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.'"

Comments

What I loved about the net..

[TheDick]

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

Re:What I loved about the net..

[mboedick]

I too remember the days when sites were distinguished mostly by what they had to say and what content they offered instead of who has the prettiest graphics or the coolest Flash.

It would also be nice if every site could drop back into that mode and still be usable, which is entirely possible using stylesheets, standards-compliant markup, etc. If I can look at a site with stylesheets and images turned off, in black Times font on battleship grey background, with blue and purple links, and the site still says something to me and gives me a reason to go there, then I know it's a worthwhile site.

You can make a fairly spiffy looking web page by starting like that and using stylesheets to add color, change fonts, and do positioning.

Like building a house and then painting it, instead of trying to build a house out of paint.

If commercialisation is running so rampant....

[Flarners]

...then why are we seeing an explosion of decidely non-corporate, distributed technologies like P2P networks and online gaming? The Web has become little more than interactive television, that's for sure, but there is so much more to the Internet than HTTP and Flash ads. P2P services are the driving force behind the adoption of DSL, Cable and other Broadband. Online gaming with Quake et al. is only "corporate-controlled" in the sense that the games are made with corporate backing; the major fun of these online games comes from the people who participate in them.

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.

Let them commercialize.

[reaper20]

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.

Increased passivity of the Net's population

[cthugha]

the early days when [the Internet] was a place for researchers at universities and governments to talk about their professions, hobbies and other interests with little interference from lawyers or corporate executives...disputes are often over gray areas...that courts rarely get to resolve because fans back down first.

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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