This isn't some standard polemic about "those stupid walled-garden networks are bad!" I know that Facebook and Twitter and Pinterest and LinkedIn and the rest are great sites, and they give their users a lot of value. They're amazing achievements, from a pure software perspective. But they're based on a few assumptions that aren't necessarily correct. The primary fallacy that underpins many of their mistakes is that user flexibility and control necessarily lead to a user experience complexity that hurts growth. And the second, more grave fallacy, is the thinking that exerting extreme control over users is the best way to maximize the profitability and sustainability of their networks.

The first step to disabusing them of this notion is for the people creating the next generation of social applications to learn a little bit of history, to know your shit, whether that's about Twitter's business model or Google's social features or anything else. We have to know what's been tried and failed, what good ideas were simply ahead of their time, and what opportunities have been lost in the current generation of dominant social networks.

A week and a half ago, I had the opportunity to go to the Novelists, Inc. 23rd Annual Conference. And on one of the panels I sat on, all the growing tension and dissatisfaction came to a head...

[O]ne of my co-panelists went after someone on the panel for "denigrating" agents and said he wouldn't stand for it. So I grabbed the mic and offered, as an agent, to denigrate agents for them. I believe very strongly that good agents are incredible partners and can bring authors more success (I'll get back to this). But more importantly at that exact moment, I was just suuuuuuper pissed. It was disgusting to watch another industry professional demean an author simply because they seemed to be chiseling away at his pedestal.

Here's my take. The role of agents in the marketplace is changing dramatically. At DGLM, we've always prided ourselves on being a full-service agency. In the past few years, we've been aware that what "full-service" means is changing. As authors have more access to self-publishing and more success in doing that, agents need to be able not only to guide their clients through that process, but to be aware of the pitfalls, potential gold mines, and ways to strategize that are best for an individual project but also an author's entire career.

What we're seeing is a balancing of power. Authors have more control of their careers and can be more demanding. Does that make my job easier? No. Does it make it more exciting? Yes. Because it's one thing to bandy the word "partner" around and make yourself sound friendly, which seems to be happening a lot. It's another thing to actually act like a partner.

We were actually contacted by some publishers over the last few months that wanted to use us to do a Kickstarter.

I said to them ‘So, you want us to do a Kickstarter for, using our name, we then get the Kickstarter money to make the game, you then publish the game, but we then don't get to keep the brand we make and we only get a portion of the profits’ They said, ‘Yes’.

Unfortunately, when you look at those details, the first thing that leaps out at you is the many small limitations, many of which are caused by Rowling's desire to route around the middlemen. As we've said before, middlemen are not bad, as long as they serve as enablers rather than gatekeepers. Direct-to-fan business models are great, but that doesn't mean creators should ignore the tools that are available to them. Every author need not build their own ebook store, nor every band their own Bandcamp—and of course, for most creators this isn't even an option. But the Pottermore store serves as an example of why even creators like Rowling, who have the resources to build their own platforms for everything, shouldn't necessarily shun the enabler-middlemen at every turn.

For one thing, there was the timeframe. The store was originally supposed to launch last October, but was delayed until now, eight months after the announcement. Prior to this, there were no legal electronic copies of Harry Potter available anywhere—even though pirated copies of each book were available almost immediately. Had Rowling embraced existing ebook stores, she could have released electronic copies alongside physical ones, instead of making her fans wait (and often pirate) in the interval.

Then there are the unnecessary additional barriers to access the books. Downloading from Pottermore requires you to create yet another account with yet another website—a growing source of consumer fatigue online. Rowling has struck deals with major ebook stores to funnel people into her website, meaning if you pull up a Harry Potter title somewhere like the Kindle Store, you are asked to click through and set up a separate Pottermore account, then go through additional steps to link it to your Amazon account. Since many readers do all their ebook shopping this way, and since these stores have always focused on (and found success by) reducing the number of forms and clicks needed to buy a book, this is likely to put off a lot of customers. It also means the books won't be available in the iBook store, since Apple, with their trademark stubbornness, did not agree to a special deal alongside Sony, Amazon, Barnes & Noble and Google. So Rowling is giving up the entire market for impulse buys on the most popular mobile devices in the world, and asking her iFans to go through the more tiresome process of downloading local versions and transferring them to their phones and tablets.

And what do the fans get out of all this? Not much, it seems. The main Pottermore website, which promises social features and additional content, still hasn't launched, so readers have no particular reason to want to visit the store—they are simply forced to, after having waited nearly a year for this supposedly innovative and exciting hub for all things Harry Potter. Dedicated users of existing ebook stores face pointless barriers, so rather than opening her market up to people (like me) who have still never read the books but might decide to do so if they crossed the path of their normal ebook-shopping activities, Rowling has limited herself primarily to existing fans who are willing to jump through hoops for an electronic version.

I have no doubt that the Pottermore store will nevertheless sell plenty of ebooks, at least in the beginning, thanks to the massive popularity of Harry Potter and the long-unmet demand for electronic versions. But what, ultimately, was the point of cutting out the middleman here? The only advantage is that Rowling makes a little bit more money from each sale—but not all the money, because despite being a direct-to-fan model, her publisher apparently still gets a cut, and the partner bookstores will be paid affiliate fees. But even if Rowling's portion of the revenues is significantly higher, it's hard to believe that will offset the lost sales from making the books so hard to obtain. Meanwhile, the fans suffer.

We've praised creators (especially Louis CK) for going the direct-to-fan route before, but that doesn't mean that creators should do everything themselves and ignore the tools that are available to them. Even with her immense resources, Rowling has created a platform that offers an inferior experience to that of the middlemen she worked to eliminate. When good middlemen are used properly by smart creators, everybody wins—when they are ignored merely for the sake of independence, without thought given to the actual benefits, everybody loses.

Hold on, though, wasn’t that a job description that the Internet was destroying? There was even a 25-cent word for it: disintermediation. The Web, we were told, was eliminating the need for the layers of brokers, agents, wholesalers and even retailers that separate the consumer from the producer.

O'Brien is in control of all the on-air creative and, just as important, all the digital use of his content. He and his production company Conaco own the show.... It's the opposite of O'Brien's setup at NBC, says Ross, a partner in the company. "Conaco owns the show, and TBS is a participant. At Tonight, NBC owned the show, and we were participants." And ownership makes all the difference for O'Brien and his team.

Team Coco, not TBS, chooses which clips to use, edits them, and posts them. Preview clips from each night's taping go up an hour before the show's East Coast broadcast; within an hour after the show's West Coast broadcast more than a half-dozen clips from that night's show are posted on its site and Facebook, and linked to via Twitter; and the full show is viewable online the next day at 11 a.m. Eastern time. Last year at The Tonight Show Bleyaert had tried to get pre-show clips posted, but even that seemingly simple idea was difficult to execute because NBC.com ran the show's site, and putting up such clips wasn't part of its normal workflow process. "After the experience that we had at NBC, we wanted to be in control," says O'Brien's agent, Rosen. "We wanted the freedom to exploit our content."

it was a fantastic fucking night. i feel so incredibly lucky to always work on the assumption that my audience will be made up of people that are interesting, people i want to actually talk to.
i borrowed a piano from a girl who came to the gig (and she wound up playing after me, while i signed and chatted to folks), took requests, drank beers, told stories, listened, hugged. kim came along and played some of her songs, and we sang together, and we....felt right at home. i was given some incredible gifts. i feel like collapsing sometimes under all the awesome that comes into my life. thank you to all you who were there. that was special.

there's something really fucking satisfying about the money not going to everybody inbetween...the promotors, the ticketmasters...and not having those inbetween people involved AT YOUR GIG. there's something that kills the vibe about playing in a venue and knowing that everybody who works there doesn't give a shit about you, your music, or your fans.

Borders are now crossed more easily than ever before in history. It is a great opportunity for artists and creators of all kinds, as art has no limits but those of our minds. Art enriches itself by eliminating artificial barriers between people such as borders between countries.

Just as artists have always travelled, to join sponsors, avoid wars or learn from masters far from home, now digital technology helps them to cross borders and break down barriers. Their work can be available to all. In a sense, the internet is the realisation of the Renaissance dream of Giovanni Pico della Mirandola: all knowledge in one place.

Yet, it does not mean there are no more obstacles to sharing cultural and artistic works on the net. All revolutions reveal, in a new and less favourable light, the privileges of the gatekeepers of the "Ancien Regime". It is no different in the case of the internet revolution, which is unveiling the unsustainable position of certain content gatekeepers and intermediaries. No historically entrenched position guarantees the survival of any cultural intermediary. Like it or not, content gatekeepers risk being sidelined if they do not adapt to the needs of both creators and consumers of cultural goods.

Take for instance copyright. For 200 years, it has proved a powerful way to remunerate our artists and to build our creative industries. But copyright is not an end in itself. Copyright exists to ensure that artists will continue to create. Yet we see more and more often that it is not respected. In some sectors, the levels of piracy demand that we ask ourselves what are we doing wrong. We must ensure that copyright serves as a building block, not a stumbling block.

Look at the situation of those trying to digitise cultural works. Europeana, the online portal of libraries, museums and archives in Europe, is one key example. What a digital wonder this is: a single access point for cultural treasures that would otherwise be difficult to access, hidden or even forgotten.

Will this 12 million-strong collection of books, pictures, maps, music pieces and videos stall because copyright gets in the way? I hope not.

The "biggest flaw in music is not copyright, it's business practice," said attorney and lecturer Ben Challis. Business practices that shift rights from the author or song writer to companies are the reason that artists do not get paid, he added. A fair regime would protect artists as well as the corporate side, he added.

Copyright has "shown itself for what it truly is," said Kienda Hoji, an entertainment lawyer and senior lecturer at the University of Westminster. It is a system that benefits those who want to make money, not the creators who deserve to, he said.