How Copy Protection Might Stall Technology Innovation

Predictions

from the not-a-happy-prediction dept

For years and years some pundits have been predicting that the Silicon Valley would mimic Detroit. That is, after a big flash of innovation, the tech world would level off and plateau into being a boring industry. That prediction didn’t make a whole lot of sense, because “technology” isn’t a single product industry like “automobiles.” Technology is a component of nearly every other industry, and hasn’t shown many signs of really slowing down at all. So, any similar comparisons always make us skeptical — but, Phil Windley has a very interesting post, bringing up the idea that copy protection systems could be the wedge that stalls out innovation in the technology world. He uses the parallel of the aircraft industry, which had tremendous growth rates early on, but then plateaued with little major changes in a long, long time. The reason wasn’t that the industry reached a natural plateau, but regulation took over — and made more adventurous innovations all but impossible except for those who had a tremendous amount of money (and who were more interested in protecting the status quo). What does that have to do with the tech world? Windley fears that the efforts by Microsoft, Intel and others to build “trusted computing” methods directly into the chips and the operating systems will have the same effect on the tech industry as government regulation had on the aircraft industry. The “hidden costs” will entrench incumbent players and make it nearly impossible to innovate.