Prosthetic Device

If you create original content, you need to be mindful of your online presence.

(Do you even have an online presence? You should!)

One big aspect of online presence that needs careful consideration is whether you host your own content (disintermediation) or post on a middleman’s site.

Middlemen (aka publishers) add true value. All the infrastructure, from tech to marketing, along with the bother and distraction, are somebody else’s problem. You can remain focused on content creation.

Disintermediation — hosting & posting your own stuff — allows closer control at the expense of needing to pay attention to non-creative aspects, like the problem raised by Louis Gray in a recent post: having your content stolen by a bigger online gorilla without attribution.

Publishers retain lawyers for that sort of badness.

Unless you’re a member of a professional association, or independently wealthy, you’re not likely to keep a rights law firm on retainer. About all you can do once the initial rage cools is what Louis Gray has done: document the theft online and make as big a stink about it as you can.

As a creative type, you may not enjoy the business side of your art or craft — but you need to at least acknowledge it long enough to make a considered decision on whether to disintermediate or not. If the details of business repel you, disintermediation is unwise.

As the case of Louis Gray v. Mashable illustrates, there is a market opening for Web 2.0 honest brokering between content creators and their audience. It remains to be proven whether that market opening is exploitable. If not, Web 2.0 will burst its bubble as content creators look elsewhere to pay for their daily bread.

(Hat tip: Dave Winer via Twitter.)