I can lick 30 Tigers today is the story of a young person who determines to take on the world in the form of 30 tigers.  However, upon seeing how many 30 tigers are, one tiger is eliminated because of curly hair.  With each successive iteration of belief of the person’s ability to take on multiple tigers, the number is reduced until finally the person decides to go and have lunch not having taken on the tigers.[1]

At its simplest 30 Tigers is about overconfidence, about taking on too much.  Whittling away the opposition is perhaps the best approach for some tasks.  Each time you find a tiger with some ‘quirk’, you can eliminate it.  It’s an interesting approach to life, and one that I think the traditional media have taken to heart.

You see, there’s all these Pirates[2] out there (not tigers) and they all download music and books and movies and games because they can’t afford to buy them[3] and of course that is money lost by the various industries[4].

Now there’s a number of takes you can make on this.  The Industry[5] has been whittling away opposition (tigers) to changing their business model.  We have the DMCA, DRM and probably heaps of other acronyms that all point to propping up these Industries.  Each on of these acronyms is a response to a tiger that has been dismissed.  It’s Under Control (the tiger, not the acronym).

On the other hand, each user who is being sued could also be positioned as a tiger.  No single tiger can stand up to this Industry. And the Industry keeps dismissing (or suing) single tigers.  And the tigers roll over[6].

What would happen if all the tigers roared together?  Probably not much, because there seems to be a divide and conquer strategy going on.  There’s this blanket strategy of suing whomever is around[7].  It doesn’t matter who (or what) they sue.

But what if we turned it around?  What if we decided that all those new rules and

1. Seuss, D. I can Lick 30 Tigers Today! And Other Stories. Collins, 1969 [↩]
2. And why pirates?  What kid doesn’t like being a Pirate? [↩]
3. There are many reasons why people don’t buy these things and that reason is value, not cost [↩]
4. I along with others think that that money is not made rather than lost, but in a mad digital world, who’s counting?  Oh, yeah, they are. [↩]
5. you know which one I’m talking about [↩]
6. but then, who has the money (or the claws) to fight this Industry? [↩]
7. Even a printer and I wish I had bookmarked that link. [↩]