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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.
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
>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!
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.
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.