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Web Thinkers Warn of Culture Clash
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."
That's strange, considering the first company I ever bought internet from was a co-operative.
Seems to me the big-business internet was either developed on the backs of smaller companies, or was developed as smaller companies grew up.
If you could be told what you can see or read, then it follows that you could be told what to say or think - BoC
The article doesn't go into much detail about the discussions, and leaves a lot of questionable assertions dangling. For example, the claim that "Going too far one way would restrict freedom of choice, while the opposite could foster organized crime." The more you restrict freedom of choice, the more actions become criminal. And doesn't organize crime really take a foothold when undue restrictions are imposed upon the masses? The Prohibition in the United States is/was a pretty stark example.
That aside, check out the conference website for a full list of the subjects they're covering. You might also be interested in reading an interesting report from the US National Research Council and Eric Schmidt (the CEO of Google) about how the Internet is growing up, so to speak.
as governments try to exert control and businesses look to maximize profits.
Since when have governments not been trying to exert control and businesses not looking to maximise profits? This difference between upload/ download speed only comes into play when you go to anything above a 56k modem. For most internet users won't even know there's a difference in speed between the two as they hardly ever upload things.
Video Game cheats, hints a
NOIE never "got it" during the Internet boom days of 1999 and 2000, and it's clear they still don't "get it" now.
To them, it's all about money. Screw privacy so people can actually keep their personal information private. Screw authentication so your friend knows it's actually you're they're talking to. When you've got a religious zealot like Senator Richard Alston running a liberal, freewheeling, abstract, technical and artistic portfolio like Communications, Information Technology and the Arts, you're doomed to failure. At every turn, with regards to policy and proposed legislation is the shadowy hand of religious zealotry and fear - "close it down, lock it up, throw away the key, because only the heathens do it" sort of mentality.
Online gambling is the obvious example, with "content regulation" (aka censorship) being the other.
It should be no surprise that the NOIE representative is there pushing the out of touch, out of place, out of money approach.
Thank goodness NOIE got a swift kick in the pants at the last Federal Budget.
When they finally die, they will not be missed.
I think I'm still going to have to disagree with you on this point. ICQ was developed, as my memory serves, by a company called Mirabillis. AOL bought them, and for whatever reason, never merged ICQ in with their product, AIM. Some features have shown up that didn't used to be there, like multiple users in the same chat session, etc., but the only thing that's keeping them apart at this point is the whims of AOL. (although some could say they're dealing with the problem by making ICQ increasingly more crapulent, but I've not used it in years. Couldn't say.)
If your argument is to hold true, the whole situation is self-defeating. Either the gateway services are to cater to the lowest common denominator, or they aren't going to work. If they don't work, they fail. If they don't support every stupid addition to every possible client/protocol, they fail.
I'd also like to point out that analogies still suck. I've had a swiss army knife for years. Works great. Does what I need it to. (mainly, it cuts stuff, has a screwdriver, and keeps me from having to open cans with my teeth).
Wait a second....you're against standards because they mean less choice for the user? Are you on crack? The idea of having a standard is all about choice: it means that you aren't forced into using one tool just because it's the only one that supports feature X. Say we've got a standard, like "For every instant message, the format is a 32-byte 'From' field, a datestamp, and the rest is message until you reach a null terminator". Now as a user, this doesn't mean a whole lot, except that you know that any client that follows this standard will work with the rest of the instant messaging user community, at which point you start picking the client based on whether or not they think you should see ads on your contact list, or how well they manage those contacts, or if they're prone to crashing every ten minutes, or if the servers they talk to are prone to being unreachable every ten minutes, etc. All the other bells and whistles get embedded between the datestamp and the terminator. Want HTML formatting, include it. Think XML is the one true instant message format? use it. But just like email clients, you would do yourself a service by being less noisy, but HTML mail continues to annoy email users worldwide, and most of the people sending it are too clueless to get it, so it continues....
Whoa. Where the hell did that come from, and for that matter, what the hell does it have to do with anything? Where is it written that if we try to create an instant messaging standard, we'll never get a standard in cable/dsl rates? In fact, why should we have a standard in transfer rates on those media above what already exists? (What, you think they got this shit working out of sheer dumb luck? Everybody reinvents the wheel for every cable provider or dsl-providing-telco? There's plenty of standarization on that stuff.)
The problem in this market is a lack of competition. How are we supposed to show our disgust with artificial bandwidth caps if we don't have any other choice in the market?
-transiit
Companies are indeed inhibiting innovation y limiting upstream bandwidth, but I think this is just an unintentional result of certain technical decisions they made when setting up their network. When bandwidth is limited, downstream has always (remember 1200/75 modems?) been favoured over upstream, and rightly so, as the majority of people pull in more than they send out.
What I see as far more detrimental to consumers becoming producers, is all the limitations ISP's place on their services. Again, all in the name of bandwidth preservation, but in this case they are far less subtle. Things like not giving fixed IP addresses, port blocking, not allowing people to run services, not allowing people to hook up multiple computers. All these are examples of ISPs meddling with how you use the bandwidth they sell, and prevent you from becoming a publisher as well as a comsumer.
I'm glad my ISP is one that provides me with bandwith, and nothing else. Barring a few provisions about not using my account for spam or resell the bandwidth, and a (generous) monthly data allowance, I am free to do whatever the hell I want with my connection.
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...
I'll match your cynicism, ac, and raise you a postmodern loss of identity. In fact you don't need tech literacy in order to express your views on the web, or usenet, or in listserves. And in many places, you don't even need to own a computer to get online and post your opinions. On the internet talk is cheap. Now, Vint Cerf, as reported in the Post article, argues that asymetric bandwidth is a threat to free expression and the ideal of open communication. In the present this is a real concern, but if recent history is any guide, then in the end I imagine video and audio will be as cheap and easy as talk. The real threat to liberty in that case will be the fracturing of dissent and the inability to form any organized opposition to power and its abuses. Power will hide itself in spectacle and the bogosity of the event even more effectively than it does through the mass media of Western democracies. As voices on cnn become indistinguishable from goatcx trolls, equally obnoxious and anonymous, communcition loses its emancipatory and critical functions. It ceases to mean. And what greater social disenfranchisement is there than to speak in a voice that has ceased to mean? This is the role the media giants, in cahoots with a self-appointed [and usurptatious] technocratic elite, have written for themselves: Their project is to engineer the sound of the free marketplace of ideas so that no individual voice can be heard. For evidence of this, look to the proposed collaboration of Verizon and MSN, or, more metaphorically (and therefore, some would say, more truly) listen to Britney Spears and N-Sync. Download an mp3 and really listen. Indeed speech on the internet has been less than egalitarian up till now, but in the near future these early years will seem to have been utopian.
I'm currently running Gaim (a Linux/X/Gtk client originally developed for AIM compatibility) which uses a plugin system to connect to several competing IM servers (ICQ, AIM, MSN, Napster etc.) - as far as I can see, Trillian is its Windows equivalent (I don't know which came first).
The Gaim developers have stopped working on their ICQ plugin, because the same protocol ("Oscar") and server (login.oscar.aol.com port 5190) will work for both services, and their AIM plugin has expanded to have full ICQ functionality - you just fill in an ICQ number and password rather than an AIM screenname and password.
AIM and ICQ still don't seem to interoperate - I'm not sure whether this is a Gaim-ism or an AOL problem, but sending a message from my ICQ account to my AIM account (or vice versa) fails.