral around. 22surf harbors a vast respect for the individual artist and lone creator. 22surf aims to be on the right side of the laws—Metcalfe’s, Moore’s, and Constitutional Law. In the following figure is a diagram of the networked marketplaces we envision, as well as the antiquated marketplace it replaces:

A question to the Open Source CMS Community: How shall we build these pillars so that they support a Cathedral and a Bazaar?

X. Technology for Creators' Rights

1. FULL ARTISTIC CONTROL	2. DISTRIBUTION	3. DRM/COMPENSATION
Postnuke, Netjuke, Phpnuke, Gallery, Xoops, Cafelog, Drupal, TikiWiki, GIMP, Open Office...	HTTP, RDF/RSS, REST, XML-RPC, SOAP, Blogger API, Syndic8 API, Oscommerce	SSL, PGP, RDF/RSS, Dublin Core, CC Licenses, Oscommerce
Authena: VVGallery, Netjuke
VVGallery: Gallery	RDF/RSS, REST	RSS1.0, Dublin Core, CC Licenses, Oscommerce
Netjuke: Netjuke	RDF/RSS, REST	RSS1.0, Dublin Core, CC Licenses, Oscommerce

Throughout the nineties Wall Street was right about the power of the internet—they were just wrong about who was going to realize it. Check out Bamboozled at the Revolution: How Big Media Lost Billions in the Battle for the Internet at amazon.com or Borders.

In an article entitled, 'New Media': Ready for the Dustbin of History, “The New York Times wrote, 'In fact, there is little natural affinity between software and media. A National Research Council study to be published this week, "Beyond Productivity: Information Technology, Innovation and Creativity," As long as the tools required to produce computer-mediated work are programming tools, the result will be programmer-created design.... There is a great distance, from the paintbrush or piano to programming in C++." -- The New York Times May 11th, 2003

All this changes in the Open Source CMS Renaissance, wherein Artist-hackers are decreasing the distance between the art and the application.

Recently the Supreme Court and Congress have collaborated in amending Section 8, Clause 8 of the United States constitution:

ORIGINAL TEXT: The Congress shall have Power To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;

TODAY'S VERSION: The Congress shall have Power To perhaps promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for (limited Times)^n to DisneyAOLTimeWarner/Major Media Goliaths the exclusive Right to others' Writings and Discoveries;

VVGallery, which can be downloaded from vvgallery.sourceforge.net, marries Gallery and Oscommerce via Authena philosophy

∙Proprietary pictures are watermarked, and originals can only be downloaded upon payment

∙System could be used for be used for film, books, music, movies, and/or any other form of digital media.

Google recently purchased blogger. Blogger derives its value from peoples' passions. Think about the sum total of passion represented within all the Open Source CMS out there. And as Moore's law marches on, making audio and video-on-demand a reality, and Metcalfe's Law brings us better OSCMS each and every day, think about where all the passion will be expressed in a few years.

Could Open Source CMS be the killer-app of the Open Source world? The way I see it, as more bands, writers, artists, photographers, and teachers use postnuke, gallery, xoops, envolution, cafelog, and oscommerce to join the semantic web, more and more servers will run Linux.

Couple this with the open RDF/RSS1.0 standards and the Dublin Core and CC Licenses, and suddenly it seems the Open Source world has a good chance of establishing the common universal standards for archiving content and managing digital rights.

This will grant Creators a great freedom to define how their content is used, in line with the Consitution's original spirit.

In a robust hosting facility with redundant lintel servers, 22surf aims to build the world’s largest content archive by offering free hosting upon Open Source CMSs including cafelog, postnuke, tiki, gallery, netjuke, and more. These verticle niches will be named 22blog, 22nuke, 22gallery, 22commerce, 22friend, and so on. By endowing all these applications with Authena standards for rights definitions and syndication, 22surf aims to foster syndicated commerce while creating a content marketplace in which any creator or hoster of content may sell their creations. OScommerce will provide the backbone for the commercial marketplace, and all modules and advancements will be released back into the Open Source community.

22surf is a quilt—the patches, being Open Source CMSs, come in different shapes and sizes, while Authena is the thread of common standards which allows cross-application syndication of both content and rights information. Authena facilitates syndicated commerce over a distributed network of Open Source applications connected by web services. By providing a set of modules and an architectural philosophy for generating RDF/RSS descriptions incorporating the Dublin Core and the extensible Creative Commons licenses, Authena marries a full spectrum of rights definitions to Open Source CMS. A second set of modules capable of reading RSS feeds and retrieving rights descriptions and content via a secure REST protocol enables syndicated ecommerce across a network of CMS. Whereas RSS is generally used for syndicating newsfeeds, Authena uses RSS to syndicate rights information and links to digital media in different formats, including thumbnailed, watermarked, and high-quality originals in secure directories, so as to facilitate the indexing, harvesting, and selling of content on the semantic web in accordance with rights defined by the creator. With Authena, artists, creators, businesses, and institutions hosting content in a wide array of Open Source CMS can syndicate it to one-other as well as to repositories and marketplaces endowed with transaction and royalty-tracking capabilities. VVGallery (vvgallery.sourceforge.net) offers a working implementation of Authena modules which provide a bridge between the open source Gallery and osCommerce projects. Users can upload pictures to Gallery, define default rights, and publish them to osCommerce. 22stockphotography.com provides a working demonstration of the Authena bridge between a photo gallery and an ecommerce site. Authena modules can support all types of content including music, video, and images, and Open Source CMS including postnuke, netjuke, phpnuke, gallery, oscommerce, and tikiwiki.

22Surf will grant Creators a great freedom to define how their content is used, in line with the Consitution's original spirit. Working together, the Open Source CMS community can build a global network of content archives and marketplaces for authors, artists, and creators. 22surf aims to seed Open Source CMS projects with funds to encourage the development of an Open Source Standards for content syndication.

The following free hosting services would be quickly ramped up. When a user registers for any one of them, they will be granted accounts across the entirety of these 22surf verticals.