 Wednesday, June 29, 2005
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Business Week interviews Stanford Law professor Larry Lessig about the implications of the Grokster case which we wrote about on Monday:
Imagine that you're a company with a copyright and you see a company coming out with a technology you don't like because it's challenging your business model. We've seen lots of these -- for example, ReplayTV, or the VCR. Obviously, if the technology is illegal, you can just get it stopped.
But a second way to stop the innovation is just to litigate. Look what happened to ReplayTV: It spent years and millions of dollar litigating to defend its right to have the ReplayTV technology as it was. Essentially, it had to fold the company because the legal standard then was so uncertain that you had to get to trial before you could resolve the case.
I have tremendous respect for Lessig and I think he represents an important viewpoint: he's right when he elsewhere makes the claim that "culture builds upon culture." Still, however, even without Grokster litigation was and is a depressingly common way to slow innovation; conversely, innovation flourishes when people stand to make a buck and know that that buck is at least short-term sustainable.
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My article on the importance of business rules, and how they relate to business processes, is published here.
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