Infinite Supply, the Problem with Copyrights & Patents
In a comment to Economics Of Abundance Getting Some Well Deserved Attention a reader complained that there isn’t an infinite supply of good books, good music, and movies. This is flatly false, there’s an infinite supply of any intellectual property and it can be mathematically proven. How is that for being emphatic?
Don’t fear, I’m going to back up that statement and do the following:
- Prove there is an infinite supply of information.
- Show some reasons why Copyrights & Patents are logically flawed.
- List one form of intellectual property that is real and very valuable.
Digital media makes my point very clear. When you digitize a song, book or movie you convert it into numbers. And how many numbers are there? Infinite, you can keep counting forever. Computers store everything as a series of electrical impulses. We think of those as 1’s and 0’s. So inside a computer the music, videos, books and everything else is just a big number.
If you converted the phrase “infinite supply” into a stream of ones and zeros the way the computer sees it this is what it looks like:
01101001 01101110 01100110 01101001 01101110 01101001 01110100 01100101 00100000 01110011 01110101 01110000 01110000 01101100 01111001
As you look at that I’m sure it looks like a meaningless number. And that is the point. That phrase, “infinite supply” is just a meaningless number to a computer. Now look at this article. Up to this point it is 1,462 letters. When I save it on my computer it’s converted to a stream of 1’s and 0’s, it’s just a number. And like every number you could start at 1 and count up to the number equivalent of this article.
To count to the number that represents “infinite supply” you would pass “infinite supplx” and “infinite supplw”. You would also pass “supply”, “infinite”, “finite”, “in” and “a” and every possible combination of letters up to the 15 letter combination that make “infinite supply”. That is 2,954,312,706,550,833,698,643 combinations if we only include the letters “a” through “z” and blank space.
Read more
WCBN – Interactive Technology Interview – Part 1 – 2006 Dec 19
We discuss viral marketing, the online TV show I produce being spotlighted on Veoh.com, video advertising systems such as Revver.com, BitTorrent, Creative Commons, and business models that use file sharing and how artists and other creators of intellectual works can get paid for their works in a world of unlimited file sharing.
WCBN – Interactive Technology Interview – Part 1 – 2006 Dec 19
WCBN.org radio University of Michigan Ann Arbor
Interactive Technology Radio Show
Google Patent
The second I read about Google Patent on ZDnet, I rushed to write this post. Google making patent search easy gives me so much to talk about I can’t possibly cover it all in a single post. This could break open the flood gates of invention and hopefully innovation.
I’ve been talking about Google doing this for several years. The reason I’ve been so interested is the OutCompete method for predicting future innovation. Think about this for a moment. If you had a list of all possible innovations and an easy way to see which ones were already patented you could go down the list and patent the new ones before anyone else did.
Talk about idea factory! This is systematic innovation!
Of course for someone to do this they need the financial resources to file those patents. And to turn it from invention into innovation they need the engineering & marketing capability. Which company has a lot of cash, a bunch of smart people, and the ability to reach a global market? Google! So will they do this? I don’t know. We haven’t shared the OutCompete method with them yet, we would be glad to do so. Since they are opening up a location in Ann Arbor we’ll be neighbors. So, who knows?
What does all of this mean to you? If your company has a specific niche and you want to secure your market or grow a new one you now have some serious tools for doing it.
Its impossible for one company to patent everything, as I said in my last post “Google is an Innovation Amateur“ there are on average 50,625 ways to achieve any goal. That is a whole lot of patents. And how many goals are there? Infinite!
So, you can block off threats to your niche, and quickly generate a series of innovations to ensure your success for many years to come.
When I first learned the OutCompete method I sat down and applied it to a couple of industries, just to see what I came up with. At the time I was working with BitTorrent and trying to figure out new business models so artists could prosper in an environment where file sharing was now impossible to stop.
In a few hours I created about a dozen solutions to the file sharing problem. One of these doubles the artists profits and give them more artistic freedom, pretty cool. I also discovered a serious threat lurking that could completely disrupt Network TV. And it had nothing to do with copyrights. Even better I found a way for Network TV to triple their return on investment.
With a map of every possible innovation it’s easy to find super valuable opportunities. And possibly more important it’s easy to see vulnerabilities while you still have a chance to do something to save yourself.
Action Items
- Use Google Patent to search for term related to your top product
- Estimate the cost of loosing your current top product, including needing to replace it
- Estimate the value of 12 new inventions, including reducing risk from competitors.
Predictive Innovation Training
Predictive Innovation: Core Skills Book
RoundSquareTriangle.com