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Commercialization Of The Internet
Anonymous Coward writes "For those anti-corporate tech-heads out there, Excite is running an article about how companies are taking over the net through the use of the courts, trademarks and deep pockets.
From the article, 'Big corporations have a significant and growing presence on the Internet. In March, just 14 companies controlled 60 percent of users' online time, down from 110 companies two years earlier, Jupiter Media Metrix found.'
A final thought from the article,
'This is the last remaining communications medium that allows the small person to participate,' said Barbara Simons, past president of the Association for Computing Machinery. 'To lose that would be a great tragedy.'"
In even the fairly recent "past" (1994?) was how any jow schmoe with some university webspace was on equal footing with a multinational. Not anymore. Granted, the net has a lot more USE now, I mean, its more than just a passion for tech oriented young men, but we've lost the edge we once had. I'm sure everyone knows this, and I will get modded redundant, but who cares. I want the old school URL's back. Shit like www.university.edu/physicsdep/387434/2w0843273/geo rge.html
The reason why 14 companies control that much of the Internet access today is the fact these are the companies that have survived and have the resources to support large numbers of users connecting to the Internet.
What's very interesting is many of these companies own the means to connect to the Internet (DSL/cable connections) or own the backbone of communications lines used for Internet traffic.
They say sex is a virus that infects every other endeavor.
Sounds like there's another.
"Win treats sysadmins better than users. Mac treats users better than sysadmins. Linux treats everyone like sysadmins."
i love em
t or e.pl?user_action=detail&catalogno=HL110
https://store.theonion.com/cgi-bin/edatcat/EDCs
For example, Amazon as a retailer has to compete with every other bookshop on the onternet - this competition is good, and keeps prices down. Low proces allow poorer people to buy. The digital nature of amazon means that anyone can work for it anywhere in the world (excluding the manual work in the warehouses). This is a democratic, meritocratic process.
As for the effect on the internet itself, well, look at all the services available - hotmail, msn, aol, yahoo, cnn, bbc, these are the bread and butter of the internet.
But most importantly, the Internet prior to commercialisation was an ivory tower. It was exclusive and exclusing. It has been the commercial companies that have pushed it out into the mainstream and made it a resource accessible by everyone - much to the chagrin of the Internet 'old timers', who still contemptiously sneer at AOLers and such 'low life'.
Moaning about commercialisation of the internet is just a front for elitist snobbery, for wanting the old, university and academic dominated internet back, for people who want to exclude the majority.
This hypocrisy must not be tolerated.
You may be annoyed that the sort of internet *you* like is no longer mainstream, and is relegated to dusty old newsgroups and places like slashdot, but that's just tough; don't try and exclude the majority under the pretense of 'stopping commercialism', the only great force of equality known to man, Capitalism.
I have been in the Digirati for 15 years, but as an artiste, not a programmer or sysadmin, and it has always dismayed me how the mainstream 'hacker' opinion is so exclusionary, and hypocritical.
Now that this culture is finally a tiny majority on the internet, it seems to view itself as persecuted by commercialism, which (in a small sense), it is, as it has been sidelined.
But creating this anticommercial, anticapitalist, antiequality and antiegalitarean agenda will only lead to tears.
Wake up!
It's because the other 96 went out of business...
Should such an overtaking of the internet happen, there is always the going back to building our own. And come to think of it, it'd probably cause some innovation to happen. You know making things streamline and faster, no ads... etc..
So how would we replace the university backbones that began the internet?
Hasn't there already been some efforts in this direction?
Do we have to be concerned about anti-ad-free networks or laws banning such?
GNU/Linux/GPL began a direction of user/consumer options. How might this play out with
commercial free internet?
Should we begin now or push more for commercial free networks, or wait?
This kind of proprietary technology is one more way corporations are attempting to control the internet. They move from open standards to ones they design. I am surprised that it was not mentioned in the article, for if Microsoft is successful with .NET, we will be forced to use their proprietary technology to access resources that previously were open (as they recently did with the msn gaming zone and has been done for a while with hotmail, etc.) Though most sites that use .NET and passport are MS sites, if it spreads beyond that...::shudders::
Remember, there were no nuclear weapons before women were allowed to vote.
People need to see beyond the Web; it may be the primary medium you look through when you open up Internet Explorer, but it's primacy is being quickly supplanted by new distributed technologies. Articles such as this are terribly short-sighted.
"The problem with the French is that they don't have a word for 'entrepeneur'." -George W. Bush
I manage a non-profit site geared toward people interested in the TI-89, a Texas Instruments graphing calculator, at www.ti-89.org. I do not have any illegal material there, and I clearly state that I am not in any way related to TI in my disclaimer. My website is simply a fansite that promotes interest in the TI-89, and in the message boards I've noticed that it has influenced several people into buying TI-89s.
This did not prevent them from sending me a letter threatening lawsuit if I did not sign an trademark "license" with them for the use of the letters T and I, placed consecutively. The letter stated that it was their trademark and that I would have to remove it or face lawsuit. They also wanted me to turn over the domain name as well, and the license they sent me was extremely restrictive.
I refused to agree with this agreement because it said that I couldn't say any negative things about TI or any of their products and had several other clauses restricting what I could say. I felt that this was censorship, and even though I haven't put anything negative about TI on my site, I didn't want my opinion to be biased toward them.
Anyway, that was the last I've heard from them (for now, at least). My site remains, and with over 100,000 visits it surely generates interest in TI's products, generating revenue for them. Luckily, they probably came to the conclusion that such a fansite was probably more beneficial to them than detrimental, and that sending threating letters wouldn't accomplish anything. If they decide to threaten me again about this, though, I might choose to simply remove my site, and thus the interest it generates for them, from the Internet. I simply do not have as deep pockets as they do and could not afford a lawsuit.
Then again, perhaps they were just sending me a form letter. I once received a letter from someone asking for advice about what to do, since Dell threatened him about his domain name, which had the word Dell in it. Consequently, Dell was his last name, and he had just as legitimate a right to the domain name as they did (even more legitimate, in fact, since he registered it first); they probably just chose to send out a form letter to all domain names with the word Dell in it.
"I have not failed. I've simply found 10,000 ways that won't work." --Thomas Edison
Meanwhile, the busiest sites are increasingly run by a handful of companies, giving them greater ability to control what users read, view and say. By running the message boards and chat rooms, such sites can delete unpopular viewpoints or reveal identities of anonymous critics
Now would be a great time to just shrug your shoulders and refuse to contribute to a world where you have no place.
The only freedom we have left is the freedom not to condone, encourage, or participate.
Until there is freedom, let there be silence
http://cincyboys.blogspot.com/ Everything Cincinnati. Including the word 'Finnih'
I agree that commercialization of the net can generally be bad. (More spam for everybody).
But at the same time, it's good to know that there are alternatives to all the commercialism on the web. What we need to be fighting for is to ensure that the open protocols of the net remain open, and that I don't have to have a Passport/Sun doohicky to buy a book if I don't need it.
Come to think of it, I rarely browse commercial sites unless I am looking for something. Commercialism tends to be counter to what the internet was ideally supposed to be, a repository for information.
Ever notice how stories on Yahoo, ZDNet, MSNBC and others mention things, but really never provide links to anything that they are talking about? That's because some marketing moron decided that it's best to 'lock in' a surfer to their specific 'content channel'. I say screw that. Link the hell out of everything and let the content stand on its own.
exactly. most of the "joe shmoe" venues vanished because they couldn't pay their bills. when you can't make payroll or pay for your bandwidth you also go away (not just when a behemoth buys you).
it's not the fact that big corporations have taken over the net so much as they're the ones who have survived the recession. the lawsuits aren't so much a result of their new power as the increased attention they're paying to the net. six years ago if you told fox that someone has a web page with screenshots from one of their shows they probably wouldn't have known what you were talking about, and now they do (and care).
frankly i think the net is as democratic now as ever, just in a new way. i no longer have to rely on tripod or xoom or the globe or whoever else has gone out of business: i can set up my own webserver under my own domain on my home dsl to voice my opinions (try doing THAT six years ago).
"Mister Potato-head --MISTER POTATO-HEAD! Backdoors are not secrets!" (War Games, 1983)
Either commercial interests will have to learn to live in balance with the public network or risk losing their customers. If they squeeze too hard, the smart ones move on.
"The great thing about multitasking is that several things can go wrong at once." -me
Corporations care a lot about the legal process. They write letters and checks to their congresscritters. Do you really wonder why corporation-favouring legislation keeps getting passed?
If you don't like it, change the system. For example, make it hard for corporations to give money to congresscritters. Make it hard for corporations to use the legal system.
Ever thought how different things would be if having a corporation not only protected the founders from liability, but also limited their rights use the legal system? Say a special clause where if a corporation loses a case against an individual, that it has to pay 10x legal charges plus 5x the individual's normal yearly salary plus another two years of the individual's legal expenses in any case the individual decides to start?
Hmmmm...
fifth sigma, inc.
Companies cant control the internet! thats whats so great about it. the little man has as much of a voice as the big companies. it just all depends what people like. and with more projects like linux and other open source projects, we're taking the mic away from the big greedy companies and giving it back to the people...... quit whining and do something about it.
I think this is more or less due to the growth of media companies in recent years. Obviously the merger of time warner ( a huge media company) and aol (a huge online company) would bring media companies deeper into the internet. The internet is a worldwide platform and the supreme market for any media empire.
GoatPigSheep, the 3 most important food groups
The problem here is what? If every Joe-Schmoe or Maw-and-Paw-start-upcompany was as good as the larger companies than 60 percent of the net wouldn't be controlled by said companies. Obviously the larger the organization, the better job it can do establishing a net presence and the better it can handle the traffic once it establishes that presence. I don't see how this is a problem. Or newsworthy.
The commercial content is really just another variety of information. Not "counter" to anything.
We'll see some other medium come in and people will move to that. What has happened here is the the Internet has truly been commercialized and industrialized. The 60 companies will go down to the Mighty 10 or Big 5 and will fall under a banner name much like the RIAA or MPAA. Capitalism works that way.
What makes the Internet interesting is that it Spans the globe and is mostly universal. This universality is what will make it follow different rules. Note that it is expected that in about 5 years or less, Chinese sites are thought to be the most prevalent sites (and the language too) on the internet. This is a market that the current 60 companies are not necessarily fighting for and without that and with the multiple cultures out there, who knows what will happen. Companies will take longer to buy eachother out and different trade systems in different cultures will add a little bit of spice to the dish. Who knows, the Internet might infact split up or another better medium might show up making all this pointless. Such is life...
- Snowbeam
I am Lord Snowbeam. Heed my call!
We have the National Science Foundation to thank for allowing commercial traffic across what was then known as NSFNET in 1991. Does it really come as a surprise to anyone (especially the ACM) what has come to pass? There will be no undoing the deed that's been done.
Not even Internet2 is safe from rampant commercialism, as is evidenced here.
But isn't this also the first communications medium that allows the small person to participate? (Other than largely ineffective channels such as pamphlets and megaphones.) Maybe things are just returning to the way they were prior to 1994.
Figuring that "In March, just 14 companies controlled 60 percent of users' online time, down from 110 companies two years earlier" and that those also-rans either were bought or went out of business, is it just be or does anyone else find it ironic that Excite, of the Excite@Home group, is running this story?
forma3
Access to the Internet should be federalized and regulated like the utilities - freely available to anyone who has the equipment to connect. Yes, our tax dollars should fund it - then free speech would be safe from the corporate interests.
The society for a thought-free internet welcomes you.
There's no two ways about it: the Internet must become commercialized.
Not because we, the joe-blow users of the Internet want it commercialized. Rather, because it is the biggest threat to the mediacracy since the invention of the printing press.
And what makes the Internet even more threatening than the press is that the actual publishing is as good as cost-free. At least with paper, you have the overhead of layout, paper, and shipping. With the net, you have the overhead of... nothing.
The media conglomerates simply aren't going to allow that. They can't afford to.
And I believe the government isn't particularly happy about it, either. If you care to dig, you can get all sorts of truthful information about the bad-ass things our governments and corporations are doing.
An information-empowered people are a dangerous people: they know things they shouldn't, they can coordinate too easily, and they get smarter.
Between the media conglomerates and the government, you damn well bet that the glory days are over!
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
What about Internet2? Wasn't that supposed to be an alternative to the current, overloaded, commercialized Internet? I've heard about it before, but I don't see much else in the news or online. I'm guessing they're trying to keep it to only major universities and scientific organizations. That way, it will remain commercial-free.
I remember just five years ago, when I was 14 and first getting onto the Internet, the extent of advertising I saw was the mandated GeoCities ad I was forced to put at the bottom of my pages there. It was "This page is hosted by GeoCities. Get your own Free Home Page." And there was the Internet Link Exchange, which I thought was a well-intentioned, legitimate enterprise. And that was about it.
Now we've got this pop-up window crap, x10 ads everywhere, pop-under windows, banner ads, and renegade JavaScript and ActiveX which create bookmarks for you (another reason I use Netscape and Mozilla). And it sucks. Hell, I'd go back to 28.8 dial-up access from my cable connection just to have a simpler Web without ads. Well, maybe I wouldn't go that far :-P
www.tealeaves.org "All you need is love." -
As she logs on thru MSN and checks her tech stocks of Yahoo, and Excite ( they're not doing so well)
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Am I the only one to suspect this is going to happen? I think the web is destined to die nearly completely due to its business model (or rather lack thereof). Content dies as it gains popularity, in a complete reversal from other media. Only content that is fairly "unpopular" survives. Its almost darwinian natural selection, the web breeds media that avoids detection. I think within another five years or so the web will be completely commercial, this will be accompanied by a peak, and then decline of web use. This is not to say I think the internet will die, quite the contrary, I think we'll probably see a resurgence of usenet and other systems. Just my two cents
You have to wonder how much of the problem revolves around the migration of a large group of people onto the Net who don't appreciate the free, communitarian culture they were entering.
While reading the article, I was reminded of the big bust-up that occured when Paramount went after all the unofficial Star Trek fansites prior to establishing its own official site. The community of Trek fansites had a lot in common with the early community of the Net as a whole (probably because a lot of our founding non-gender-biased parental figures were Trekkies themselves), it was cohesive, well-connected and had a sense of the common ideal of the free flow of information. These qualities allowed it to collectively "take offense" at what Paramount was doing, with the result that Paramount did permanent damage to the Star Trek franchise.
These days, it seems that the various communities online are a lot more internally isolated and aren't aware of the proud heritage they inherit, with the effect that whenever there's a corporate crackdown on a single fansite, there's no way for the community to which that site belongs to find out and react as a whole.
Perhaps we should start establishing community ISPs that provide cheap, high-quality access (on the back of inexpensive or volunteer labour) to the masses and distribute with each new account some material about the early history and ideals of the Internet, a sort of "online civics" course to indoctrinate the masses. I'd work for one.
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Sorry, but media concentration is still a reality and it is getting worse, despite the blooming of many alternatives. I agree that Chomksy and other Left media critics are wrong when they apply this criticism to the Internet, but when it comes to newspapers, radio, and TV, there are only a few companies that own everything. Radio is the worst of the bunch, with 3 corporations owning pretty much all of the airwaves.
I'm also sorry that you find Chomsky to be a crackpot. You are entitled to you ignorant opinion, but Chomsky is well respected around the world. He appears on TV stations in other countries, yet is shut completely off of American TV.
This story about a few corporations controlling the Internet is just another PR stunt from Jupiter Research. Cyber-pundits have been proclaiming the takeover of the Internet by corporations for years--if anything, the situation has improved with the shakeout of all the crappy dot-coms.
The Jupiter Research survey is also fundamentally dishonest: not every surfer going to the "popular websites" is going TO that website. More often than not, they are seeking content created by people whose content is hosted on that website. Corporations like Yahoo have tried to censor and discourage controversial content (like the adult communities) with the result that people go elsewhere.
ah, yes.. but you, me, or anybody who reads /. is not a normal internet user
the normal user is (sad to say )a damn soccer mom using aol, shopping at amazon, and logging on to bigbrother.com for 30 bucks a month
its sad, but its the truth. and until the general public is informed that there are alternatives to the bullshit thats advertised the most, it wont change.
I didn't think it was physically possible, but this both sucks and blows - Bart Simpson
Wait a minute. Slow down a sec. Hold up.
So what you're telling me here, is that money equals power?
Holy shit, does someone have a pencil I can borrow?! I need to write this down!
------
Today's Top Deals
The reason why the big companies are taking over is because people
dont know of anything else to go to.
The average user only knows of the big name sites
from TV and etc.. This isnt surprising
Kick ass website dancclark
Help pay for my wedding! Go to my kickass website
I have found many communications mediums that allow the small person to be active.
1. Tin-Can to Tin-Can, AKA PPPOTC
2. Copy machine to street corner
3. Projection on laser tracked white balloon
4. Soap Box
5. Spray paint on large wall
6. RFC 2549
7. Bumper sticker
I could come up with others but that's just what I found on the top of my head.
Granted numbers 2, 3, 5, & 7 allow for only one way data transmission but that still leaves 3 bi-directional methods for use by the little people.
Ascii artist &
The problem is the people who are on the net, as time goes by more and more of the packets on the net are going to be between buisnesses and between john q public who is going on that "internet thing" to buy something or check his stock quotes. Consolidation happens and what do you see? 99% of people go to B&N or Amazon to buy a book, it is the same for all other industries. The reason there are only 60 now and were 110 before is because 50 of them were probobly dot.com bombs and are now gone. Right now the vast majority of people on the internet either think AOL is the interent or just go on it like they sit and watch TV. It means nothing to them. They don't care about the culture behind it's formation and don't care if it fades away.
The one nice thing is that no matter how many corporations gobble up bandwith without a major change of the infastructure, all us geeks are still free to do what we like.
So this isn't bad news. It's just the natural motion in capitolism.
It's not the OS it's the user that sucks. If it's user friendly, you get stupider people. - clinko
Chomsky is well respected around the world by whom? Only by his likes, the same crackpots.
Chomsky is a kind of Pavlov's dog: if this is something originated in USA, it must be bad.
M$ zealots and shills: if you are actually responding to this seriously, substitute tech iq for iq, and shut up.
My, what well thought out, enlightening discussion....
Why?
Just shoot all the lawyers!
It's not really a suprise that ownership pool of webviews has shrunk. Essentially, only the largest corporations still have money to throw away. It's not as if *anyone* is making money off the internet. Basically, everyone involved is taking a bath, from the connection providers to the content providers. (Yea, yea, a few people took the money and ran, but I'm talking about making a profit, not suckering investors.)
Only a large company still has money to throw down the drain into supplying cheap bandwidth and free (okay advertiser supported) web sites in the hopes that some day, this will magically make money.
The last few years has, in my opinion, seen the largest transfer of money from investors to customers (in the form of below cost services) in the history of commerce. No suprise only the wealthy can afford to continue giving away money to their customers.
I tried to classify your species, and came to realize that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet, instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with its surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply. You multiply until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern - do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet - you're a plague.
Dontcha just love how this article infers that corporate involvement is directly synonymous with a loss of personal freedom?
With companies, as with government, we all boo and hiss them to death because they make nice targets. Its a constantly renewable whine of "They take money from us!!!" or "They're trying to take my freedom away!!" when in reality, both institutions are providing you with services you both want, and need.
You pay taxes so you dont have to drive on a Fred Flintstone road in an unsafe car designed by 9 year olds. You pay your phone bill because youre tired of going down to the Western Union office and sending a telegram whenever you want to say hi to your folks or see if your girlfriend wants to go to dinner.
The government, and corporations, are made up of you and I. They are not unthinking, uncaring robots that kidnap old people, puree them in a big blender, and sell them back to you as baby food. For example, I used to work for IBM. Big Blue. Perhaps the single largest corporate entity in the world. Did a big black raincloud show up on your radar because of it? With the money I earned, I was able to buy a nice ring for my girlfriend, move to a better neighborhood, get a better/nicer car, and actually sleep at night without freaking out when it comes to bills and rent. Many of you do the same thing...So if you think companies or governments are evil, doesn't that make you evil by definition? After all, you're 1/600,000th of IBM, or 1/350,000th of Hewlett-Packard, or 1/4th of VA Linux Super Research Mario Systems World Software Boy Storage Forge.
Think. Then react. Not the other way around.
Cheers,
Bowie J. Poag
Even though MSYAHOL has captured 60% of the Web's audience, this doesn't mean that the audience of the "weird" sites has grown smaller. I'm quite sure that while their "market share" has decreased, the actual numbers have increased.
That's exactly how I still code HTML to this day.
:-)
{ShamelessPlug}
Check out www.osxadm.com. I haven't put any real content up yet, but the HTML forms are done.
The only difference between my pages in 1997 and today is that I use a BGCOLOR="#FFFFFF" tag now.
I wouldn't be surprised if somewhere in the boardrooms of the world there are people who would like nothing better than to have the internet regulated to the point where you need to be licensed to operate a website... The Australian government looked at doing this to anyone in Australia who wanted to stream video over the net but then backed down - for now, anyway.
I don't believe it will ever happen, I don't think anyone would ever even suggest it publicly; but the biggest thorn in these companies sides seem to be the public's unwillingness to stay in the officially sanctioned "walled gardens" they have set-up, and you can be sure that somewhere there's a few rich old white men who daydream about walling off the whole damn thing and turning the entire internet into a kind of SuperAOL...
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Isn't The Rest Of The Web Still There?
There are still .EDUs. Most ISPs give out 10 free megs or more. If you have broadband and you don't upstream too much, you can run a server. If your project is software, you can host it on places like SourceForge. If your project is the least bit interesting, you can probably find someone who will host it for nothing.
There is still plenty of room for the Internet as it used to be: Obscure, intellectual and hostile.
Just because there is a WalMart in the suburbs doesn't mean there isn't a coffeehouse in the city. Just because everybody else drinks Starbucks mocha, doesn't mean you can't drink home-brewed kombucha from a thermos.
The old culture is still there. Those who want it will always seek it out. Yes, it is no longer the brightest star in the sky. Maybe the other stars are as bright as the Sun, drowning things out; but there will always be people who surf above the atmosphere, in the blackness of space.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
...it looks like you've just been slashdotted!
You're using her as bait, Master!
...and it would be a lot faster and better than the commercialized original. Don't worry about this faux corporate takeover. (In reality there was always a corporate core, only the identities have changed.)
What matters about the Net is the information metaphor, not its first-cut instantiation. Companies and lawyers (and Slashdot) are obsessing over DNS, hyperlinks and other things that will be bonus trivia answers in 20 years.
When we need the OtherNet we will have it running in a month. Until then, keep learning and diversifying.
Isn't it a tad bit hypocritical to criticize companys like AOL for owning so much of the traffic when this is what VA has done with your site? The way I see it is that the consolidation has kept many organizations alive that wouldn't be otherwise. And just because they are owned by the a larger company mean that they lack journalistic integrity? Freshmeat, News Forge, Slashdot, Source Forge and Themes.org used to be independent before being bought by VA. Would they still be around now without being bought? Maybe, but I doubt it considering the advertising shake up. The control has not be gained from nefarious means, just out of survival.
Absolutely. The reason people are spending time at a smaller number of sites is because those sites are improving their service and quality so as to attract more people. These sites are simply out-competing others for online viewers. It means the web is getting better, not worse.
I still see plenty of room for the little guy, you know.
Geocities, EZBoards, USENET, email, listservs, Slashdot, Pathfinder discussion boards...
EZBoards is the only site I know of that actually filters your words, and that differs from moderator to moderator (turns swear words into #$%@! style expressions).
Every one of the other ones has allowed me to use profanity and yell anti-establishment slogans. Hell, if terrorists can communicate to each other in library terminals, you know big brother isn't going to bother little ol' you.
-------------------------------------------------
charlton heston is more of a man than yo
you name it. people are as free as they want to be. if they are not free, they are not, because they believe in the propaganda the big companies are spilling over them. it works like a self-fullfilling prophecy. somebody says "14 companies are controlling you". in the moment you say "oh, how horrible!", he is right, but if you say "no, they aren't" then they aren't. so, maybe the 100 richest families in the world are controlling world economy, BUT they are NOT controlling the people. people have to understand that. malana
Hasn't anyone found it ironic that the article is hosted on excite.com?
I am a genius; therefore, you suck.
The next thing you know there will be .com domains and shit, then there will be a http://www.joltcola.com commercial cola website, then http://www.sex.com throbbing, pulsating porn sites, then people will be selling softwear! ohmygawd! or they will be selling cars and trucks and guns!!! then it will be drugs of all sorts!!! after tha there will be http://www.wired.com and http://www.2600.com just giving information away like harlets!!! then there will be other places that use the sacred internet for gabling!!! the next thing you know, people will be setting up swap meets on USENET (oops, wasn't that BEFORE the first web page?) and then spammers will begin culling EAs from every corner!!!
OH THE HUMAITY!!!
yawn, thanks for the hot tip and this stupid story looks familiar too
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
about Jesse James, his father in-law I believe ran a newspaper and ran an editorial every now and then starting with the phrase "If we are ever going to have law and order in the West...".
This one time he said "If we are ever going to have law and order in the West, the first thing we need to do is take all lawyers and shoot them down like dogs"
You gotta love the last line in that article:
Copyright 2001 Associated Press. All right reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed.
That alone makes more of a point than the entirity of the article itself.
*sigh*
If you're a zombie and you know it, bite your friend!
Oh yes, "techs" are so isolationist and xenophobic. God forbid anyone bother to learn how to use the tools they're given.
What always gets me are studies done on web site use, showing that people are more and more frequently going to more commercial sites. Of course! When was the last time you went to a person homepage? What sort of ratio is this compared to places like Slashdot and CNN.com?
The web being the ideal "person to person" communication device is obviously incorrect. The telephone does a better job that the web. Various chats do a much better job than the web, and they have been around longer than the web. Email is another great example.
- (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman
And at the end of the article, we find this gem:
It's like reading an article in the Wall Street Journal about how commercialism is ruining Christmas.
Eh, "we"? Who is "we"?
The problem, in the eyes of hackers and general Slashdot visitors
Why should we care about what criminals (i.e. "hackers") consider to be a "problem" (i.e. an impediment to their illegal activities)?
Why do you insist in speaking for the collective body of visitors to this site? Do you have mind-reading powers? Or do you just wish to usurp others' voices for your own ends?
The commercialization of the internet has given rise to free web page services that only give you 2MB of space and 300MB of bandwidth per month
Well, there's a lot that private individuals can do with that. So your objection is that it's not enough for heavy-duty warez trading?
cable modem services that will disconnect you if you run anything even remotely resembling a server
We already know why you want to run servers, right?
Anyway, did you stop to think that the people who pay for these cable modem services don't want an idiot on the same network as them creating a virtual traffic jam with his server? This is the exact online analogue to real estate zoning laws. People deserve to be protected from their neighbor setting up a big retail business right next to them, attracting tons of traffic and general degradation of life for the people who live there.
and a greater feeling among non-tech-heads that any site that isn't run by a multinational corporation that already owns fourteen newspapers and three TV stations "isn't trustworthy".
Yeah. They should trust tiny fly-by-night websites run by w4r3z d00dz in Slovakia, right?
The silencing of the average person for the sake of keeping internet speech under the control of multinational corporations because it is more profitable, however, is a bad thing.
Excuse me. I, contrary to what you seem to attribute to yourself, can't read minds. Would you explain to me which fruit (turd?) of your imagination you are talking about?
Competition based on low prices is a deadman's game. It's extremely short-sighted and ultimately doomed to failure. There can be only one winner in that game, and it's not likely to be the consumer nor the employees.
The consumer loses because competition based on cost requires the elimination of additional value in the supply chain. Quality, customer service, guarantees, product returns, post-sales service, what-have-you: it all is eliminated when the lowest price guarantee becomes the requirement for survival.
The employees lose because the intolerably low overhead demands poor wages and working conditions.
Oh, and the consumer also loses because competition is eliminated: only one supplier can provide the lowest possible price. All other suppliers must fold.
Low prices are the antithesis of democratic, meritocratic competition. In fact, low prices are anticommercial, anticapitalist, antiequality, and antiegalitarean, too.
Please understand that I'm not saying that outrageously high prices are better. What I am saying is that a focus on price alone is a fool's game and a foolish attitude.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I'm sorry, but there is a science which studies this kind of thing, and it is called economics. You are contradicting centuries of accummulated scientific knowledge of economics. You are treading lightly where giants have exercised utmost care.
The consumer loses because competition based on cost requires the elimination of additional value in the supply chain. Quality, customer service, guarantees, product returns, post-sales service, what-have-you: it all is eliminated when the lowest price guarantee becomes the requirement for survival.
If the consumer can't correctly judge the value of different choices in the market, and goes for the "cheapest" (but seriously devalued) product, then he wholly deserves it when he gets fucked. Market economies don't just make demands of producers and laborers; they also make demands of consumers.
Statistically all statistics lie in some form. Journalists statistically don't have any degrees besides journalism. Few journalists statistically know more about statistics than statisticians.
My point? You can infer anything from statistics, thats like the first chapter of a statistics textbook. So web eyeballs have narrowed their focus to a smaller number of websites in a given amount of time, big deal. If you go a little farther back in time you'll see the exact same thing as today, a majority of web users visited a handful of websites. Why? Lots of reasons. The biggest is only a smaller number of websites offered content the majority of web users even wanted to look at. Then there was a boom of websites that all offered the same thing packaged a little differently, some put blue bows on their piles of shit whilst others wrapped their shit in red bows. People liked the red bows more and thus now most of the blue bow sites are gone. Before the boom there were a handful of sites because no one thought much of the internet, now there are a handful of sites because people overvalued the internet.
Some people think this is a new concept and rant and rave and some who read slashdot whine and moan about it. Somehow the government and corporations are controlling people's minds. Read into your history a little bit. Around the turn of the last century there were dozens of newspapers in San Fransisco. It had grown so fast and was inhabited by so many different sorts of people that for a while it supported these several dozen newspapers. Then people began to homogenize and so did the different newspapers and publishing groups. Now you've got a handful of local newspapers in San Fransisco some with much larger circulations than others. See the correlation here? The web is going to be varied but there is also always going to be points where alot of people go to. Just because you've got a phone book with a million listings doesn't mean you're going to call them all, unless you're war dialing. Same goes for websites in directories.
Besides basic economics and social structures pervading the web researchers are often times not very well versed in the regions of the internet. Most research completely ignores IRC networks and message boards some of which are like slashdot and have nearly a bajillion people reading them per day. As well as IRC networks (which I know have declined a little bit in popularity) researchers seem to ignore instant messaging systems and their effect on the web. Alot of web users have abandoned e-mail lists, IRC networks, and message boards in lieu of instant messaging systems. I bet alot of people on analog modems probably IM more than they surf the web anymore. It doesn't require a whole lot of bandwidth and can be done on even old slow computers.
I'm a loner Dottie, a Rebel.
Although his last paryt is falmebait... the frist three paragraphs are important.
The link in the last paragraph, on the word "producers", should go here.
Do we have to be concerned about anti-ad-free networks or laws banning such?
That got me thinking...
Not that this guy is doing this but...
Every damn time I think that I am off of my rocker a little, some Orwellian freak on
Wow. Free things being outlawed. Now that is truly using a stretch concept.
Its amazing the fiction that people will believe as the truth.
next thing you know, the AT&T's, Sprint's and MCI's will control who the fuck you call and what you say. Shit, I've been online since the late 80's and I am getting fucking sick of it. Besides, I already downloaded ALL thr pr0n. Shit, I'll go back to reading the goddamn newspaper. Sayonara.
You're forgetting about ignorance.
Many people, especially new users, are simply not aware of the diversity of the internet. They're locked into the content their ISP's portal delivers them. And why not? It offers news, weather, shopping, everything. There's even that little search box which makes you think you're searching the net.
The average user has no clue that they're trapped within such a narrow view. And for those that do, most don't realize that they should care.
And Microsoft doesn't rule you? Well then, consider yourself to be within a very tiny majority. Try and find an ISP that will support any OS other than Windows. Try and find an ISP that will even answer a simple question like "what's my mail server address" if you happen to let it slip out that you're not running Windows, instead of the usual "We don't support that"...click.
To even realize that there are other OSes out there puts you into a very tiny majority. I'd doubt if even 1% of the population could name an OS other than Windows or Mac, and most of the rest would only be able to name Linux thanks to the stock market hype surrounding it two years ago.
Yes, the internet still does offer the freedom that it always has, but freedom is useless if you aren't aware of its existence. Be glad that you are enlightened enough to realize you have a choice, but realize also that very few people are.
--
"Karma can only be portioned out by the cosmos." - Homer Simpson [1F10]
Although the article does bring up a few points, it is HORRIBLY written.
..
I don't mean any disrespect to excite, but that article is just badly written style-wise.
just my 2 cents tho
- mescaline - its the only way to fly -
I can't get that excited about fan sites having trademark problems. Most of them lack any significant original content. (There's fan fiction, but most of it sucks.)
Pressure applied to sites that criticize companies is more of a problem. But most of that is bluff. I run Downside, which was very negative on doomed dot-coms back when they were riding high. I've received threats from companies I mentioned, but nobody ever actually did much. Read the Associated Press libel manual for guidance, then go ahead and criticize.
The biggest disappointment to me in the last decade of the Internet has been the lack of good online journalism. I'd hoped that disintermediation between journalists and readers would lead to reader-supported investigative reporting. Nothing like that has happened. We have online columnists, yes, but not hard-news reporters.
"Clearly when the community did not toss spammers off the face of the earth, it was a lost cause at that point,"
Blaming the Community ? Jesus Christ, where was this guy hiding ?
When the spammers came on the internet, we forwarded proof to their upstream providers and peers. We traced accounts, poured through headers and decyphered the forgeries. We filled out complaints with the Better Business / Trade Practices commisions.
When that failed, the community rung and harrased them at home. We published pictures of their house with their street address, and even visited their little hole in the wall frontends. We flooded their mail boxs and voice mail, and tried to annoy them at every chance.
Then you had UUnet, who took 3 to 6 months to cancel accounts, Earthlink, who basically ignored us for years at a time and a variety of other companies that dragged their heels at every opportunity in order to maximize their revenue.
The comunity isn't to blame for Spammers, it was the companys who realised they could make a dollar selling spamming services, and that they listened to their bank managers over the people who pointed out the dangerous precident.
There isn't any way I'll let you blame that on us.
- A news.admin.net-abuse and news.admin.net-abuse.* survivor
One thing you're neglecting is the cost of publishing on the Internet. A corporation can pay for a couple of T-3's, a bunch of expensive servers and the engineers and publishers who will put up their massive web sites.
A small publisher may be incredibly popular, but the costs would make it so that publishing would become increasingly difficult, there's a cap on how popular they can be. Too many people come to their site and their ISP will hit them with a bill they can't afford.
The central problem is the "cost" of publication falls more upon the publisher than the consumer. P2P publishing networks like MojoNation and Freenet change this trend. Resiliency is determined by consumer popularity, not how big the corporation publishing it's bankroll is. Usenet publishing is free, but ephemeral. Only a corporation could collectivize Usenet. Currently one has a monopoly on this collectivization, Google, and it does not archive binary posts.
It was announced that hell was actually "quite warm", even "uncomfortably hot". J Random Condemned was heard to say "There is often talk about hell freezing over, but that's not likeley. [Hell] is really hot!". Satan was not available for comment.
Free Java games for your phone: Tontie, Sokoban
Start our own version of the internet which is based solely on complete and total freedom from the idiocy of the american society... We all suck
Zaxyon
The voices in my head don't like you
worldwide.... fuck them all... we rule
Zaxyon
The voices in my head don't like you
The internet is only *a* net, not the only game in town. There are an infinite number of possible nets. Those carelessly left behind in the rush to colonize the green planet can be resurrected.
What's the hurt? Is there anyone who's no longer able to communicate? Have the real issues been hidden? I can still do research on Google in ten minutes that would take a half-day at the library. I still trade e-mail with who I want.
And should those things go away, or the surveillance get too intrusive, I'll join/go make another net.
Nobody's forcing anyone to visit those commercial sites. While I rarely get to any of them, they must providing some service that lots of people need.
Nobody has to buy into the corporate culture, or to buy their stuff. If lots of people do, that's their lookout. If you want a nose candy high, go buy some nose candy, but if you aren't aware of the side benefits, too goddamn bad.
"You must try to forget all you have learned. You must begin to dream." -- Sherwood Anderson
I wish there had been forum for people to bitch about the abhorrent keyboard those things had.
Nearly impossible to press '4' without getting '44444'. Wasted 2 months of paper route money to buy it.
The great feature of that thing was "Constant Memory" (the c in the model name). Must work cuz the calc is long since buried, but i haven't forgotten how bad it sucked.
With the caption of "Copyright 2001 Associated Press. All right reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed." and the numerous ads, why did that not seem right. I don't doubt that Excite is one of those 14 ISPs.
However the article does a damn good job of assesing the situation of the net today. It is just to corrupt...too censored. The net isn't pure, its too corrupted by competition. Do we need all these graphics and flash intros?
It gives me uncalculable pleasure when I find a university site that has no purpose other than to share.
Some how I just linked the commercialization of the net to the open source/linux movement...I think I need sleep.
forget it.
yes, vi is a plague.
..I mean I hadn't noticed!
It's not hard at all: http://www.google.com/search?q=fuck
I have been warning about this problem on WIPO.org.uk for some time now.
Virtually every word is trademarked, even the common words you learnt with your A B C's - apple, ball and cat. MOST share the same words or initials with MANY others in a different business and/or country. For example, the World Trade Organization (WTO) shares its initials with six trademarks - in the U.S. alone (please check). Caterpillar tractors claimed 'cat' is 'their' trademark on the Internet - even though hundreds of trademarks use the word 'cat' - again in U.S. alone (see for yourself).
Conflict with trademark and domain name is IMPOSSIBLE to avoid. Yet, the United Nations World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO.org) and the United States Department of Commerce are hiding the simple solution. It was ratified by honest attorneys - including the honourable G. Gervaise Davis III, UN WIPO panellist judge.
Please visit WIPO.org.uk to see.
I tried to classify your species, and came to realize that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet, instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with its surrounding environment, but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply. You multiply until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern - do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet - you're a plague.
-- Bill Hicks
But why? I mean, when I design new pages now, I remove the BGCOLOR attribute. BGCOLOR is clearly marked as deprecated in the specs, and should only be used in a transitional period, and I think the tranaitional period has lasted more than long enough. From now on, I think one should use the Strict DTD, either 4.01 or XHTML 1. There is no use for BGCOLOR anymore (eh, actually, I think there never was.... :-) ). Instead, use an (external) stylesheet. It's easy to turn off for the users, and it'll be easier for users to make your pages suit their taste.
Other than that, I agree with your philosophy. The pages I write now are XHTML 1 (it should be completely backwards compatible) and comply with at least two levels of Web Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0. I think that if everybody did that, the web would be a lot more usuable for everyone (it was a huge blunder by the W3C to market the Accessibility Guidelines as being something only for people with disabilities).
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
"but when it comes to newspapers, radio, and TV, there are only a few companies that own everything. Radio is the worst of the bunch, with 3 corporations owning pretty much all of the airwaves."
Sorry, but your claim has nothing to do with the real numbers. Newspapers? There has been an explosion in the number of publishers getting involved. TV? As I mentioned earlier, the number of national news outlets has more than doubled. None has been lost, other than a very short lived cable news network. Radio? In my area market, there are 10 or more companies involved, which mostly different from the companies in other markets. So much for 3 controlling the airwaves. Why do you make claims when you cannot back them up?
I'm also sorry that you find Chomsky to be a crackpot. You are entitled to you ignorant opinion, but Chomsky is well respected around the world.
He is only respected by the Stalinist fringe, which is ever smaller since his economic ideas failed so spectacularly in the USSR. He also tends to be more popular in certain countries where the government has much more control of the marketplace of ideas, providing support for statism.
He appears on TV stations in other countries, yet is shut completely off of American TV.
More non-fact. I've seen him on US television many times.
This story about a few corporations controlling the Internet is just another PR stunt from Jupiter Research. Cyber-pundits have been proclaiming the takeover of the Internet by corporations for years
It is no less silly than making the same claims about other media sectors.
Not only did they require .NET Passport Authentication, but I was REQUIRED to enter my credit card details to TRIAL real.com's latest "RealOne" player software. Realplayer have always been guilty of bloating their website to make it impossible to locate and download the free player, but this was the last straw.
Not only are the poor AOL users who have been using the internet but a week going to pay 9.95 for the player out of frustration of not being able to find the free product, but they are keeping your card details on file when you trial their pathetic software.
I was so insulted I am never using Realplayer ever again.
I dont't care if 99% of Internet users decide to use the Internet just for reading MSN, as long as the other kind of content is there and accesible.
We cannot require that the majority of people use the Internet for browsing educational and academic content, or to publish web pages with their opinions and ideas, it wont happen, a lot of people loose hours of their time watching stupid soap operas on tv, a lot of people doesn't care about politics, a lot of people think that MS its god, why Internet would be different?
As long as the content is there for the people who DO care, then whats the matter? If sometime we start to see that it becomes restricted by some direct means, then we can start to worry. As for the other people, well, the comercialization of the Internet its just a small part of the problem.
the normal user is (sad to say )a damn soccer mom using aol, shopping at amazon, and logging on to bigbrother.com for 30 bucks a month
Come on. You can't possibly know what the "normal user" does and neither does anyone else, because no one's ever done an in-depth survey of 1000 people or so to see exactly what web pages they were visiting and why. So, 60% of internet time is spent at 14 companies. At least five of those companies have a bewildering array of subjects and content, not to mention links to the other 40%, which could be anywhere. No one, to my knowledge, has actually recorded (on paper, not a log), what these people were looking at - or how long they were looking at it. If I do a web search on Yahoo for Dickens and find David Copperfield and download it, mere web logging is going to show that I spent 50% of my "time" (actually connections) at Yahoo and 50% at Project Gutenberg. But whose content is going to occupy more of my time?
I am not a bit troubled that Buffy the Vampire fans cannot have their website. To use Buffy's metaphors, if you go to sleep with vampires, you wake up with bruises on your neck. And if you insist on creating your identity out of corporate material, your identity is going to be at the mercy of the executives who made that material. If think that this is an educational experience. Now, if you had a satire on Buffy, that would deserve first ammendment protection, and will be a completely different game.
Likewise, I am not bothered that some portal does not give a link to alternet. Alternet is there, and people who feel the need for it can find it. Part of the value of alternative networks is that they spread by alternative means.
It is wrong to judge alternative media by eyeballs. For an ad driven network, eyballs are everything. But the impact of an alternative source of information can be far greater than the number of people who actually use it directly.
-- look, cheese ahoy!
While everyone here can argue about web content and physical restrictions concerning the Internet. The Quote: "In March, just 14 companies controlled 60 percent of users' online time, down from 110 companies' two years earlier, Jupiter Media Metrix found" obviously states that there are fewer Internet Providers then there were two years ago. By this statement alone the question now is instead of the non-sense being talked about now, should be: How many providers will be around in the next two years? The next five? Etc. Utility companies have been regulated for this reason... They are the only game in town. How would you feel if your Internet service provider acted like you gas or your electric company? Miss a bill and get cut off. While most people consider $21.95 a month to access the web a nominal fee, consider the amount it will be once unfair competition eliminates the other services and your left with as many providers you can count with your hand (not to mention bad customer service). So the claim that Internet, for what it is worth, is still free commercialized or not... what bothers me is the fee-based route I would have to pay just to get there.
If you think AOL, Time Warner and Microsoft doesn't rule you wait a couple of more years and then try using equipment not supported by these companies and see what happens. Nothing! Exactly.
Online users time is the deciding factor in this equation. If I can't find a cheap subscription rate to fully use this feature, then by all means I wont use it. Then only corporations and government agencies will have access to this medium and the poor souls who created it wont be given a chance.
set up wireless networks, neighborhood networks, anything that is OURS and not THEIRS!
right now i wuld love to see a medium that anyone willing to pay an up front fee can get online for no additional cost.
we can have this if we want it, you know.
no spam, no banners, no popup ads
use ipv6 and ipsec, and your all set.
it is our internet, we allowed this to happen to it.
what do we do? we cant take it back, so build another one.
a nonprofit provider would work...
i say everyone pitch in and create such a thing.
i bet that AOL and the telcos provide better service REAL fast.
i bet those spams stop, REAL fast.
and i bet you wont see another X10 popup ad ever again.
on another thought... i suggest that the small isps, the ones willing to provide a good service for less install spam killing software to kill popup ads and banners.
this is just what i want to see, and im sure some others will agree with me.
Put up TI and the registered trademark symbol, and put a footnote on the site saying that "TI is a registered trademark of Texas Instruments"
The one time I faced this problem, simply officially recognizing the trademark was enough to satisfy the other company.
>What do you do if your cable company blocks all
>inbound traffic, and only allows you to use 80,
>25, and 110 out? (Keep in mind that tunneling is
>not an option for the average user.) Do you go
>to the "competition?" And what do you do if the
>phone company puts the same filters in place?
Start my own ISP and clean up..
I guess that I'm especially lucky, then. On the support pages of my ISP, there are configuration instructions for:
Commercialization isn't really bad. All corporations care about is money and so they are going to do anything possible to get it from consumers. If there are two websites that sell the same product, corporations are going to try and improve their website as much as possible making it easier and better for consumers to use. If they do that then consumers are more likely to come to their site and buy things from them. Competition in this form helps the consumer. Now if a consumer only supports a big compnay that company will become a monopoly and I think everyone here on slashdot knows what happens to the quality of products that come from a monopoly.
So in short support the smaller stores that come onto the internet and help promote competition.
Outdoor digital photography, mostly in New Engl
We don't have to be subject to a commercialized internet. We should work on creating an entirely non-commercial international network where the network would be a licensed service, using the "By using this you agree" wording of many commercial software licenses.
.nix, .ncm or similar could be used to block access to/from commercialized domains, making it the near equivalent of a separate, parallel internet.
.nix domain for commercial purposes would by the simple act of using the network, agree to accept any and all retribution and/or preventive action from *common citizens*, specifically including citizens' arrest and imprisonment *by, and at the will of any private entity* for up to one year (if a corporate crime, then its officers would be subject to citizens' prosecution), publishing biographical information on the perpetrator, and permanent confiscation of any personal, corporate, and/or intellectual property (up to three times the amount of aggregate damages) whether that property was involved in the crime or not.
Creating a noncommercial sub-internet should not be all that difficult. An enforceable noncommercial TLD, such as
There would be a strong, never-ending push to commercialize the 'potential new market', so rules of use should be simple, potentially providing very harsh civil penalties that would not require or invite government involvement.
The penalties: Any person or entity using the
I never understood this about television, what are we hiring 5 year olds as corporate heads? They are acting like "IT'S MY INTERNET AND YOU CANT PLAY WITH IT", this is the impression we have to give everyone. Didnt their mothers ever teach them about sharing and cooperation?
'This is the last remaining communications medium that allows the small person to participate,' said Barbara Simons, past president of the Association for Computing Machinery.
... oh and walking around downtown with a sign that says "The world is coming to and end!".
except, of course, for ham radio, direct mail, public access cable, personal ads, classified ads
Hmmm... the last one kind of reminds me of this article.
(-1, Adequacy.org Trolling)
If you look in the physical world.
- How many food chains are there. Many brands yes, but most of them fall under the same parent.
- How many truly different movie studios?
- How many truly independent car-brands?
Concentration of power is an inherent aspect of the commercial world we live in. That's life.Now why is this suddenly a revelation for the Internet? Could it have to do with the perception that on the Interent everyone is supposed to be more equal than they are in real life? That access barriers to the net are suppsed to be low or non-exisent (assuming you have the money to afford a phone line, PC, ISP & Telco charges)?
Realisticly these Internet ideals do not align with the reality of a commercial & capitalistic world. In our capitalist meat-space we are all equal...
This seems to be the way the world works. Face it!
And if the legal system is f*cked up to favour the establisment and those with money, there is little leeway you can expect there.
Please note: I would not like to pass judgement on the capitalist system or make any statements about alternatives. Just trying to describe the status quo.
Titled:
n .n ii.html?topic=&topic_set=
Where Is the Digital Highway Really Heading?
Quote:By mechanism and by policy, networks will be much more closed than open, the pessimist would say. Old ways of thinking die hard, particularly when they were weaned by legally enforced monopolies. Content will be supplied only by a carefully chosen set of providers, barriers to entry will be created for everyone else. Programming will still seek the least common denominator, and the population will be divided by income into information haves and have-nots...
When regulations restricting competition are relaxed, nobody's market share is protected. If telephone companies can offer video programming, cable revenue will surely drop. If cable companies can offer local phone service, the Regional Bell Operating Companies (RBOCs) will be hit where it hurts. As the public policy continues to enable more and more competition, the regulatory barriers that have kept cable and telephone companies out of each other's base businesses are surely going to fall...
Let's assume all the technology and all the alliances shake out in unpredictable ways by the end of the decade. Attention is likely to focus on the winners and the losers, among businesses and in technologies. While the outcome of battles between cable and telephone superpowers is going to make a difference to the consumer, more important are the design principles (both in technical architecture and public policy) under which the winning entry or entries operate...
Who has access to the network? Is it affordable? Many basic human services transactions - in health care and social welfare for example - could be handled far more easily over a ubiquitous voice, data, and video network, saving the elderly, the infirm, and young mothers with small children a trip on public transportation downtown to municipal, state, and federal office buildings. But unless there is a safety net that guarantees an affordable connection, the network will further stratify society, not bring it together...
Cut and paste
http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/1.03/kapor.o
This isn't about technology. This is strictly about the legal system. If I rented a storefront and put up a neon sign that says "Come here to discuss TI calculators" and used the place to hold nightly discussion groups at no charge, and their legal department found out about it, they'd probably get just as upset and pull exactly the same nonsense. The only difference is they're not likely to actually see a sign like that so it's likely beneath their attention, while they can easily search all the domain names and generate a list of people to threaten.
I'd like to see innocent people who get these stomp letters from the lawyers start initiating lawsuits against the company for harassing them. Perhaps it would make companies sit up and take a little notice of what their corporate lawyers are doing and perhaps even put a leash on them for a change if a few corporations could be made to pay out large settlements because their lawyers tried to intimidate someone into giving up their right to free speech.
What does that have to do with anything?
Are you really that dense? The moderator who gave it a +1 Insightful got it. Why didn't you?
Okay, for the short bus crowd, I present a simplified explanation: The article was about large corporations controlling the net with lawyers, legal actions, and money. Then the Associated Press, a large corporation that published the story, cited copyright law and implied legal threats to prevent people from putting copies of the story on their own web sites.
Did you even read the article before posting? It's times like this that I wish Slashdot had a sign at the entrance saying "Your IQ must be at least this high to go on this ride."
The government is what is stopping free speech and openness on the Internet.
A company may sue you, but it is the government that actually steals your money (at the point of a gun) and gives it to the company.
No government enforcement of corporate whims, no problem.
The corporations are just doing what the law says they need to do (be as competitive as possible). If murder were legal, companies would be obligated to do that if it would benefit their shareholders. Companies aren't allowed to be moral.
The courts have no such excuse. They are the law (effectively, even if not "in theory") and their job according to the Constitution and the natural rights of man is to protect our interests.
They have failed.
Just because it CAN be done, doesn't mean it should!
I control my online time - not AOL, not MS, not Earthlink, X10, Slashdot, or The Onion. ?
Really ? So, what happens if you stop paying your ISP ? You still get connectivity ? I think NOT!
ANALYST
I Came, I Saw, I Networked, I ate KFC
I do have much more control of corporations than I do over government. If I don't like a corporation, I can merely refuse to participate in it (quit working for it, stop buying products, don't invest). If I try to "quit" participation in government (taxes), that leads down the road to FBI sharpshooters aiming at my windows.
The non-commercial stuff not only isn't "hard to find", it is in fact a huge proportion of what is out there.
I don't believe the original poster that competition should focus on "price alone". I don't think anyone really thinks that so-called "perfect competition" exists in this world, that it's mainly "monopolistic competition", i.e. competition on cost AND differentiation.
Where you go astray is in assuming that all competition on cost is "bad" because it reduces consumer value and wages, and you continue to argue on this theoretical plane where companies that aren't least cost all of a sudden shrivel and die. This is patently absurd.
To give an obvious example, the average price of the PC has been falling, the level of service has been rising (free internet service, printers, office suites, anti-virus software, photo software, 90 day free tech support, etc). compared to the earlier days. A company like Dell has managed to reduce costs AND increase value due to lower parts costs and a streamlined production & inventory process that few in the industry can match -- in other words, they just do the job better & cheaper. Certainly much competition has died, but a lot remains, and will continue to if people differentiate themselves enough (i.e. Apple).
Lower prices are fundamentally about lowering economic resources to acquire a good or service, it is in the end an empowering force for consumers. It is THE reason why we have a free market economy and capitalist society -- to allow for the poor to have access to goods and services that were once out of reach, and to allocate higher resources to those innovative areas that require it. How is this anticapitalist and antiegalitarian?
If prices didn't continually fall in "growth" or "innovation" areas, there wouldn't be room for new innovations, the money just wouldn't be there. That's why Joseph Schumpeter called innovation "creative destruction" -- there's always something new to take your revenue stream away. Your model of suggesting that prices should NOT fall in growth areas is unworkable lest we let the world's central bankers to let the floodgates of capital open and risk hyper-inflation.
Consumers are not dumb creatures, they will only put up with so much shoddy service. Prices eventually do reach a quasi-equilibrium level which is somewhat based on "how low can you go" to sustain acceptable service standards. Sure, it's slow at times, and doesn't always work when the service is very inertia-prone (i.e. poor banking services, cell phone services, etc). But it works often....as an example, notice how most near-unlimited ISP service hovers around $25/month, and that free-ISP services really didn't take off.
No one focuses on price alone. But it is the only quantitiative determinant of what the market is paying attention to.
I haven't been to CNN, ESPN, EBay, MSNBC, Yahoo!, Excite!, ZDNet, Barnes and Noble, blah blah blah blah blah, etc etc etc, in months, and don't expect to for -- when?
Never.
Who cares?
Somebody needs to get beyond this kinda cr*p:
and realize that there's one whole hell of a lot to the Internet that Jupiter Media Metrix isn't even the faintest bit aware of, and that there's a whole lot more that you can do with the Internet than just buy sh*t.
Those "14 companies" don't "control" one second of the time I spend online.
The only people who take that kind of drivel seriously are those who don't do anything but consume, anyway, so the only Internet they know about is the "commercialized Internet"...
t_t_b
I'm on PJ's "enemies" list! Are you?
Isn't there something a bit ironic that they are running such an article?! Ho Ho - guess what folks, the Internet biz is being consolidated in fewer and fewer firms controlling major web destinations for the masses. (Oh, and by the way, we are one of them ...)
Companies are made of men and women. They most definitely are allowed to be moral, and many indeed are. Some of the worlds biggest philanthropists are corporate shareholders.
You've obviously never taken course in critical thinking. "if murder were legal"? You're ignoring how many individuals would kill each other if murder were legal... corporations that went down this route would be no less immoral than them. Let's not also consider the prerequisite for murder to be legal -- most of society would already have to have deemed it an amoral activity (neither good nor bad), so few would care anyway.
It may become a moot point whether the current Internet is run by corporations, as the .edu and maybe the .mil sites will eventually separate to become part of their second-generation nets that have limited accessibility/intersection with the current Internet; a reversal of how the Internet was created in the first place.
I'd have a personalized plate on my car, but "toxic bachelor" won't fit into 7 letters.
Monopolization is bad. Anything which is so structured as to foster a tendency towards monopolization is bad. Monopolies are bad. Even a single predominant company, even when it isn't a monopoly, is bad. True, a predominant company can ameliorate it's effects, if it wants to. But the sheer dominance is bad. Mandrake improved Red Hat by making it less dominant. (Not smaller, not less profitable. Less dominant.)
... nearly always a bad move). Unfortunately, the current laws and customs in the US encourage businesses to behave in a domineering and oppressive manner towards their customers. Companies which don't have good competition are able to behave this way and still flourish. But they sure build up a mass of resentment. Consider IBM in the 1960's. It was THE quality computer dealer. It made good machines, and gave honest return for cash. But it was high-handed. It took IBM decades to partially rebuild it's image. They're still working on it. MS has been a god-send for them, because of MS nobody hates IBM. But they still remember IBM as the company that gave good value for money. (Well, I do, anyway.)
... except for their expensive daa's (much like the current dsl vs. T1, only the technology required to get around them was even more laughable).
Commercial entities are only seen as bad when they are seen as oppressive (or when people are so desperate that they ignore ethics
But IBM isn't dominant. It's larger now than it ever was. It's profitable, perhaps even more so than ever. (And it may be more influential! This is bad, dangerous, because the damage isn't noticed. But it may not be, and it's unfair to assume. But it's also unwise to assume -- either way.)
Still, a monopoly, or an essentially dominant company is an automatically bad thing. Sometimes people take awhile to notice this. Some people never do. For decades people bemoaned the loss of the unified Bell system (even though each of the pieces is still a monopoly an any particular geographic area). But until the breakup, modems were acoustic couplers, at their rediculous slow speed. Bell didn't see any reason to allow direct connections
.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
1, are we willing to pay to own our own "presses", and to do the work to provide meaningful and interesting content with them? i have to wonder if the increasingly broad net community doesn't consist largely of people trained by other forms of traditional mass media to be "audience", to listen in silence, not to publish or converse or even talk back. the web provides the technology for people to do otherwise, but it's still up to the individual to decide whether or not to *do* it.
2, are we, as web users, deciding to just go see what cnn says today, or do we go to any lengths to look around a little more for broader perspectives? do we decide to click on the big shiny button, or go to the search engines and dig up the sites about our own weird little interests? it's ten seconds' effort to go to a search engine and thence to a page on modern poetry written in latin -- but i have to decide i'd rather read latin today, instead of yet another osama bin laden rant and an ad for cellphone service. caveat lector!
one more note: i couldn't figure out from the article whether the total quantity of "non-commercial" web traffic was on the increase. it wouldn't surprise me if it were, and was only decreasing in terms of percentages, rather than actual quantity. i know that my websites' traffic continues to go up, and i suspect that the topics i talk about (mushrooms and religion, formal poetry, folk-goth music, my cats) aren't seeing much competition from the corporate world.
Hmmm... is VA Linux one of these??? Afterall... we geeks spend _lots_ of time online... :-)
I'm wondering if this is a bit biased, too... who tracks this crap?? I never get asked! I know that 14 companies _don't_ control much of a percentage of my online time!
-jbn
So, you think you are entitled to Internet access? Sure, the US Constitution says the government cannot take away your rights to free speech, but it does not say you are entitled to a medium for that speech.
By the way, if you believe your tax money should fund such a thing, Arkansas has a "Tax Me More" fund which allows people who don't think they are taxed enough (you obviously don't) to send in as much money (over and above what they already pay) as they like.
In case of fire, do not use elevator. Use water!
My sister was shifted from @home (I think!) to AT&T. She was disconnected. When she called, she was told that she hadn't paid. She authorized a credit card payment. That was over a month ago. She still has no service. When she calls, they tell her it's her hardware. It's the same hardware that worked before. They don't tell her she needs a new modem or something. They tell her things like: unplug your modem, wait for 5 minutes, and then plug it into a different outlet. This set up was working until they switched. (I tried that anyway. Made no difference, as I expected, but if you don't try you aren't certain .)
... slowed (dial up connection at ~ 4800 baud is still available).
My feeling: They have the cash because they have been stealing it.
If there were decent competition, then they couldn't get away with this. As it is, I've recommended that she look into some other service provider in the neighborhood. But I don't live down there, and we are both employed full time, so finding an alternative may take awhile (we want the new one to be better than the old, even though that doesn't seem difficult). Fortunately, this is in Silicon Valley (Sunnyvale), so there are almost certain to be alternatives. But meantime her thesis is
But I sure won't be recommending AT&T to anybody except a DA or the (state) Attorney General. (I'm a bit upset with them!)
.
I think we've pushed this "anyone can grow up to be president" thing too far.
The commercialization of the internet has given rise to free web page services that only give you 2MB of space and 300MB of bandwidth per month, cable modem services that will disconnect you if you run anything even remotely resembling a server
And such things are bad? Would you prefer a non-commercial internet with no free web page services and no cable modem access? If commercialization hastens broadband internet access to me, then I am all for it.
In case of fire, do not use elevator. Use water!
I think a class action suit against copyright holders is in order. Threatening fan sites that have fair use material because it might be a breach of their copyright deprives everyone who might otherwise have enjoyed the material. Even if the damages are only a dime, that would still be a sizable sum considering the number of potential claimants. A single example of threatening a fan site resulting in a multi-million dollar lawsuit being slapped on the party making the threat would at least make the corporate interests think a little before they open fire.
... on your own computer. Google and Yahoo! both have pages detailing how you can put their forms on your Web site. Just copy and paste them to a blank document, save as HTML, do a few small stylistic modifications, and point your browser to the file on your computer. No need to wait for load times, images, pop-up windows, and all that fun stuff. It comes up immediately. Mine's startup.html and it works great. I also put other quick links on the page that I use often.
www.tealeaves.org "All you need is love." -
Encrypt the hell out of everything you do and create, run and support sites that offer full anonymity of surfing path, message origin/destination and content. They can't control or choke off what they can't see.
Don't whine. Fight back. Create what you want to use and when it has been created, use it.
I happen to agree with most of the ideas in this article, but it is terrible journalism. If there's one idea I wish journalists could learn, it's: There are two sides to every dispute.. Usually we see AP publishing an article about how "pirates" are costing the music industry billions. With lots of quotes from record executives, trade associations, legislators. And no attempt to ask normal people how they feel. No investigation of the alleged moral right to confine information.
This time the biased shoe is on the other foot. We hear a bunch of complaints about the corporate closure of the net. And yet the reporter didn't bother contacting any of the alleged villains for a balancing quote. Nor did the reporter talk to the ordinary people who lean heavily on corporate-provided content.
I expect to receive some backlash (if anyone reads this) because the complainers are substantially right, and we know it. But that doesn't excuse one-sided reporting.
You are not being controlled.
I am not being controlled.
Joe Sixpack is being controlled.
In the OLD net, there was no Joe Sixpack. You and I surfed the web, went where we chose, found cool sites by crackpots and had a laugh or two.
NOW, Joe Sixpack may get wired, and go on the net. He's not going to find the crackpot sites. He has virtually no chance to. He uses the ISP's search engine, which directs him to the highest bidder.
You may think that's the crackpot's problem. And also Joe Sixpack's problem. Not yours. Not mine.
AOL doesn't rule you? I hope you don't use Netscape. Microsoft doesn't rule you? I hope you don't use MSN. You use Opera? I guess you're okay then. Until Microsoft buys Opera. Microsoft sure as hell CAN and WILL make changes to IE - someday, mark my words, that will make it impossible to view certain pages. AOL will do the same. Eventually, this trend will split the net.
You'll see situations like last year, when cable networks on the west coast were shut out from providing Disney content - because Disney was "playing hardball" with contract negotiations - but in reality, they were de-valuing Time Warner's Cable assets. But it was the consumer who was caught in the middle - locked into a service - PAYING for that service, but unable to get content. Not due to technical reasons, but due to corporate tussling which has nothing to do with them.
The same thing will be played out on the internet - soon enough. The players are already in place (forgive the pun, because the "players" are Quicktime, Real, and WIMP).
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
Did you even *read* Atlas Shrugged? Sometimes the only way to win is to refuse to play by the looters' rules.
******
"I do not play at being God -- I AM GOD!
Comment removed based on user account deletion
My web pages are still up at http://bryanpatrick.com last I checked. I haven't been squashed by the big boys yet. Altho it does cost me a pretty penny to get my self aggrandizing message out.
Loved the "I remember when" comments. Nobody mentioned when a "page" was a "post" on usenet and the web was just an experiment that everyone used lynx (a text based browser) to access. You guys and gals. What a bunch. No wonder I keep coming back.