Slashdot Mirror
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.'"
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.
Dude, we're not angry about AOL, Hotmail, or online stores. These are all good things. The problem, in the eyes of hackers and general Slashdot visitors, is what has been brought with it. 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 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".
Free e-mail is a good thing. Reasonably priced and user friendly internet access is a good thing. Online stores are a good thing. 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.
I also use NoAds, which helps me kill pop-up windows on sight. It's wonderful. I do like Mozilla's "Block Images From This Server" option too. Works wonders on cnn.com and other places.
www.tealeaves.org "All you need is love." -
It's very easy for a company to send a "cease and desist" letter to someone like you, that neither means they have the legal wherewithall to prosecute you nor the time/money to do so. They hope you will be intimidated by the letter and comply. Sounds like borg to me.
What this is rooted in is not necessarily some greedy corporate culture drones out there (although they do exist) but more in patent and trademark law. Both, unfortunately, are horrifically broken in this modern era. What you are probably getting needled for is so that TI can defend it's trademark. Here's why:
Trademark law (in the U.S.) put simply states that if you do not vigorously defend your trademark, you lose it. "Vigorous" to lawyers means you sue anyone, anywhere, anytime they might appear to be infringing. Thus, the letter to you. TI could care less what you're doing, but the damn legal system wants its pound of flesh, and the corporate lawyers on retainer know that.
I'm willing to bet that outside the legal department nobody at TI has one inkling of an idea that you were "threatened". Further, and this has worked for me in the past, if you contact someone higher up in the company (and it is damnably difficult -- use the "investor relations" links to get their contact info) you'll usually find them sympathetic to your cause if you're not slandering them left and right. Nobody wants a PR black eye, and it's very easy to distribute negative info on a company to the entire world overnight via the Internet.
So, to sum it up, if you're being threatened, stand your ground. If things look to get nasty, contact the EFF for legal assistance. As a last resort, the ACLU might be of help sometimes as well (for Americans only, though). Sooner or later the legal system will change to catch up with technology.
In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet and say to us, Make us your slaves, but feed us. - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
SacredNaCl writes: I then spent the next 4 months waiting for SWB to throw a switch
Yup... sad that paying off congress critters is better business than hustling to make your customer happy.
Living in Missouri, you've got another problem with some paid flake state representative that wants to ban towers (Missouri HR 999) used to deliver wireless service because "they threaten children." (Tell me, are you Missourians putting playgrounds under the broadcast towers or what?)
Seriously, this critter must have been seeking the junk science award of the year - no explanation how these "evil radio rays" harm the kiddies or anything. Since the bill got tabled due to the junk science approach, Merideth said he'll reintroduce it next year without the "evil kiddie rays" stuff so his opposition doesn't have any substance to argue against.
Oh, and guess who got campaign contributions from the local phone/wireline incumbants who have an interest in making sure there's no rural wireless phone service, wireless broadband, etc?
*scoove*
Remember this holiday season: Friends don't let JonKatz post.
Ironically, I got a letter yesterday from PacBell thanking me for being such a wonderful DSL customer for the past year, and that my bill is being raised by $10 a month so that they could provide "exiting new services" which seems to consist only of a redesigned home-page.
I also received, last week, an email from Earthlink, thanking me for signing up for their DSL service, but they regret to inform me that DSL is not available in my area. This is the same automated email I've been getting every 3 months for the past year and a half (since I first asked them if they could provide DSL for me) - despite my asking to be removed from their mailing list, despite telling their product manager that their information was wrong, that I was happily getting PacBell DSL service, etc. etc.
Whatever.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.