When Copyright Protection Meets Users, Guess Who Wins?
Today's New York Times story about Internet users spreading a key anti-piracy code from Blu-ray and HD-DVD disks offers a number of business lessons. First, the quick background: people have been relentless posting - in some ingenious ways - a secret code found on high definition video disks since it was unearthed in February. An industry group - the Advanced Access Content System Licensing Administrator, which has such members as IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Sony, Disney, and Warner Brothers - decided to stop things in their tracks and began sending cease and desist letters, claiming that publishing the code was a violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act of 1998.
That was about as effective as putting out a fire with jet fuel. People put the code up everything and in forms including lyrics of a song and hidden within the information of a digital photograph. Even though such actions are against the law, there are so many people doing it that the industry hasn't a practical prayer of going after anyone legally. This is the nature of the Internet hydra: for each user you legally smite, dozens more pop up.
Now to the lessons. One is that if command and control attitudes didn't ultimately work with employees, what made anyone think that it would with customers? Another is that companies really out to learn from experience, as the same thing happened when hackers broke the copy protection on DVDs. Third is that when you try to maximize your profits and customers perceive that it's at their expense, they will be unhappy and find ways to make you unhappy.
The Internet has changed business, but not in the way most managers understand. The real difference isn't speed or global distribution, but rather a leveling of the communication playing field and the ascendancy of ideas that the communications can transmit. Company value is in intellectual property (ideas), though few act as though it is. Customers can talk to each other using an electronic megaphone that is largely out of the control of corporations, and the ideas they express can have demonstrable impact on companies. Treat the customers with respect and you may get it returned. Try strong arming them, and the attempt is likely to blow up in your face.
That was about as effective as putting out a fire with jet fuel. People put the code up everything and in forms including lyrics of a song and hidden within the information of a digital photograph. Even though such actions are against the law, there are so many people doing it that the industry hasn't a practical prayer of going after anyone legally. This is the nature of the Internet hydra: for each user you legally smite, dozens more pop up.
Now to the lessons. One is that if command and control attitudes didn't ultimately work with employees, what made anyone think that it would with customers? Another is that companies really out to learn from experience, as the same thing happened when hackers broke the copy protection on DVDs. Third is that when you try to maximize your profits and customers perceive that it's at their expense, they will be unhappy and find ways to make you unhappy.
The Internet has changed business, but not in the way most managers understand. The real difference isn't speed or global distribution, but rather a leveling of the communication playing field and the ascendancy of ideas that the communications can transmit. Company value is in intellectual property (ideas), though few act as though it is. Customers can talk to each other using an electronic megaphone that is largely out of the control of corporations, and the ideas they express can have demonstrable impact on companies. Treat the customers with respect and you may get it returned. Try strong arming them, and the attempt is likely to blow up in your face.
Labels: communications, copy protection, ideas, intellectual property, Internet
Permalink posted by Erik Sherman at 4:43 AM
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