The Commercialization Of the Internet

YorickFinn writes "Common Dreams recently posted an article by Norman Solomon on "Denial and the Ravaging of Cyberspace." In short, Solomon argues that the commonly held view of the net as the last bastion of truly democratic mass communication is, in fact, a myth. For instance, he points out that "Websites operated by just four corporations account for 50.4 percent of the time that U.S. users of the Web are now spending online...." Ultimately, Solomon claims that the net may become more like "interactive digital TV," with the decline in the use of browsers and the increasing prominence of technology such as MTV.(The "M" is for Microsoft, formerly WebTV.) All told, his forecast is somewhat bleak, but not entirely unfounded. Worth the read."

Comments

Re:without it we'd still be in '92

[Genom]

I compare the Internet to a Lord of the Flies situation. Let them be animals and they will be animals. If Americans weren't so blindly protective of "Free Speech", we could regulate it like other information mediums and return to an Internet with CONTENT!
I disagree. Were the US to repeal it's first amendment rights, and regulate speech, who would get the shit end of the stick? The answer is the same people who get the shaft by Congress now. The American people. Corporations make a nice "campaign contribution" and buy whatever laws they want (DMCA, UCITA, etc...) -- whereas the average citizen doesn't have that kind of influence. Who is the Congressman going to side with? The side giving him the cookie, of course. THe only "cookie" his constituents can give him individually is their one vote - which in the grand scheme of things is pretty worthless, seeing as the media conveniently splits things into a 2 party system (forcing 3rd parties out of the picture) and promiting two people who probably aren't really the best ones for the job - but of course, noone knows that because those are the only two choices presented to them before they get to the voting booth. Once there, the see a long list of names -- most of which they've never heard about before (thanks media!) so of *course* they're not going to vote for them.

If Free Speech is regulated, it's not the corporations that will be silenced, and their content removed -- it's the independant sites who will be squelched - because they don't give nice cookies like the X10 people do.

Re:Stupid Users

[Bonker]

There will always be an "underground" on the net for people who want to go there.

I agree totally. While I may occasionally swing by Yahoo to get movie times or AOL/CNN to get world news, the vast majority of my time on the web is spent on 'private' sites. Sure, some of those sites may be hosted on AOL or Geocities, but they are administered by individuals rather than companies.

The vast majority of my packets don't come through HTTP at all, but from Usenet. I suspect that something like this is true for most 'advanced' users. They'll have a P2P client or some other form of unattended 'leech' going, especially now that cable and dsl connections are becoming ubiquitos... for those who haven't been bent over by their cable and DSL companies.
My 'Internet Time' goes roughly like this:

8:00 AM. Read news, see if world is still spinning.

8:02 - 8:30 Read comics like Sinfest, Exploitation Now, and Sluggy Freelance.

8:31 - 5:00 Work, taking frequent breaks to read fanfiction, download MP3's off Usenet, see if Anime News Network has published any thing that will change my world. Take 3-4 breaks a day to see if there's an interesting discussion here. I may check by CNet or ZDNet once a day to see if there's any interesting tech news. This doesn't happen every day.

5:30 - 11:30 Watch Anime Fansubs I've downloaded the night before off Usenet. Maybe game a little. Dinner. Family time. Go to the gym, etc. Almost 0 web browsing.

11:30 - Download headers for anime fansub newsgroups. Pick the episodes I want, start them downloading. These can be anywhere from 50 MB to 3 GB in size. While I sleep, my PC will leech for me.

95 percent of the content I get off the internetis generated by individuals rather than companies.