When Will Control Truly Shift To The Consumer?

For those engaged in the process of empowering consumers, 2012 is already a fascinating year. So it was timely that a bunch of us met at Ctrl Shift's "Explorer's Club" to try to map the timeline for when 'customer relationship management' truly inverts and firms finally acknowledge their customers control them. 

The output of the session is being converted into an 'infographic' that will be available as a reference soon. In the meantime, here's an excellent drawing that Joel Cooper produced during the session to reflect the various themes:

Submission on New Model for Retail Finance

Over on The Fine Print, I've set out both the initial summary and my full submission to the Red Tape Challenge and the BIS Taskforce on Non-bank Finance. I'm very grateful to the colleagues who contributed, as mentioned in the longer document.

Some might say that the alternative finance market is small beer at this point, and it's not worth accommodating them in the regulatory framework. But it's unrealistic to expect alternative business models to thrive amidst the dominance of the banks and while the entire financial system is hard-wired to suit them and other traditional investment vehicles (see the series of articles by Vince Heaney, David Potter and Adriana Nilsson in February's Financial World).

Others might also say that we should wait until the 'winning' business models emerge before figuring out what regulation may need to change. Yet picking winning business ideas is impossible, as Peter Urwin explains in "Self-employment, Small Firms and Enterprise". He has found that, while "entrepreneurship is crucial for economic growth... we have no idea where it will come from - not even in the most general terms."

As a result, the best that we - and government - can do is to ensure "a climate in which enterpreneurship can thrive".

Big Media: Inside The Propaganda Machine

You know something's hokey when the Financial Times, a leading paywall operator, devotes a whole page to the war on content sharing 'online piracy battle' just days after the big set back for SOPA/PIPA. Here's the lead article, snuggled between two stories from the 'front line' ("Parameters shift in online piracy battle" and "Upload websites bar file sharing"):

"Digital revenues set to offset CD fall"

It's then you realise you're inside the propaganda machine for the Big Media faithful:

"Keep sluggin' it out, people! 

Less content sharin' means more money for us!"

Think about that.

Because these are the same institutions who were leeching public money out of New Labour in 2009 for help with copyright enforcement, with tales of 'losing £1bn in music sales in the next 5 years'. Whereas only 3 years later, the FT reports they have this to say:

[Rob Wells, of Universal Music] "Some of those big global subscription players are only playing on a small playing field... As they mature, they are more likely to be bundled with internet service provider or operator subscriptions which is where we start to see real anti-trust investigations scale. The future is looking extremely bright."

"We are going from headwind to tailwind," said Edgar Berger, chief executive at Sony Music International. "There is no question the music industry is going to be in great shape shortly, it will become a growing business again. The internet is a blessing for the music industry."

Big Media is not in the business of solving consumer problems. It's a cabal of institutions out to solve their own problem of how to return to rampant profitability at the captive consumer's expense. And they won't give up trying to stop you sharing content 'til your MP3 player looks like this:

Avoiding The Dire Strait of Retail Banking

So, competition in banking has worsened, according to research cited by the FT this week, and Which? is back on the warpath against "complicated and exorbitant" unauthorised overdraft charges.

Accenture's research found that in 2011 only 11% of customers switched at least one product and only 6% switched their current account - and 90% of us "had no desire to change providers". 

Financial services consultancy Oliver Wyman chipped in with this gem:

"if [banks] made their charging structures completely transparent, no one would want to pay them."

Forrester, the research firm, found that less than 25% of UK customers thought "their bank put their interests above the desire to generate profits."

Yet more reasons for levelling the playing field between banks and alternative finance models.

War On Your Internet Use Rages On

"Get back on the sofa!"

President Obama may have thrown his weight against the latest attempts by the traditional media to outlaw individual people sharing content - the "Stop Online Piracy Act" and "Protect IP Act" (beware moral panic). But history tells us the war ain't over yet. 

As Clay Shirky eloquently explains below, the latest so-called anti-'piracy' bills in the US are Big Media's attempt at a nuclear strike on content sharing after last year's bills misfired and a previous surgical strike missed the target (the Digital Millennium Copyright Act). In short, Big Media won't give up until our computers are as interactive as an analogue TV - "Get back on the sofa!"

We need to care about such US legislation, because it targets US internet services and features that make the internet useful for individual people all over the planet. But this is not just a US problem. In the UK, for instance, we are blessed with our very own Digital Economy Act [crowd cheers]. 

The war on content sharing comes down to two things: political donations and votes. Currently, it's billed as a struggle between internet companies and entertainment businesses. But that analysis ignores the giant individual in the room: a few carefully directed £/$'s and a vote from each of us should ensure that our politicians work hard to protect our right to share. 

 Image from Geek.com.