Flashpit (n.) - A physical gathering of people in a public place, announced via the Internet, to quickly and anonymously trade physical goods with no transactional cost and no central agency.
Flashtrader (n.) - One who participates in flashpits.
Flashmobs are fun. Performance art, collective action, lovely stuff.
But what if flashmobs had an economic purpose? What if we decouple the legal act of creating communities online with the illegal act of digital copying? Flashmobs can be used to legally trade entertainment media such as books, CDs and DVDs.
Flashpits are not about making a philosophical statement. Flashpits are not about being rebellious, or being cool, or being a part of a greater whole. Flashpits are definitely not about giving the finger to the middleman or trying to redefine copyright.
Flashpits are about pooling community resources. Supply and demand, pure and simple. An incredible glut of entertainment media is already in circulation. The entertainment companies are hoping you don't notice, and they spend a good deal of advertising money to manufacture demand for new product.
If music "wants to be free", all we as consumers need do is carry that philosophy to its logical conclusion. Stop stockpiling music. You don't even have time to listen to it all!
Everybody who has CD A gathers in one place and deposits their CD in one of three piles:
[wants CD B] [wants CD C] [wants B or C]
Then the CD A owners form line #1 on behind the CDs. The owners of B and C who want A form line #2 on the other side of the CDs. The two people at the head of each line are now facing each other and are in a position to try to trade. If they can't because the person in line#2 doesn't have the right CD, then that person steps out of line and the next person in line #2 steps up.
If line #2 runs out before the pile of CD A runs out, then the remaining folks in line #1 take back their copies of CD A.
Next, the whole process is repeated for owners of CD B. At the conclusion of that step, CD C owners have had a chance to make any possible trade, and the flashpit is over. This method doesn't scale well as the number of different CDs to trade increases.
Q. How is this different from trading used CDs for credit at a record store?
A. Record stores need to make a profit, so you must give more than you get. Not so with flashpits.
Q. Aren't you just redefining the concept of a "public library"? Is this some sort of entertainment socialism?
A. If everybody donated all of their CDs to the library and then expected to easily access them under current copyright laws, there would be tremendous administrative costs. Those costs would be paid through taxes, so, like a used record store, you would end up paying administrative overhead. Flashpits distribute cost onto the Internet and public spaces, and can be highly targeted to the type of media you want.
Q. Is this just another form of music piracy? A lot of people thought that they were safe using Kazaa and now they are being sued.
A. As long as you bring CDs that you legally purchased, this is no different than taking CDs to a used CD store and trading them. Do not bring burned CDs or you WILL be engaging in music piracy.
Q. The physical trading process sounds too inefficient because you don't know how many CDs are available and what each person wants. Won't many people end up wasting their time and not finding a trade?
A. This is a valid criticism. If somebody wants to come up with a system for matching flashtraders before the event that would be great, but there are two problems with that:
1) the cost of the matching system will be difficult to recover from the community
2) The flashpit community cannot guarantee that any particular member will show up. The certainty of availability is a big part of what you pay for when you go to a music store. If that certainty is worth your money, then perhaps flashpits are not for you. There are many possible solutions to this problem. For example, EBay creates a sense of security about person-to-person transactions through a fairly sophisticated reputation system. They could probably spin off local flashpits that would provide more reliable attendance and a higher percentage of completed trades. But they'll want something in return.