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Seth Godin wrote about trade guilds the other day in this blog post. You should read the entire post, but the relevant part is:

Whenever a trade association raises the barricades and tries to lobby their way into maintaining the status quo, they are doing their members a disservice. Instead of spending time and insight and effort reinventing what they do and organizing for a better future, the members are lulled into a sense of security that somehow, somehow, the future will be just like today.

In short, a trade association serves its members better by enabling them to adapt to changing market conditions, rather than helping them circle the wagons, passing out ammunition and jabbing the horses of the enemy riders as they pass. In the end, the food will run out, the ammunition will be all spent and the settlers will die.

Take a look at the RIAA. Instead of helping their members understand the changing market conditions that Apple’s iTunes created, they lashed out at their member’s customers, suing grandmas and teenagers into submission. Oh, sure, it might work for the short term, but the reality is that the music industry is changing. It has a different distribution model and the ammunition inside the wagon circle is getting leaner and less intimidating.

Now the Author’s Guild is doing the same thing. Boing-boing picked this up and commented further on the issue. Author’s Guild president Roy Blount Jr. is right in his argument that a text-to-speech feature creates a “‘derivative work’ by creating audio editions of your textfiles.” But, that argument is also like saying a bridge is a derivative work of a ingot of steel. Both are derivative works, but both are needed to be reshaped to be able to deliver a marketable product.

The public does not understand copyright law, nor do they really care to. Arguing about what is and is not protected under copyright is like trying to explain DNA to a jury. Their eyes glaze over, they are inundated with scientific jargon and they don’t hear a word beyond “thou shalt not…”

What this will become, if Jeff Bezos is a smart man, is a public fist-fight between the Author’s Guild and blind people. Bezos should be making PSAs and publishing them up on YouTube, with the message, “The Author’s Guild does not care about blind people.” It’s a really, really niche part of the issue, but something the public can understand. “You are going to fight a blind man? What’s wrong with you!” Defend yourself against that.

Does your trade association or society seek to protect the status quo when confronted with change or does it help its members adapt to the changes so they can be relevant in the future? You can’t stop the advance of technology, especially when it is driven by a thirsty marketplace. You may be able to weather the first one or two waves, but after a while, market pressures and technology end-runs will end up overpowering your efforts.

When change wants in, change gets in. How you deal with it is what will make you relevant.

Or not.

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