Web Extra: Super-Distribution Turns Pirates Into Friends - ' Creating Cyber'

Creating Cyber-Salespeople

So you can actually turn file-swappers into cyber-salespeople, boost profits and gain information on those new customers as a result?

That's exactly what I am talking about. All the files that can be shared actually have a way to be tethered to e-commerce, tethered to a commercial relationship. Because the files that are shared today are free, there's no tether to commerce.

How might other companies across other industries use this technology for e-commerce?

Think about it from a corporate communications perspective. If I am able to super-distribute a video presentation that can be tethered to a tracking or audit system internally within my company, I am now able to manage where that content goes. I may be better able to better manage to those who receive the content.

If I send out a broadcast and I don't know where it goes, I may want to be able to tap that recipient with additional follow-up information from that broadcast, but I don't know who they are. So by being able to securely distribute content and track it, it provides for new opportunities. For both businesses as well as those who are distributing to consumers.

That sounds like it gets a little into privacy issues.

Yes, it's part of this whole thing, the ever-evolving policies, especially with privacy and all that kind of stuff. You know, that's what we're all in the middle of. These things may not have been completely reconciled in the digital domain, like how content should be shared, where privacy begins and ends. Privacy is where there needs to be a hand-in-glove relationship with technology and policy.

The way IBM looks at this is very clear. Technology is there as a tool for business and in many cases, technical capabilities get ahead of policy, and that needs to be reconciled, but the purpose is to be subservient to business. And in a case where technology gets ahead of that, you'll notice the pain. With dialogue or discourse associated with violating that policy. And then it has to catch up. We're going through that now, we're all kind of watching it. Ultimately the business needs to drive the technology. Not the other way around.