update 5 09 10:
Since publishing this post the argument has been shown to me to already have much wider social application than I anticipated and is already developed in the realm of software patents and business process patents. One of the core qualities of significant social trends are how some core value is reflected upon in a variety of manifestations across a society. In this case it is about shared attitudes toward ownership of ideas as it related to IP, patents, and copyrights. Interestingly, these seemingly separate events are all part of one evolving social trend that can be monitored as such. Established interests in the business realm use an ever more complicated legal process to obfuscate the core public need: ever increasing utilization of good ideas to produce incremental innovation. The problem is how ideas have become protected like patents on machines and drugs once were. The age of digital innovation is ground zero for all these concerns and is subject the the era of Choice. The greater social good in the era of Choice is about being more connected using high quality ideas and whether or not ideas can be owned the same way a unique manufacture process has been protected by patents. So the perishability of content is about the ownership of ideas in the same way that we eventually decided that ranch owners ultimately were forced to erect fences to protect grazing for their cattle. This is not esoteric if you produce daily news content in any modality, if you write software, and these day if you use math to produce a business process. The following video link is 28 minutes and shines a bright light on how individual interests are using our legal system to protect ideas that cost prevent from becoming more efficient in order to capture value for a single enterprise. From a very broad social standpoint, businesses are tools created by people to deliver value to markets of people. That is their role and responsibility. Over time the social fundamentals have evolved so that our laws are working harder for business interests that for the markets they serve. That is the current state of this trending process.
If space allowed (it does not) I could offer an esoteric discussion of how different portions of large social trends are seen to have phases that can be identified and how this phase of this particular trend is clearly nearing social exhaustion and typically this produces circumstances where the fundamental issues are out of balance with the greater public good. This is exactly why I am writing about this topic here. Viacom v. Google (You Tube) is a side show to this larger social trending process.
Even if you have no interest in the legal process surrounding tech issues, this video will offer insight to how this late stage trending is choking value off from the larger social need that the era of Choice is endeavoring to revive. Large and important social trends have at their core very simple social values that can be seen to swing from one polar extreme to the other. This will take a while (as in several years more at least) but the value in identifying this now is precisely because social values sometimes change much more quickly than at other times. We are approaching one of those periods now. Expect change because it is needed and the social motivation to produce that change is based on need and noting less (like politics etc). This trending issue is a reflection of one important aspect of social need that surrounds the industrial revolution of media.
video link: Patent Absurdity
Original publish date: 4 08 10
Viacom's lawsuit of Google's You Tube over copyright protection issues is a major social issue but so far most people see it only as one business fighting another business in court, so they dismiss it.
That's really too bad.
The implications of any decisive action will affect all Americans, and especially the youngest & brightest from focusing on what really matters most...incremental innovation.
Even though the long term outlook is more predictable (generationally), the shorter iterations will change how content companies do business and how Americans, ultimately, make progress in these challenging times. How we value things (our shared values related to information) is changing and more than ever the spotlight is being cast upon the behavior of newly competitive enterprises and the generational divide. This case matters to everyone because we are redrawing the official boundaries of acceptable behavior (as reflected by actual changing behavior). It is not everyday we re-write (or redefine) a social contract. It is worth a little reflection that goes beyond the demands of the quarterly earnings of over-leveraged companies.
If this introduction sounds like editorial, I encourage you to read through to the end.
