Day: 2 July 2006

You should be used to my twists and turns by now. But cricket and DRM? That’s not just any turn, I hear you say.
It’s been a lazy weekend for me, spending time with my family, watching some sport, catching up with some chores, some reading, some listening to music, and the occasional blog post.

[An aside. In some northern areas of the UK, they use the word “messages” to mean chores. They’ve been doing this for a long time. Well before e-mail. How did they know?]

After the disappointment of watching England crash out of the World Cup yesterday, it was with some trepidation that I turned on the cricket after everyone else had gone to bed. Wikipedia entry for the convenience of readers who haven’t come across this glorious game. Would India win the Test and the series in the West Indies tonight, or would they be denied again by resolute tail-enders? Well, Denesh Ramdin nearly pulled it off, but in the end Rahul “The Wall” Dravid implacably led India to their first overseas victory over the West Indies since 1971.

And it made me reminisce. Of famous victories over the West Indies. And 1983 came to mind, when India won the cricket World Cup, after setting the Windies a paltry target. And wandering down memory lane, I remembered watching Kapil Dev score 175 not out, his highest one-day score, to rescue India against Zimbabwe that year, in an earlier World Cup match. He came in when India were 17 for 5, so that took some doing. Amazing innings.

Many years later, I was with some other cricket-loving friends, and the conversation moved to that Zimbabwe game. We were there together. And someone remarked that the BBC had lost the tape of the game, so it had never made it to DVD or similar. Now I think I have a tape of the game, if only I can find it.

Which brings me to the point of this post. Suppose something is in copyright, but for some reason the copyright holder has no copy. Suppose there is only one “copy” in existence. And further suppose there is a lot of time and care and effort that has to go into retrieving and restoring the sole existent copy. Does the owner of the copy have any rights, according to the DRM and IPR gang? Does the restorer have any rights?

If I find the tape, I will give it freely to the BBC for them to restore and to make money from. Naturally. I’d probably expect that they give me a free copy on DVD in exchange, though :-)

The point is, in this particular instance, the copyright holder (BBC) has no copy, the copy owner (me) has no rights, the effort needed to retrieve and restore the copy is high (like wading through a garage of junk for individual videotapes and playing each one in order to find the right one). What will the pro-DRM pro-Mickey Mouse Act pro bad IPR people make of this? :-)
It just made me wonder. Is some of this pushback against digital freedom perversely a consequence of sharply reduced costs of reproduction? When the product is physical, are there some copy rights attached to the copy, especially if it becomes the only one? I remember reading about the great efforts people went to in order to find an original of Moore’s Law in article form. Does Moore have rights to it? Does the magazine? What happens when a title is “deleted”? Can Google make copies of all “deleted” titles? Why ever not, if the title holder has chosen to abdicate?

Just musings. Googlies and doosras.

So said Peter Drucker in one of his last books, Management Challenges for the 21st Century.

You’ll get your fill of Drucker quotes in this post, but I want to bring one more of his quotes into the front and centre of your attention:

The American regulation of business rests on the assumptions that to every industry pertains a unique technology and that to every end use pertains a specific and unique product or service. These are the assumptions on which antitrust legislation was based.
These are interesting times. Many would say the Net Neutrality debate is over, the incumbents have won. Many would say the same about Intellectual Property Rights and Digital Rights Management. Many would say that my views on identity and confidentiality and privacy are utopian and impracticable.

It would appear that the three Is that I have spent time arguing about are no longer worth arguing about: the internet, intellectual property and identity.

Time for dinosaurs like me to go quietly to the grave. Or so it would appear.

At times like these, I read. And think.

So I delved into Drucker. And chanced across something I hadn’t read for a while, entitled Technologies and End Uses. For those who haven’t read it, Drucker makes some very simple and worthwhile points:

• The assumptions about technology and end uses to a very large extent underlie the rise of modern business and of the modern economy altogether. They go back to the very early days of the Industrial Revolution.
• …..it was assumed — and with complete validity — that [each] industry had its own and unique technology.
• By now this assumption has become untenable…. In the nineteenth century and throughout the first half of the twentieth century, it could be taken for granted that technologies outside one’s own industry had no, or at least only minimal, impact on the industry.
• Now the assumption to start with is that the technologies that are likely to have the greatest impact on a company and an industry are technologies outside its own field.
• Today’s technologies, unlike those of the nineteenth century, no longer run in parallel lines. They constantly crisscross.
• Constantly, such outside technologies force an industry to learn, to acquire, to adapt, to change its very mind-set, let alone its technical knowledge.
• Equally important…. was a second assumption. End uses are fixed and given.
• This was accepted as obvious not only by business, industry and the consumer, but by governments as well. The American regulation of business rests on the assumptions that to every industry pertains a unique technology and that to every end use pertains a specific and unique product or service. These are the assumptions on which antitrust legislation was based.
• But by now it is clear that it is not just one material moving in on what was considered the “turf” of another one. Increasingly, the same want is being satisfied by very different means.
• It is the want that is unique, and not the means to satisfy it.

These two lock-in layers are fundamental. One that says every industry has its unique technology, the other that says end uses relate to unique and specific products/services.

These two lock-in layers have coloured our thinking, our investment processes, our valuations, our regulations.

These two lock-in layers are dead. Defunct. As in the Python Parrot.

It does not matter to me just how entrenched the incumbents and their lobbies are, it will not be possible to protect the lock-ins ad infinitum.

The ability to transfer disruptive technologies from one market to another, and the ability to vary end-use way beyond what the “inventors” ever dreamt of, these abilities are as American as motherhood and apple pie. They are the essence of innovation, something America has excelled at. And will excel at again. I’m not American, but I love innovation, and believe that the US of A got many things right in supporting and enhancing innovation. Now it looks like there are going to be a few backward steps taken. Tough. Frustrating for all concerned. But ultimately unsustainable.
It is these abilities that will be held back if the battle for the Three Is (Internet, Intellectual Property, Identity) continues the way it seems to be continuing. Held back, yes. Suppressed, no.

It is the want that is unique, and not the means to satisfy it.

It is the customer that does the wanting. The signalling of his intentions.
In markets that are conversations.

[Note: quotations from Drucker and the illustration from Monty Python appear here on a fair use basis; my thanks to the copyright holders]