The "If pressed..." manifesto

What got me thinking about product reviews was the realization that, in a google search for my name, my Amazon reviews showed up on the first page of results. Obviously Amazon has thought quite a bit about their review system, implementing reviewer rankings, usefulness feedback on reviews, the "real name" badge, which gets applied to users who use their real legal name, etc. Other internet selling outfits have recruited small armies of celebrity reviewers ("experts") in order to boost the authority of their reviewer system. The bottom line is that every successful internet vendor has embraced product reviews, and rightly so, as they've been shown to increase sales. As a result there are now review aggregation services and other derived products.

But in some sense, the whole product review situation smells like a rights grab. Every time a buyer writes a product review they are a) creating something, a piece of writing, and b) exerting influence. I will freely admit that I haven't read the terms of Amazon's or anyone else's product review pages, but I suspect that at least some of the rights to the piece of writing the user submits pass on to Amazon or whatever website the review was submitted to. Likewise, the influence the author of the review is able to exert is now channeled through the vendor, a chip added to the vendor's pile of influence chips, if you will.

So is all of this a problem? Yes and no. On the one hand, buyers are presumably not coerced into writing the reviews. Instead they are freely expressing their opinion, perhaps even in the interest of giving back to the presumed "community of buyers". There is nothing wrong with that. On the other hand, would a system in which the value (in terms of rights to the writing, and influence) of reviews is openly acknowledged break the online vendors? Probably not. In other words, would it be possible to have a system where each reviewer chooses explicitly how many of her rights to give away, without hurting business? I think so.

What I think would work is some mechanism by which reviewers can publish reviews, possibly authenticate them, and explicitly specify the distribution rights. When I thought about this, I had two choices: 1) go out there and come up with some RSS/XML schema that allows one to do just that, or 2) start an RSS feed for my reviews, and explicitly specify the terms under which they can be reproduced. I have no illusions of grandeur regarding my relevance and influence in this matter, so I decided it best to start low key. The quickest way to start a RSS feed is via a blog, so If pressed... was born. Friends quickly joined me in posting reviews, though I do need to urge them to explicitly specify the licensing terms for their writing.

Everything we create, write, photograph, doodle, and post online, is a work. It would be a better internet if we all realized the value of what we make, then chose whether to give it away for free and to whom. Clearly defining what constitutes labor, and what constitutes a work, the result of labor, is a great start for making the internet a more ideal society than the one we live in is. Respect for labor and works, however small, insignificant, or freely given away they may be, should not be taken for granted. Right now the entities making a profit on the internet often do so based on people's ignorance of their rights, and willingness to hand them over without discussion. Respect for what we create, and for our right to determine its fate, is not prevalent in the internet mirror world right now.

Update 1: I was reading Jeff Atwood's column this morning, and his fourth point seemed related.

Companies may appeal to your innate sense of community or public good to convince you to do their work at zero pay. Consider carefully before choosing to participate; what do you get out of contributing your time and effort? Is this truly a worthy cause? Would this be worth doing if it was a paid gig?

The rest of the article, and probably the book that sparked it, "Predictably Irrational", seem worthy reading.