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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.'"
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.
clickedy-poo
It's because the other 96 went out of business...
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
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.
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.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
>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.
With all due respect, that's bullshit. The mom-and-pop ISPs often provide far better service than the big companies. Smaller subscriber bases typically mean better customer support. Try getting support out of AOL, MSN, etc. and then try getting support from your hometown ISP. The local guys are going to provide better service every time, because they don't have to support millions of customers.
But the mom-and-pop ISPs don't happen to own a massive cable television network on which they can run an incessant stream of commercials for their online service, free of charge. Anyone else who subscribes to Time Warner Cable knows what I'm talking about. AOL and RoadRunner commercials on every channel, every 15 minutes. It's impossible for momandpop.net to compete with that.
The mom-and-pop ISPs don't have millions of telephone subscribers whose bills they can stuff their advertisements into each month. I can't remember the last time my BellSouth bill didn't include a 5-page pamphlet explaining the wonders of DSL.
The mom-and-pop ISPs aren't going under because they suck. They're going under because they can't compete in a market dominated by bloated companies with billions of dollars to spend on advertising.
Shaun
Thanks to the War on Drugs, it's easier to buy meth than it is to buy cold medicine!
I guess web designers, bandwith, and network admins come free.
Such a plan is sure to backfire. There would be a similiar clause that would state the individual must pay a certain amount to the corp for losing as well. It would then make it impossible for the individual to fight back for their rights as the loss would ruin them and their family for decades.
Personally, I would like to see corps be treated as "full" individuals. By that, I mean that I would not mind seeing officers of a company rot in jail when they break laws. If I, as a person, murder someone, I go to jail for the rest of my life. If I, as say... Ford, murder people by refusing to recall and redesign my products, I pay only a fine and it's back to business as usual.
So how would we replace the university backbones that began the internet?
Communicate the old-fashioned way: FidoNet
Seriously, the only way break the megacorp's choke-hold on the net is to go totally wireless, and completely circumvent the need for the existing millions of miles of strung wire. There needs to be a communcation method that can go end-to-end without *depending* on all that wire.
Right now, he who owns the pipe controls the communication.
No start-up or co-op or RMSophile (of which I am one) is going to gather enough resources to lay down an equal amount of wire to compete.
It's gonna be AT&T or TimeWarner. Coax or twisted pair. Cable or DSL. There is no other option, and all the wire is owned.
There will have to be an all-wireless solution. Until then, grab your ankles -- but don't hold your breath.
Software Wars
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
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.
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.
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"?
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.
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.
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.
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]
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".
I agree that, in general, people are not too angry that services like AOL, Hotmail, or online stores, exist. But I don't think your example of what was "brought with it" is a particularly apt one. I see no fault whatsoever in "free web page services that only give you 2MB of space and 300MB of bandwidth per month". They are free, so take what they give you and don't whine about it. Also, cable modems and other forms of home-based broadband aren't something people had in "the early days", and though most broadband providers are crap right now, I imagine most people would agree that having SOME broadband option is better than having NO broadband option.
There are two primary issues that I believe are the cause of most of the attitudes you will find. First is a perceived loss of culture. In the "old days" there was a certain lingo and level of technical aptitude with which you could speak, and you could generally expect people to understand you. The Internet was not yet very diverse in the type of person that could gain access, and as a natural result those who could gain access formed a somewhat tightly-knit culture. While much of this culture still exists (as evidenced by Slashdot, various newsgroups, etc), it is often harder to find the tech solaces due to increased noise. The exploring tech-guy who happens to wander into other subcultures of the internet could, understandably, feel out of place, which could be a particularly offensive feeling for those that helped to create the internet in the first place. It is this issue that usually leads to comments that people see as elistist or excluding. As for a solution, I can't really give any answers, as it seems more of a natural social phenomena than anything.
The second issue is the one that seems to really drive people nuts. That is the attempt by commercial interests to exert CONTROL over the internet. There are several commercial entities at work that would like to see the internet standards come under proprietary control. Others exist that would like to see (more) legislation passed to censor what we can read, write, and do on the internet. Many of the "original" gang saw the internet as the ultimate in presonal freedom (particularly free speech). Commercial interests quite often (usually) act in direct opposition to this concept. This is what aggrivates most of the old school internet junkies. The attitude I see is more or less "What right do these corporations have to tell me what I can do on MY internet. I was here first, not bothering anybody, and they came along and crashed my party." Again, I can't claim to have any real answers as to how to combat this (I do have ideas and opinions, but they are beyond the scope of this post), but I definately feel this is the more serious issue.
AJ
Your point about content dying as it gains popularity is a good one- the cost of providing huge bandwidth can price a site out of people's range. This doesn't consider options like permitting mirroring, or simply acknowledging that some people won't be able to get access to the content. You'll note that usenet, which you mentioned, is all mirroring and propagating. So is P2P.
The reason the Web has a particular value is because it's a 'property', a fixed location with lots of software that's been out there for years that knows how to go look up 'www.foobaz.com' if you ask. The fact that this is usually (not invariably!) the same server in the same physical location, is not an advantage, it's just the LABEL that is the advantage, hence all the battling over trademarks etc.
If commercial interests manage to genuinely stomp out all personal interests on the WWW, then maybe you can call that death. I have a bit of a hard time seeing fan Trek sites and the like as genuinely personal interests... a lot of the stuff that's being stepped on is, to some ways of thinking, genuinely the property of somebody else. Yes, 1000 trek fan sites is an amazing thing, yes having Paramount step on them is a shame, but if I am a science fiction writer who is NOT Star Trek, maybe I am not as full of sympathy. I might see people thronging to pay attention to the usual corporate malarkey and putting up lots of sites at their own expense and writing fanfic based on that stuff- supposing it's good- is it really such a great thing that people waste their energies getting all excited over corporate rubbish rather than creating their own artworks based on their own ideas? I guess that's debatable.
There are some possible benefits to having the corporations really tighten the screws on powerless individuals. In some of those cases, the powerless individuals happen to be expending energy in celebrating the productions of the corporation. Trek, Harry Potter, etc. Is it so wrong if the corporations' true colors show, and they undercut their own cultural proliferation?
For everybody else- well, hopefully you will always be able to buy _some_ space on the Web and _some_ kind of label/domain-name to direct people to. Hopefully it won't descend to where you can't even put two English words together in a new way without it being judged too similar to some company's words. All this is not new- it's just being fought over again on the new turf.
Not exactly. You can hog more bandwith just downloading MP3s and MPG files, than I ever could by running a web server.
The TOS agreements given by the cable companies are discriminatory towards people who want to provide "content". I don't want to download Brittney Spears MP3s, I want to distribute my own recordings for free via my own servers.
The ISPs should be charging for bandwith - as this is the thing that's limited - and not worry about what runs of my own servers.
...richie - It is a good day to code.
Flash is a proprietary standard, and having been on Tru64 most of the time, I can tell you Flash is among the most awful things you can encounter.
But indeed, it has more to do with its propretary status than technical abilities. But, SVG+DOM+SMIL should do most of the things Flash does (though I haven't seen a good comparison yet), and if people would use that instead, I would have no objections, as all technologies can be used intelligently.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid