My good friend Brian in Spain wrote me an email last night about my NutStrap. Surprisingly, he thought I was stealing an idea and not rewarding the inventor. He has give me permission to re-post below so that I might respond on my blog. Response is below, after his email.
Hey Troy -
I was reading your blog and read your post about the nutstrap, my first impression was hey, thats pretty cool, Troy learned some metalwork skills and got to hang out with Wes for a while.
While I think both of those are true, as I thought more about it I also was disappointed. You and I both make our living out of intellectual property, and no matter how you feel about copyrights, patents and the like, I think the spirit of that type of work and the incentive to do it is the expectation that if you invent something new or build a better mousetrap you’ll somehow be rewarded for your effort by others who find your work valuable. I haven’t looked to see if there are a ton of other camera straps like the BlackRapid, but I’ve never seen the design before and I’m guessing that you got the idea for the nutstrap from there. It looks like its a husband and wife company and the strap seems reasonably priced at $48, but they didn’t get any reward for their work from you (who presumably found it useful) because you have the means to duplicate their idea, albeit at a higher cost. Then you told others via your blog how to do the same thing, enabling others to also get the value without rewarding the inventor.
I’m not trying to be preachy, but in short imagine that it was you who invented this and was trying to make a living selling it. I think it’d be cool if you could figure out a way to help compensate the inventors for their work in creating this because it was valuable to you, maybe send the blackrapid folks whatever you think is fair for the use of their idea and encourage others to do the same in your blog post. I bet their cost of goods is $15-20, the rest of the cost probably goes to paying for the website, their salary/time, etc.
Brian
Really, this is a new take on an old idea. Other’s like Gordy’s Camera Straps have built straps out of the tripod socket that you could buy before the BlackRapid. There are similar products for binoculars. I’ve used a tripod base before to do this with my Canon AE-1 in college. An AE-1 weighs nothing, a DSLR a ton. You don’t want to do this with a typical tripod mounting base, the d-ring isn’t welded and will come out with much weight. When I came across a photo.net post about straps I saw the BlackRapid video. Reviews were mixed across – many bought the BlackRapid but either didn’t like its feel and/or wanted to keep their own straps. Like me, I love my Crumpler Industry Disgrace. So BlackRapid improved on what I did in college and made it into a sliding strap – so did Gordy’s. Very cool twist and with the help of Wes, I was able to have the best of both worlds. Then I told people about how I made my version, as others have, and helped increase the sales of BlackRapid. What? I am helping their sales?
Yes – because DIYers are a tiny portion of the population yet we are connectors and mavens. We influence others because we love new technology, try it, review it, improve upon it and most of all, tell people about it. Many people have gawked at my strap and many have asked me about it. All are intrigued so I tell them how I made it and then I tell them about the BlackRapid. Almost no one is going to make their own mount but will instead will buy the BlackRapid or some other variant. My actions have only help to validate their commercially available strap and to help market it. Think about it this way – maybe 1 in 10 people are DIY’ers (do it yourselfers). That means if I tell 10 people who are interested in having a NutStrap how I made it then 1 will make it and 9 will instead buy the BlackRapid. But what if I didn’t make the NutStrap and didn’t buy a BlackRapid (because I don’t want it). Yep, no new sales from me, not one. So by my making one they get 9 new sales or ok, 8 new sales after you deduct my ‘lost’ sale from having ‘made’ rather than paid for something I didn’t want. That’s 8 new sales they weren’t going to get. I’d argue 1 in 10 is actually high and that their return is even higher off my efforts.
Here’s another example of how I’m helping. Back in November a salesman at Gassers saw my Crumper strap and said to me “hey, is that the new Crumpler strap? Oh cool, we have to get those in now that I’ve seen it, awesome strap”. I just helped Crumpler. When I go back soon I’ll make sure to show him the NutStrap, my guess is he’ll probably say he should start stocking the BlackRapid.
Our society is based on the open flow of information, today now more than ever. Ideas are rarely new and unique but instead are built upon other ideas. In addition, there are always alternatives to any one idea to fit a given a situation. BlackRapid didn’t provide the exact product I wanted so I didn’t buy it. If someone else (Crumpler) made what I wanted I probably would have bought it. Instead I built my own. People vote with their dollars in a capitalist society. Inventors are rewarded by how unique and inventive their ideas are not just by the virtue that they were built it or that they are from a small Mom and Pop shop. If it’s easily duplicated then it will be and if it’s a worthwhile idea it will catch on, people will use it and competition will spread. BlackRapid will only benefit from this environment so long as they make a really good product. If I were BlackRapid I would capitalize on the DIY interest in their strap and link to blogs like mine. Say “Look how popular our strap is – everyone is trying to imitate but don’t be fooled, ours is the best 
.” And it should be, otherwise people won’t buy it. Crumpler actually commented directly on my blog not only with a ‘hey cool’ but also with ideas on how to improve my hack on their strap. BlackRapid is missing an opportunity here. We now live in a DIY world – Maker is fabulously popular and open-source is continuously changing the landscape in incredible ways. It’s part of the innovation system now and won’t be going away. It needs to be embraced, extended and in the end made to work for everyone.
Yes, I work in software and I understand IP issues very well. What BlackRapid has done is tweaked an existing idea, made a product and added some excitement to the camera strap arena. I didn’t download their strap and make a duplicate nor did I start a competing company. I spent 4 hours in a shop to make something completely inferior and had a hell of a lot of fun. In the end they did a better job with a 1/4″ x 20 bolt and a 1″ metal hook than others have – so did I – there is prior art and this is hardly an IP violation.
What you should be criticizing me for is not giving thoughtful credit to BlackRapid for inspiring me to go into the garage and hack on an old idea. It did – thanks guys. You should sell a Crumpler Industry Disgrace version, it’ll be a huge winner with me.
