Author: JP

Musing about downloads in the UK

Some of you may have noticed that I like my cricket. And one of the things I like about cricket is the cricket story; the history of cricket is festooned with anecdotes and tales and apocrypha, filling a very large number of books. As with most other stories, over time, these stories gain a life of their own, with a series of embellishments and accoutrements; this is particularly noticeable when the story is about  larger-than-life characters, something that cricket’s cup runneth over with.

One such story involves one of the largest of the larger-than-life characters: Freddie Trueman.

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The story goes like this:

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Trueman bowls. Batsman is trapped plumb LBW. Trueman appeals. Not out.

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Next ball. Trueman ever-so-slightly irritated. Trueman bowls. Audible snick, ball deflects and sails upward, caught behind. Trueman appeals. Not out.

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Third ball. Trueman a little more irritated now. Trueman bowls. Through the gate, stumps spreadeagled, middle stump uprooted and cartwheeling. Trueman turns to the umpire and says with a wry smile “We nearly had him that time, didn’t we?”

We nearly had him that time, didn’t we?

Actually that’s the way I feel about recent discussions to do with downloads and filesharing in the UK.

First we had the Digital Britain Report. Lots of hard work, lots of interviews, lots of people given a chance to express their views and opinions.

The report had an entire chapter on Creative Industries in the Digital World. The chapter headings were Towards a New Framework for Content; Protecting and Rewarding Creativity; The Legislative Proposals; Legislation to Reduce Unlawful Peer-to-Peer Filesharing; Other Rights Issues: Fair Use; Modernising Licensing; Intellectual Property Office’s Copyright Strategy; Orphan Works;  Matched Penalties for Physical and Online Copyright Infringement; A Role for Rights-Based Funding Mechanisms; Interactive Content: Converting Creativity into Value; Digital Test Beds to Trial New Products and Business Models; Extending Existing Interventions to Interactive Content; Virtual Worlds; Digital Britain: Film, Cinema and Literature; Literature; Case Study: Retirees.

From that line-up, you would think that serious consideration had been given to most aspects of what is essentially a complex subject. The fact that we’re entering a new world, with new products, services and business models. The case for change. The legislative implications of that change, needing to reward creators while protecting the principle of fair use. And so on and so forth.

When it comes to legislation to reduce unlawful peer-to-peer filesharing, the report had this to say:

The key elements of what we are proposing to do are:

  • Ofcom will be placed under a duty to take steps aimed at reducing online copyright infringement. Specifically they will be required to place obligations on ISPs to require them:
  • to notify alleged infringers of rights (subject to reasonable levels of proof from rights-holders) that their conduct is unlawful; and
  • to collect anonymised information on serious repeat infringers (derived from their notification activities), to be made available to rights-holders together with personal details on receipt of a court order.

Ofcom will also be given the power to specify, by Statutory Instrument, other conditions to be imposed on ISPs aimed at preventing, deterring or reducing online copyright infringement, such as:

  • Blocking (Site, IP, URL);
  • Protocol blocking;
  • Port blocking;
  • Bandwidth capping (capping the speed of a subscriber’s Internet connection and/or capping the volume of data traffic which a subscriber can access);
  • Bandwidth shaping (limiting the speed of a subscriber’s access to selected protocols/services and/or capping the volume of data to selected protocols/services); and
  • Content identification and filtering.

This power would be triggered if the notification process has not been successful after a year in reducing infringement by 70% of the number of people notified.

Remember, this was the outcome of a long period of formal consultation with people from all parts of the industries involved. Seemed a decent piece of work. And then what happened?

Then, the Secretary of State for Business, Inn0vation and Skills, announced plans to discard the proposals in the Report, and rather than go through a year-long trial period with non-technical measures, accelerate the move towards technical measures. Measures that ISPs have been united in opposing, for a plethora of reasons: rationale, lack of fairness, affordability and effectiveness being the main ones.

I thought to myself, when I read the Digital Britain Report, the hawks were plumb leg-before-wicket. They were out.

But no, the Secretary of State decided “Not Out”.

A little while later, I read another official document. This time it was the All-Party Parliamentary Communications Group, reporting on an Inquiry called “Can we keep our hands off the Net?”

This was another duly appointed committee going through its orderly business, seeking to answer five questions:

#1 Can we distinguish circumstances when ISPs should be forced to act to deal with some type of bad traffic? When should we insist that ISPs should not be forced into dealing with a problem, and that the solution must be found elsewhere?

#2 Should the Government be intervening over behavioural advertising services, either to encourage or discourage their deployment; or is this entirely a matter for individual users, ISPs and websites?

#3 Is there a need for new initiatives to deal with online privacy, and if so, what should be done?

#4 Is the current global approach to dealing with child sexual abuse images working effectively? If not, then how should it be improved?

#5 Who should be paying for the transmission of Internet traffic? Would it be appropriate to enshrine any of the various notions of Network Neutrality in statute?

There were ten conclusions regarding Question 1. Conclusions of an All-Party Committee duly set up to look at this issue. And what did they say? Here are some extracts:

We believe that voluntary arrangements would be the best way of tackling this issue and
note with approval the initiative which is already under way in Australia. Accordingly,
we recommend that UK ISPs, through Ofcom, ISPA or another appropriate
organisation, immediately start the process of agreeing a voluntary code for
detection of, and effective dealing with, malware infected machines in the UK.

2. If this voluntary approach fails to yield results in a timely manner, then we further
recommend that Ofcom unilaterally create such a code, and impose it upon the UK
ISP industry on a statutory basis.

We conclude that much of the problem with illegal sharing of copyrighted material
has been caused by the rightsholders, and the music industry in particular, being
far too slow in getting their act together and making popular legal alternatives
available.

We do not believe that disconnecting end users is in the slightest bit consistent with
policies that attempt to promote eGovernment, and we recommend that this
approach to dealing with illegal file-sharing should not be further considered.

We think that it is inappropriate to make policy choices in the UK when policy
options are still to be agreed by the EU Commission and EU Parliament in their
negotiations over the “Telecoms Package”. We recommend that the Government
terminate their current policy-making process, and restart it with a new
consultation once the EU has made its decisions.

Let me repeat one of those conclusions. ” We conclude that much of the problem with illegal sharing of copyrighted material has been caused by the rightsholders, and the music industry in particular, being far too slow in getting their act together and making popular legal alternatives available.

So this time I thought to myself, definitely caught behind. But the Secretary of State for Business, Innovation and Skills had other ideas.

He’s announced that formal three-strikes legislation will be in place for April 2010.

Not out.

But it isn’t time for us to give up hope as yet, despite the presidentially non-consultative hide-head-in-sand approaches in evidence. Very recently, I saw the possibility of help from a most unlikely quarter: Disney.

Here’s a quote from the CEO of Disney:

The business model that underpins the movie business is changing,” Bob Iger told the Financial Times in an interview published on Monday. “If we don’t adapt to the change there won’t be a business — that’s my exhortation to my team.”

The newspaper said Iger advocated a fundamental rethink of the costs associated with movie production and marketing.

And I thought to myself. What a shame. Britain could have led, should have led, the world in a complete rethink of the principles, practices and legislation required for a thriving digital world. Instead, we’re about to take ten steps back while Disney, of all people, move forward.

Good for Bob Iger. Good for Disney. Someone has to change.

And, as I saw the wicket spreadeagling, I turned to the Secretary of State and said, wryly, “Nearly had him that time”.

Credits: Trueman photo hanoiswans; leg-before-wicket photo Wikimedia Commons; caught behind photo cricketweb.net; wicket spreadeagled story tribuneindia.com.

Musing about culture and customers and choice: the eBaying of “content”

I have the privilege of spending time with many startups, in a variety of guises: as incubator, as advisor, as investor, as chairman, as well-wisher, friend and supporter. The startups differ widely and wildly: they range in size from a handful of people to hundreds;  they have annual burn rates in the thousands and in the millions; they have different strategies and different ways of executing them; the motives that drive them are different, the things that keep them awake at night differ as well. They make different types of products and services, for different markets, with different social and economic aims and consequences.

But they share one thing: They keep asking themselves the same set of questions:  “What does the customer want? What will she do with our product or service, how will it be used? Why will she come to us for it? And what will she pay for it?”

This isn’t rocket science; it isn’t even illuminated startup management. It’s Customer 101. So we speak a lot about customer choice, and, much of the time, we do something about it.

When it comes to culture, however, we seem to forget. Which is strange, because the changes that are taking place are at their most severe in the cultural arena. Changes that are taking place to reverse the developments of the last fifty, maybe even hundred years in a number of key aspects of culture.

  • These changes are simple yet far-reaching:
  • Consumption to Participation: The television and broadcast ages brought the ability for people to consume events globally, but it took the tools of today to let them participate globally. Obama’s campaign is a classic example. There were people all over the US, even in the “red” states, who contributed to his campaign, who participated in the discussions. Yes, there were people in Europe who tried to donate money into Obama’s campaign and failed for good legal reasons; but they could still engage.
  • One Place to Many Places: You couldn’t be part of an orchestra unless you went to where the orchestra was. Now the Mountain comes to many Mahomets, the orchestra comes to you, there are many examples of distributed music ensembles.
  • One Time to Any Time: Gone are the days when Super Bowl Monday was a nightmare for young men in Europe, who had to stay up into the early hours of Monday if they wanted to make an “evening” of it. Now they can still do that, but they don’t have to. They can hold their party on Monday night if they want. Not everything is streamed live, or needs to be. YouTube passed a billion hits a day and doesn’t stream anything live.
  • Hit Culture to Long Tail: When costs of warehousing and distribution were a significant proportion of overall cost, it made sense to reduce the number of items in inventory. As that changed the size of “inventory” available changed dramatically. So for example I buy many books from Amazon or Abebooks that aren’t in their top 10,000 sellers. Many of these books would be impossible to get via a traditional bookshop. The same goes for music and video. It doesn’t matter how many studies I see that seek to pooh-pooh Chris Anderson’s thesis, I look to what I do and what I can do. What I can do is a lot more than what I could do, because my transaction costs for “long-tail” items have reduced sharply.
  • Using to Making: The proliferation and ubiquitous availability of tools that are themselves participatory by nature has changed the basis of participation. Think of the number of video cameras you saw in the 1960s, the 1970s, the 1980s and now. Just look at the photographs, videos and notes that make it on to Facebook. Soon, Facebook will be a country whose population exceeds that of every country bar India and China. A country where everyone has feedback loops to the mother ship. Say what you like about the Borg, but don’t underestimate it. A critical change is taking place there. A country with more photo uploads than Flickr, more games players than World of Warcraft, more people than most of Europe or America. And global in reach. The stuff that gets uploaded to Facebook is not “copies of originals” but often mutations. Think of the number of video cameras you saw in the 1960s, the 1970s, the 1980s and now. More on this later.
  • Scarce to Abundant: One of the most fundamental changes is that of the internet as a copy and remix machine, making artificial scarcity something very difficult, something almost impossible. The very concept of artificial scarcity is relatively new, born of the consumption mindset driven by mass marketing. Things analog were, or at least could be, scarce. [If they weren’t scarce then you could hoard them or cartelise in order to make them seem scarce]. Things digital are fundamentally infinite in abundance, since the cost of reproduction and transmission is trivial.
  • Forced to Voluntary: Payment for cultural services has always changed from age to age; sometimes it’s been about patronage; sometimes it’s been about passing the hat around; sometimes it’s been about levies and fees, as with library schemes and radio broadcasting. The fixed purchase scheme is relatively recent in comparison and is in the process of being rendered obsolete. People will now pay what they are willing to pay, even for ostensibly free things.

I could go on, but won’t. The point is simple. We’re moving from an analog world to a digital world. That means that many things change. The most important change is that in a world of abundance, the buyer sets the price. The customer is in control.

The story is one of empowerment and inclusion, of enfranchisement. And one of the key shifts that is taking place is in the almost-random repurposing of things past. For example, take the concept of “literal videos“, as exemplified by Dustin McLean. What a lovely idea. Take an old video, keep to the original pictures and backing music, rewrite the lyrics to reflect what’s actually happening on the video rather than in the song. My particular favourite is the literal video version of Bonnie Tyler’s Total Eclipse of the Heart. My thanks to Dave Morin, who pointed it out to me via Facebook.

I keep trying to tell people that while the internet may have been discovered or even invented by Al Gore, it was definitely not invented exclusively as a new distribution model for Hollywood or its musical cater-cousin. Who could have predicted that someone would do this to Carl Sagan and to Stephen Hawking.

People are creating value from things long forgotten, long abandoned, long deemed worthless.

There is an eBaying of content going on, as people repurpose stuff they find in the digital garage and attic that is the Web.

Some people will become the new scavengers, looking through the detritus of the web for things to reuse and remix. Some will build the places where they look, the tools they look with: the Bit Torrents and Pirate Bays of this world. Some will do the remixing, as in the Dustin McLeans. Some will buy, but not all: there is already a plethora of data points about freemium models and conversion rates.

If we allow this to happen, then new revenue streams will begin to emerge, new business models will come about.

If we allow this to happen, then we can participate in these new revenue streams and models.

If we try to prevent it from happening, we will fail. And therefore not participate in the new revenue streams and models.

The customer now has choice.

And we have a choice. To be on the customer’s side. Or not.

Musing gently about choice in the enterprise

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[Photo credits: guitars: fotobicchio and shoes: Orin Zebest]

For some time now, phrases like “the customer’s in control” have been floating around the marketplace, yet “enterprise people” haven’t taken a blind bit of notice. You can’t expect them to. Many of them can’t understand what choice means in the context of the services they receive. And what they don’t experience they can’t express to others.

But it’s all changing, and changing fast. As consumerisation drives innovation from the consumer to the enterprise, and as the millenial generation enter the workforce, these changes are speeding up. Which is a good thing. Why? I shall come to it.

We start with the device, the “desktop”. Since the dawn of time the device has been under the control of the IT department: hatches battened, everything that doesn’t move painted, everything that does move shot down and then saluted in full funeral gear. [You will only write in company ledgers using company pens.] IT guys should have learnt from telco guys, who lost control of the device years ago. But they didn’t, so they have it all to do. For the millenials, their devices are more than just mechanisms of input to corporate systems; they double up as phones, as photo albums, as music systems, even as fashion statements.

But it’s not too bad; many firms are beginning to understand this, and the concept of the lockdown desktop is weakening.

Beyond the desktop we have applications and services. The historical model within the enterprise has been to create a “standard build” and then impose that one-size-fits-all on everyone. If you were lucky you had three or four builds to choose from, but even that was rare. So what happened? Nature abhors a vacuum. Water finds its own level. In most enterprises, it was only a matter of time before people found ways of subverting the system, playing chicken with those that would stop them. [You can’t park here! Let’s be having you now]. First there were policy-based attempts at control [thou shalt not …]; then there were attempts to disable input drives and removable media; but with the proliferation of laptops and mobile working all this became unsustainable. [But they still tried, valiantly, to stop the variations].

What do the millenials know? They know Facebook. They know the iPhone. They choose the apps.

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They choose the apps they need to do their jobs. Not the apps they get given by someone who hasn’t done their jobs.

It doesn’t stop with the apps. They also choose who or what they want to hear from, as in Twitter or Friendfeed or Facebook News Feed, and not as in e-mail. Who or what they want to hear on the “radio”, as in spotify or last.fm. Who or what they want to read, to watch, to see.

What does this have to do with the enterprise? Everything. As the millenials continue to enter the workforce, these are their expectations and values. We’ve spoken about it for a while now, but it’s actually happening. If you care to look.

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The more intriguing questions of choice come up when you look at how tasks and resources get allocated to each other within an enterprise. Firms exist at least partly because they serve to reduce transaction costs. They could borrow capital cheaply, obtain global reach and scale, attract and retain staff by the provision of pay and benefits. At least that was the theory; over the years those advantages have dwindled: enterprise credit ratings aren’t what they used to be, the internet lowers the barrier for global reach and scale, security of tenure is no longer to be assumed and benefits sometimes  become millstones around legacy operations. So yes, firms are changing.

Despite all that change, some things haven’t changed. Management structures exist to define and agree objectives, to prioritise activities in the context of those objectives, to allocate scarce resources to the completion of those objectives, to monitor feedback on performance and to intervene when and where appropriate, to fix problems, overcome obstacles, resolve conflicts.

Maybe some of that is now changing as well. My father had one job. By the time I die I will expect to have had seven. And maybe my son will have seven jobs …. at the same time. The contract of employment is under stress and will change. But not immediately.

What may change sooner is the way tasks and resources meet each other:

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The “exchange” concept is spreading everywhere, a place where “buyers” and “sellers” are able to discover each other efficiently, particularly with the Web. Betfair is an exchange.  Match.com is an exchange, as is SeatWave or even SchoolOfEverything (disclosure: I’m chairman there). The model’s not new, what’s different is the ease with which the model can be applied universally.

So it’s not difficult to visualise a time when people at work pick jobs to be done, scanning their smart phones to see what needs doing, reading services they subscribe to in order to make those decisions.

People choosing what they do, when and how they do it, where they do it, what services and tools they need to do it, what devices they use. All possible. All being done now. But not holistically across the enterprise anywhere.

For that we need to architect our services differently. Which is where outside-in design comes in, designing for the customer, designing to provide that customer with choice. At a level of abstraction, everyone’s a customer. Your actual customers. Your trading partners. Your supply chain. And your staff.

The customer’s in control, as Esther Dyson used to say.

A coda: One of the choices we have to provide is the no-choice choice, where we make decisions on behalf of people who don’t want to make them. Barry Schwartz’s The Paradox of Choice is a good read if you want to go down that particular road. I remember how disquieting it was for me to visit a supermarket for the first time 30 years ago. I was used to walking up to a corner shop which was little more than an overstocked hole in the wall with a man sitting in it surrounded by stuff for sale. And suddenly I had an aisle full of ….toothpaste….

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[Photo courtesy the New York Times].

So one of the choices we have to provide people is the “complete default”. We’ll choose for you if you want us to.

Choices. As Yogi Berra said, If you see a fork in the road, take it.

Swiftly going West: Digital parody comes of age

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I know my readership is “old” but most of you are not as old as I am. So that means you’re more than likely to have heard about the Kanye West/Taylor Swift incident a few days ago. I heard about it, found it at least mildly distasteful, despite Kanye’s apology; I was therefore glad to hear about Beyonce’s touch of class later.

But that’s not the point of this post. Why would I write about two people I don’t listen to, on a programme I don’t watch, and whose lives I have no interest in? Simple. I write because of this video:

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Chris Messina tweeted and alerted me to this, a mash-up between Kanye West and Taylor Swift.

Stop there, just for a second. Shut your eyes and imagine. Imagine what will happen if the video goes viral. So-called rights holders crawling out of their shells and demanding recompense, when none is called for in a sensible copyright regime. Am I being sensationalist? I don’t think so. Just take a look at this article, brought to my attention by friend and colleague Kevin Marks.

Experiencing things by watching and hearing and reading. Learning from those experiences. Borrowing from the experiences you have. Letting your imagination run rampant and riotous. Using that imagination to praise, to teach, to lampoon, to savour alone, to share with all.

We have to allow the Matt Kammerers of this world to do their thing. Sampling from here and there in order to make a new thing. A new thing. Copyright law used to be reasonable for centuries, despite attempts to mutate it at critical stages: the inventions of the press, the radio, the copier, the tape, even the CD. Since the dawn of the digital age, attempts to enshrine stupidity in law have increased. Much of what passed for creativity and comment and parody and satire may not be possible in the future if the law is allowed to become more of an ass.

The current battles are really not about downloading or filesharing or mashing up. There is far too much evidence that the downloaders, filesharers and mashup makers are themselves the ones behind the massive growth in digital sales.

The battles have been about control. Control that allows owners of obsolete marketing and distribution systems to exert power on a new generation, because they can. Because we let them exert that power throughly poorly thought out law.

The battles are about control. Control that is alien to the very basis of the internet. Centralised and monolithic, able to criminalise a cohort in the twinkling of a cataracted eye.

The battles will be about control. Control of an entire generation and their right to their culture.

Guess what? Not much stands in the way. Except you and me.

RIP Mary Travers 1936-2009

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I was saddened to hear that Mary Travers died yesterday. As Mary in Peter, Paul and Mary (or PP&M as they usually get referred to), she enthralled a generation with her voice and her attitude.

I was six years old when I first heard Mary sing, and I’ve been hooked ever since, to her voice and to the sound of the band. In The Wind remains one of my all-time favourite albums, and PP&M one of my favourite groups, something I’ve written about here, here, here, here and here. Rocky Road has lifted my spirits on so many dark days when I was young. [Intriguingly, I can only get to the song samples via the US Amazon site, they’re nowhere to be seen on the UK site].

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PP&M were an integral part of my childhood and youth, and continue to be an integral part of my life: they’ve influenced me in my attitude to life, my beliefs, my musical tastes, even my vocabulary. I think they’re way underappreciated for who and what they were: they were in Washington on the day of Martin Luther King’s incredible I Have a Dream speech, playing on that same stage. They had 3 albums in the top 10 the day that Kennedy was assassinated. They pretty much introduced the world at large to Bob Dylan, with three different Dylan songs on the album In The Wind. Two of those made the top 10. From Puff The Magic Dragon to Leaving on A Jet Plane (where they introduced John Denver to many of us) they enthralled a world in ways that folk groups rarely do, with their values shaping their music and their lives. A protest group from start to finish.

PP&M was a rare group, one where all members contributed. Mary didn’t just sing, she wrote as well; just do a Google check on “stookey okun travers” and you’ll see what I mean.

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One of my favourite Mary Travers songs, poignantly, is Laura Nyro’s And When I Die (a song I will always associate with another seminal group and eponymous album, Blood, Sweat and Tears).

As and when you get the chance, do watch/listen to Mary singing it on the Mama Cass TV show, with Cass Elliott and Joni Mitchell watching. Or just visit YouTube and choose from a plethora of tracks. Because you can.

Mary Travers, thank you for all those sunshine moments in my life, listening to you sing. May you rest in peace.

…. And when [you] die/ there’ll be one child more/ in this world/ to carry on.