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
BBC moves to file-sharing sites
Hundreds of episodes of BBC programmes will be made available (legally) on a file-sharing network for the first time, the corporation has announced.
The move follows a deal between the commercial arm of the organisation, BBC Worldwide, and technology BitTorrent firm Azureus through their Zudeo service.
This is really great news. People all over the world have enjoyed BBC programming but its sometimes hard to get it. In the US BBC television is mostly available through public television. And more recently through file sharing. Its great to see the BBC recognize the value of global distribution made possible using BitTorrent.
I’ve been involved with BitTorrent since 1999, my business partner The Shad0w created BitTornado, a BitTorrent client, to enhance the protocol. Many of BitTornado’s enhancements have been accepted as standards to the protocol.
The original reason we got involved in BitTorrent was to create alternative business models to allow artists to get paid for their work. We realized that file sharing was the natural state and trying to stop it was impossible. So how can artists get paid if making copies is free? We tried to help performers get concert gigs and built a web site that allowed you to audition performers online and then book them for performances. We found paying for bandwidth was too expensive at the time; this led Shad0w to work on the BitTorrent open source project and became one of the major contributors to the technology.
I continued working on business models, and discovered there are four basic types of business models for information. The key factors are:
| Paid Before Creation | Paid After Creation | |
| Paid By Consumer |
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| Paid By Another Person |
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Copyrights focus on paying after creation or publication. By focusing on business models the pay the artist before creation or publication sharing isn’t a problem, and in general is helpful.
Advertising benefits from file sharing. I spent a lot of time promoting integrated advertising also known as branded entertainment. The Apprentice was one of the biggest successes of branded entertainment. I was unable to get the idea to widely catch on. Oddly enough it wasn’t people rejecting the idea, it was because companies didn’t know how to purchase it. The advertising world is based around the idea of empty space. You buy empty space and place your ad in the empty space. Since branded entertainment is the content there isn’t an empty space to fill with a 30 second spot. The big companies didn’t know which department should handle it. And is the case with most innovations, if its disruptive they ignore it.
We have seen an interim solution with such companies as Revver.com. They tack an ad on the end of videos. So far this is missing the important content targeting to make the ad beneficial to the viewer. Viewers HATE commercials. The post roll approach used by Revver is better than others because the ad is at the end so there is no interruption but advertisers don’t want to pay for something that isn’t seen. There isn’t a strong win-win-win feedback loop.
Patronage and charity are very similar but patronage is more interesting. A patron gains benefit from having the work created. And now that copying and sharing is free groups of people can be patrons of an artist and everyone get a copy of the work. A method of doing this is The Street Performer Protocol. I believe this is the next big innovation, its already being used and I’ll discuss it more in future posts. I’m currently working on a service to make patronage easy and reliable. This will allow consumers to directly fund new movies, books, music, and software that can then be released with a Creative Commons license. No ads, total artistic freedom and consumers choose what is made.
After seeing Zudeo and the ability deliver HD content with an easy to use interface it is one of the outlets we will use for distribution.
Action Items
- Visit Zudeo and try the Azureus client to download high quality video.
- Visit Inagada.com, read about the project and sign up for the newsletter to stay informed of the progress.
Inertia Impedes Innovation
When I see a headline that says, “Diabetes Breakthrough”, I’m intrigued. When the article says diabetes was cured with a very cheap natural occurring substance, I get excited. How about you? A group of Canadian researchers found when capsaicin, the stuff that makes hot chili peppers hot, was injected into the pancreas of mice with Type 1 diabetes caused the pancreas to almost immediately begin producing insulin. Amazing!
The big discovery wasn’t that capsaicin could jump start a pancreas to produce insulin again. The big discovery was the root cause of diabetes is in the nervous system, not the immune system. That could change a lot of medical understanding. We could see some huge medical innovations from this discovery.
Why is this titled “Inertia Impedes Innovation”? Immunologists don’t want to accept the finding. Did they doubt the results? No. Did they question the methods of the study? No. Why don’t they want to accept the finding?
Diabetes has long been thought to be caused by your immune system attacking itself. Immunologists have been studying it for decades, it’s “their disease” They simply refused to change their long held believe. The findings were potentially disruptive to their establishment.
Any innovation is disruptive to someone. Even if the innovation will help the person they must first accept the change. These immunologists supposedly were trying to find a cure for diabetes but when a cure falls into their lap they reject it. Why? They reject the cure because it doesn’t fit their view of the world.
One might argue that the immunologists now face loosing their research grants to cure diabetes. It could also be argued that their specialty could loose prominence if other diseases are found to have neurological roots. And there is some embarrassment from missing such a simple cure.
I don’t believe that the driving force behind their rejection of the discovery is so sinister. I believe most people would be happy to find a simple cheap cure for a seriously debilitating disease. I believe the immunologists are afraid to change their view of the world.
Anyone could see that the immunological basis was wrong. If a problem worsens despite lots of smart people with lots of resources struggling on it for decades while more resources are spent on it, there is a flawed assumption. I call it the Law of Bottomless Pits. If the results get worse as the costs increase then you’re doing the wrong thing.
The corollary to the Law of Bottomless Pits is if the solution doesn’t require less money over time, it’s not really solving the problem. Before you jump all over something that isn’t costing less over time make sure it’s the real cause of the cost. Other hidden problems can act like a parasite driving up the cost; so, don’t be too quick to jump to conclusions. Use the Law of Bottomless Pits to point you in the right direction.
As with any discovery it opens so many new doors. A neurological basis for chronic diseases means a ton of cheap and easy cures could be just around the corner. I’m excited at the potential.
Action Items
- Identify one violator of the Law of Bottom Less Pits, in your organization or society in general.
- Identify a cure that was rejected because it didn’t fit the current belief.
- List ways you could positively respond to a disruption of a strongly held belief.
- Think of a time you resisted changing your believe and how to finally changed.
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