99 designs is a web site where users can publish design contests. So if you have a company that needs, for example a logo, you pay a $40 fee to 99 designs, and you provide a design specification. Artists then compete by providing designs on spec that are posted on the site. You can then review the submissions, tell people what you like and don’t like in the discussion area, and ultimately pick a winner if you like any of the work.
I am writing about this because I got into a discussion about this service on a local New York tech mailing list and I thought the discussion was interesting.
There were opposing points of view, but not a few people thought the idea behind 99 designs was wrong. People with that view held that it was inappropriate and actually *unethical* to ask people to work, on spec, without getting paid, and that this would be the “downfall of the design profession.”
I am sure that there are more than a few designers who feel this way. Personally, I don’t find anything unethical about this at all since people of free will may decide to participate or not. But my immediate reaction was to wonder how many illegal MP3s the people who are complaining that this is immoral have on their computers.
I was immediately attacked for making a statement that was in the mind of one person, a non sequitur. What do MP3s have to do with outsourced, on spec design?
The answer: Hypocrisy.
How can you claim that it is unethical to give an opportunity to people of free will to compete for business, if at their own discretion they so choose, while filling your computer with someone else’s work without their permission at all.
In one case, the creator of the work has decided that it is totally fine that you may view their work for free in the hope that you will chose them. In the other case, the creator of the work explicitly expects to get paid, but instead you steal it.
I cannot say that the specific people making these particular comments have ever pirated even one MP3. But since the majority of people steal music, statistically it is likely most of the people who would argue that 99 designs is unethical, see nothing unethical about actually *stealing* someone else’s work.
What is amazing is that we as people are so often fundamentally unable to see such simple logical fallacies. What is wrong for you is right for me. Doing “X” is wrong because it hurts me, but if I do the same thing, or worse to you, that’s OK.
Its not like I don’t understand how this happens, but is sure is frustrating to watch.
Thursday, April 24, 2008
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11 comments:
It scares me to think that people are discussing the ethics of this website. I hope the people discussing this never find themselves in positions of political power, because their "ethics" will ruin us all. I can only imagine the laws forcing people to not make the free choice to work for the chance of making some money. You see, 99designs is just like entrepreneurship except that you know exactly who your customer is, and you might even know what they want.
It seems to me that the critics of 99designs have stated, correctly, that these two scenarios have exactly zero to do with each other. Completely orthogonal.
99designs does seem to have a generally-exploitative nature, but that has nothing to do with whether or not a critic of the service is a thief, saint, etc. Nor does it matter if a supporter of 99designs is a thief, saint, etc. It's totally irrelevant.
On the 'free will' tip - there are differing levels of 'free will'. For instance, many folks in the world choose to sell their bodies to strangers every day because the sellers want to eat, have a roof over their heads, etc. You could claim they had 'free will', but that would be dishonest, of course. It would be completely ignoring the real coercion they face based on the power structures of their particular societies. Any serious discussion of free will has to take coercion into account, by definition. Do the people of Haiti have free will, too? They don't _have_ to eat those mud pies. They're perfectly free to starve to death if they like, right?
And as for whether or not an argument is logical/strong/correct or not has nothing to do with whether or not the person putting that argument forward is a sinner or a saint - a walking model of modern perfection or a hypocrite. An argument can stand on its merits, or it can't. You may wish to score some rhetorical brownie points if your intent is to win an argument or political battle or to influence/change public perception or some other such things, but a logical/strong/correct argument stands on its own. Even if Osama bin Laden says that the U.S. government should not be invading an occupying foreign countries, he's right - it doesn't matter that he may or may not be liked by U.S. government officials, it doesn't matter whether or not Osama is a nice guy we all want to drink a beer with, or even - egad! - a hypocrite. Totally irrelevant.
Peter,
You've missed the point. Its not about being a sinner or a saint. Its about *intellectual* consistency. If *my* IP should be valued highly, why shouldn't *yours* be valued highly.
If you're world view is that it is *sinful* to devalue IP over here when it is mine, but not when its yours, that is inconsistent logic.
Judging by the prices for some of the design contests I can't see how that site is immoral at all.
Some of the prizes/payments are over $500 for a logo which is well above the average.
I don't think a lot of people know that a great deal of the logo companies operate like this privately anyway. With each logo order several Philippine and Eastern European designers take a crack at the order. One gets paid on acceptance.
Same stuff, different method, but this time instead of splitting the fee with an agency that designer gets to keep all the money. A couple of hundred extra goes a long way in a lot of those countries.
There is no 'intellectual dishonesty' going on. Folks are consistent in their defense of individuals vs. corporations, of the powerless vs. the powerful.
Some confusion arises because of the horrible distortions in the market due to the incredible power of the music companies relative to artists and consumers. That's changing, now. The changes in technology, law, culture are dealing with the shifting power balance. The only question now is how much power will the record companies be forced to give up before we reach a new equilibrium?
The world is a complex place - we have to leave room for nuance.
People will readily 'steal' from corporations who steal from artists and consumers and taxpayers in any number of ways. In the case of 99designs, there is no IP argument at all - either you get the deal and hand over your IP rights (as I understand it), or there is no deal and you don't hand over your IP rights. Simple enough.
What people don't like about 99designs, however, is that it is inherently coercive and exploitative - just like the music companies are.
Big corporations coerce and exploit artists, and take advantage of consumers - by doing things like selling only CDs, and selling easily-ruined media, etc. This coercion and exploitation is a serious form of theft, to be sure.
Now the tables have turned a bit and consumers are in a more powerful position than they're used to - they are still being exploited and coerced in any number of ways, but things aren't as bad as they used to be. People are angry as hell at having been taking advantage of for so long - as they should be. Is stealing from a thief wrong? Was Robin Hood wrong? It depends.
Consumers are in the unenviable position of having to take revenge against big corporations - of having to force the record companies to stop taking advantage of them, which means that consumers are also having some negative impact on some artists who were exploited by those same big record companies in the first place. Tricky moral dilemma.
I don't think the IP argument is important - at least not if we care to talk about things that should actually matter - like individual human welfare, not whether some legal entity makes enough profits this quarter.
If 99designs were instead called 99cupcakes and they asked people to bake cupcakes and only the best would get paid for, it would still be exploitative and that's why people would still think 99cupcakes was evil. It's not an IP question.
Who has the power?
Record companies.
Who is exploiting who?
Record companies exploit artists and consumers. They buy politicians and radio stations and jockeys, threaten to kill artists' careers if they don't sign and do as they're told, and consumers are left with little to no choice in who they get to know about and listen to. This is top to bottom coercion - i.e. theft by another name, whether you want to label it 'extortion', etc.
Are certain crimes worse than others, and do certain crimes precipitate others?
Yes. Were it not for the real and continuing crimes of the record companies, we would not even have the phenomenon of illegal downloading. Consumers and artists are want a more equal distribution of power - they don't want to be taken advantage of anymore.
Stealing back stolen money from corporations who perpetrated the original crimes might be wrong in certain cases, but probably only a little bit.
Stealing money from relatively-poor artists who have not benefited from record company theft is wrong.
Stealing money from relatively-rich artists who have benefited from record company theft is not so wrong.
Exploiting artists and workers and consumers and citizens is always very wrong.
To recap, there is no 'intellectual dishonesty' going on - there is only the question of who do you stick up for - the big guy, or the little guy?
As for the prize amount, it's not particularly relevant - it's still an exploitative business model. We could look at the NCAA and come to the same conclusion. A very few 'win the prize' of being drafted into the NFL or NBA, etc., and everybody else has served their purpose, and can now be discarded.
Peter,
I see. Nuance means stealing from wal-mart is OK, but stealing from grandma is not.
Ethics don't work on a relative scale. Laws don't work on a relative scale. "I hate you because I think you are a bad person. Therefore its OK to steal from you." Thats what you are saying. Its just wrong.
Nuance means stealing from wal-mart is OK, but stealing from grandma is not.
pretty close. close enough for our purposes, here.
Ethics don't work on a relative scale. Laws don't work on a relative scale.
Sounds clever, but I've no idea what it means. Those statements don't sound correct to me, though.
"I hate you because I think you are a bad person. Therefore its OK to steal from you." Thats what you are saying. Its just wrong.
Of course that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is, "If you've stolen money, you need to give it back. And if you won't give it back, we're going to take it back."
The sentiment can be considered to be closely linked with the concept of worker-initiated expropriation. In this case, it's consumer-initiated expropriation. I mentioned Robin Hood in the previous comment - same basic idea.
People understand justice implicitly. We know that laws and the legal system have a lot more to do with who has money and power than they have to do with notions of fairness or justice. We hold the ideals of fairness and justice dear to our hearts, but we know that the deck is stacked against us. So all us 99%ers (statistically speaking, of course) are doing, is decreasing the total amount of injustice in the record companies vs. consumers relationship. The less the discrepancy in power between the two, the less injustice there will be.
Couldn't agree with you more Hank. I have a staunch "free market" friend I spar with sometimes who's convinced that the free market can regulate itself in any environment who, nonetheless, has no problem stealing music and, more notably, software.
There is so much intellectual dishonesty in this debate.
Working on spec has always been a standard practice in graphic design, so I'm kind of surprised at the reaction here. It's how I got my foot in the door as a designer after graduating art school, back in 1981. It's been a marketing method for me ever since. I really don't see the problem with it.
As an artist, I need to find ways to show what I can do, how I can meet your needs. The best way to do that, often, is by solving a particular design problem. It's the best way for a potential client to see how you work. It's not "giving it away", it's demonstrating, it's marketing.
Now, if the potential client says no thanks, but uses the design anyway, then we have a problem! : )
The two are unrelated. I download MP3's illegally to RECLAIM all of the money I lost over the years buying CD's.
Huh what?
The price of buying music on compact discs is, and has always been, fixed. It's a trust, also known as price fixing. It's illegal, and the government never did anything about it.
The price of manufacturing a compact disc is 1/3rd of the price of manufacturing an audio cassette tape. (Audio cassette has moving parts and has to be dubbed.) Yet, from the start, the same album on an audio cassettes costed less than the same album on CD.
Why?
Well, but the sound quality of CD's is better, so people will pay more, right? That's not supposed to be how the free market works- there's supposed to be something called "competition". One producer could start selling all his albums for $13 while everyone else is still selling there's at $17. He should sell more, and still make a profit, and even a bigger one.
But no. They all got together and formed what in economic terms is known as a trust (check wikipedia). AKA price fixing.
I used to buy CD's. Now I'm getting my money back, with interest in the form of reparations. The government was supposed to do that for me.
"Some of the prizes/payments are over $500 for a logo which is well above the average."
remenber that when you pay a designer you will have the right to tell him to have a new aproach.
And He will remake the logo to your suites. Now in 99designs that happens cos there is an all bunch of designers working for free doing just those change.
Now imagine a contest gets 30 designers entrys.
500$ / 30 = 16.6$
Now I ask you would you work for 16 bucks? Now that's not even the case cos you get to work for free!
So no offers in 99designs are far from being ok.
About stealing music in mp3 or getting a cracked software or any other illegal stuff.
First: IT'S ILLEGAL and if you get caught you can have a bad time.
Second: You can hardly make money out of it. And if you do you have a RISK
So there is actually a risk in mp3 stealing but the true argument comes when you search for a musician the went bankrupt for it.
This greatly reminds me of the book "Grapes of wrath" where "Okies" are subject to exploitation due to producers lack of moral backgrounds. A piece of US history that keeps repeating in all forms cos people just can't tell diferences on fair labour.
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