Frictionless copying

Two weak signals in one day means something worth noting on the blog:

Firstly, this in the Maker Pro newsletter:

“And if you can’t win by coloring inside the lines, check out this profile of a pseudonymous hustler who identifies up-and-coming crowdfunding campaigns — and then does whatever it takes to beat them to market. We’ve discussed this moral gray area before, but he reportedly netted some $345,000 in just three months.”

And this on Hacker News:

Sellers printing counterfeit books and selling under Amazon’s brand

Both illustrate the risks of depending on someone else’s platform for your business. But more than that they illustrate the dynamics of friction in a system are highly disruptive. Reduce the friction in a process to near zero and suddenly whole kinds of business become unsustainable.