Dec
16
Metadata Memento Mori
Filed Under B2B, Blog, data protection, Education, Financial services, healthcare, Industry Analysis, internet, news media, Publishing, Uncategorized, Workflow | 1 Comment
Content was once valuable. Then content about content, the metadata that identifies our content values and made them accessible, became a greater and more powerful value. Soon we stood at the edge of a universe where no searching would take place which did not involve machine interrogation of metadata. We evolved ever more complex systems of symbology to ensure that customers who used our content were locked into accepting our view of the content universe by virtue of accepting our coding and metadata, and using it in relation to third party content. Further, we passed into European law, in terms of the provisions of the so-called directive on the legal protection of databases, the notion that our metadata was itself a protectable database. Now content is less valuable, more commoditized, and inevitably widely copied. So it is our fall back position that our metadata contains the unique intellectual property and as long as we still have that in a place of safety we are secure. And can sleep easily in our beds.
Until the day before yesterday, that is. For on the 14 December the European Union’s Official Journal published a settlement offer from Thomson Reuters in an competition enquiry which has run for two years (http://eur-lex.europa.eu/LexUriServ/LexUriServ.do?uri=OJ:C:2011:364:0021:0024:EN:PDF) The case concerns Thomson Reuters’ use of its RICs codes. Insofar as they have become the standard way in which traded equities are described in datafeeds, the fact that the market bought the Reuters solution as a surrogate for standardization did give Thomson Reuters competitive advantage – and this is made clear by the fact that the Commission investigation was prompted by its commercial rivals. But that advantage was not unearnt, and the standardization that resulted from it brought benefits across the market. Now Thomson Reuters, to end the process, offers licensing deals and increased access to its metadata. This may turn out to be a momentous moment for the industry.
I have no interest here in examining whether Thomson Reuters are right or wrong to seek a deal. From Microsoft to Google to Apple, the frustrations of enquiries by the competition commissioner’s office in Brussels have worn down the best and most resilient. But I do want to comment om what may be happening here. If you accept my thesis that content is becoming increasingly commoditized and that systems for describing it are increasingly valuable, we may have to recalibrate our picture of what is happening as a result of this news. What if, in fact, the commoditization involved here spreads slowly up the entire information value chain over time. In this model, the famous value pyramid which we have all used to subjugate our audiences and colleagues is under commoditization water at its base, which is where raw data and published works are kept. Now the next level is becoming slightly damp from this rising tide, as descriptive modalities get prised off and become part of the common property of all information users. So information vendors scramble further up the pyramid, seeking dry land where ownership can be re-asserted. Maybe more advanced metadata will offer protection and enhance asset value. The Scorm dataset in an educational product can annotate learning outcomes and allow objects and assessment to be associated. Or, following the financial services theme here, maybe we add Celerity-style intelligence to content which allows a news release to be “read” in machine-to-machine dialogue, and trading actions sparked by the understanding created. We will certainly do all these things, because no one will buy our services if they do not accord with the most appropriate descriptive norms available. But will they protect our intellectual property in conent or data? No, I am increasingly afraid that they will not.
It will take many years to happen. And it will happen at a very different pace in different marketplaces. But the days when you valued a company by its content IP, by its copyrights and its unique ownership value have been over for some time. And now we can see that the higher order values are themselves becoming susceptible to competition regulation which seems, in this age, to over-ride IP rights in every instance. So what are we actually doing when we say we are building value? Normally, it seems to me, we are combining content with operational software systems to create value represented by utility. From the app to the workflow system, content retains its importance in the network because we shape it not just for research, but for action, for process, for communication. And that, after all, is where the definition of a networked society with a networked economy lies.
And if we were in doubt about this, reflect on the current pre-occupation about Big Data. Is our society going to be willing to hold up the vital release of “new” scientific knowledge from the ossified files of journal publishers just because some of this stuff is owned by Elsevier and some by Wiley? The water of analytic progress is already flowing around the dams of copyright ownership, and this week surged past a major player protecting his coding, though the proposed licensing scheme does leave a finger in the hole in the dyke. We seem to me to be running at ever greater speed towards a service economy in professional information where the only sustaining value is the customer appreciation of service given, measured in terms of productivity, process improvement, and compliance . These benefits will be created from content largely available on the open web, and increasingly using metadata standards which have gone generic and are now, like RICs, part of the common parlance of the networked marketplace. The language of IP in he information economy is getting to sound a bit old-fashioned.
Dec
10
Political Potpourri
Filed Under Blog, data protection, Education, healthcare, Industry Analysis, internet, Pearson, privacy, Publishing, STM, Uncategorized | Leave a Comment
When I want to write about innovation a political agenda looms. When I write about what the politicians are doing to the information industry I find it is so deeply unsatisfying and depressing that I am forced back onto descriptions of industry self-survivalism! But at times there is no choice: politics is a burden we all have to bear, and we in the UK bear a particularly heavy burden at the moment. Unless you have been sheltering in an igloo in Lapland awaiting Father Christmas, you cannot have failed to hear something of Britain’s latest Euro Row, which hit gale force this week with the ferocity of the storms that hit Scotland and generated 165 mph winds and set wind turbines alight. The political equivalent of this was a British Prime Minister using his veto in a European Summit and ending up in a minority of four, which is likely to diminish to one.
Why is this in the least interest of the information industry? While Mr Cameron acted in order to prevent his coalition from breaking down and splits developing in his own party, his ostensible reason was to prevent the European Union passing laws disadvantageous to the city of London. Financial services are 10% of UK GDP. They must be protected as the key to success in Europe. Yet, as Lionel Barber, Editor of the Financial Times, notes in his editorial this morning, there is nothing to prevent the 26members of the Union who will now get together in tighter conclave on budget, tax and trading matters to pass laws which discriminate against City interests, as long as those laws do not infringe the current regulation of the greater community of which the UK is still a member. The Prime Minister is claiming victory: he should take care. Every British victory in Europe since 1815 has been followed by Britain losing the peace.
And have a care too in more domestic matters. The junior Business minister, David “Two Brains” Willetts, supported a leadership speech on the importance of the British role in Big Pharma by undertaking to secure, despite lively public protests, the release of anonymized datasets covering diagnostic and prescription practice in the NHS, still the world’s largest health service. Yet he appears to forget that it is impossible to do this unilaterally. Not only are the major pharma players global titans, but providing UK-based players like GSK with information denied to their German or French rivals would be a state aid, or at least a restraint of trade, condemning UK government to the dock in the courtrooms of that very alliance whose powers they have recently been diminishing. And do these data and their availability do anything to promote employment in research labs in the UK? Nothing at all: we are missing the point about a networked economy if we think otherwise.
Elsewhere in the deeply paranoid British civil service, we continued last week in the hugely entertaining game of finding the pea under the information walnut shells. Having declared a Public Data Corporation to trade government-created content with the private sector, public consultations have led to real divisions about what this superstructure is meant to achieve. Local government and SOCITM, the public sector IT professionals, clearly read the intent rather than the effect of the proposals; This is an effort to frustrate the privatization of the UK Land Registry, Ordnance Survey and Met Office by regulatory obfuscation – and it is working splendidly well. Meanwhile, a near meaningless consultation on MiData – a government plan for re-regulating identity protection – has created a panel of private sector players, including Google and the real villains (energy utilities, high street banks) to give consumers more assurance that their identity information is not being grossly misused. The government’s seriousness on this topic is underlined by the size of their budget of £10m ($15m)!
Finally, the week ended with the revelation that school examination boards regularly brief teachers, in seminars paid for by schools, on what the upcoming examination is likely to cover. This is apparently scandalous, as if the huge National Curriculum requirement could ever be fully examined without giving hundreds of question options in the exam papers. What is the purpose of the examination if it is not to test what has been taught? As a result, several examiners have been suspended for cheating, several inquiries have been set in train, and the interesting idea flated that all the examination boards should be combined, and then privatized (since they would then be easier to regulate, fine, and would face regular contract renewal. Pearson already own one board. And ETS formerly held the SATS marking contract but lost it after an equally unilluminating controversy about performance. Change in outcomes then may not be a direct result of the causes of concern.
Apart from which little happened in information market politics last week. Back to innovation next week, with a sigh of relief.
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