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Web Thinkers Warn of Culture Clash

Posted by Hemos on from the battle-of-the-titans-like-see dept.

Passacaglia writes "The Washington Post is carrying an article describing some stimulating discussion from the Internet Society meeting this week, including comments from Vinton Cerf, Eric Schmidt, about the clash between freedom and commercial interests."

5 of 121 comments (clear)

  1. There's no clash by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    You want freedom, we want to sell it to you.

  2. Culture of openness by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The medium which we affectionately refer to as "the internet" never had a culture of openness. It is a technocracy. Those who operate the communication lines say what goes over them. It has always been that way and those who have differing views of what the network should be used for have experienced how far from open that situation can be. The problem is not so much that "freedom of the press belongs to those who own the press", it is that very few own a press, metaphorically speaking.

  3. Bandwidth is the key by The+Cat · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Companies are inhibiting innovation, Cerf said, by letting users receive information faster than they can send it.

    This is the most important statement in the article. Bandwidth is the main component of every Internet policy discussion. Upstream is probably at least as important as downstream. To seperate the two significantly is an attempt to confine people to the role of consumer: i.e. "stay on the couch."

    Upstream bandwidth allows people to become *producers* too, which is a good thing(tm).

    1. Re:Bandwidth is the key by Gryffin · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "Companies are inhibiting innovation, Cerf said, by letting users receive information faster than they can send it."

      There's an old saying: "Freedom of the press only applies to those who own one." Besides the issue of bandwith limits, most broadband ISPs block ports 21 and 80, and specifically prohibit running any sort of server, i.e., publishing on the web.

      George Orwell's "1984" got one thing wrong: it's industry, not the government, that's now playing the role of Big Brother. In the US at least, this makes sense; the government is bound (well, to some degree) by the Constitution; corporations have no such limits on their behavior.

      With fewer and fewer corporations controlling more and more of our lives, and with huge profits to apply towards influencing government policy, is it any wonder we're heading towards Dystopis, Inc.?

      --
      Learn from the mistakes of others. You won't live long enough to make them all yourself.
  4. Re:::sigh:: by transiit · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Trying to force AIM and ICQ to conform to a standard is like trying to force ham radio companies and phone companies to conform to a standard.
    You do understand that AIM and ICQ are both products of AOL, right?
    I think it's become apparent through the efforts of Jabber, Trillian, etc. that the technological side of getting interoperability between the networks isn't impossible. The problem is companies such as AOL changing their protocol whenever they feel threatened.
    -transiit