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The Internet Power Grab
Maple Syrup writes: "Fast Company has an interesting article written by John Ellis about the power shift on the Internet, as large corporate interests use political means to take over what had been a populist medium. The most interesting material comes at the end: 'There are no grass-roots efforts on the Web. The Internet army, which is enormous, hasn't been engaged or conscripted.'"
...and it's called the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
They are currently active in fighting the DMCA and Fritz Hollings' efforts regarding the CBDTPA, and lots more worthwhile stuff. I'd recommend you check out their site and get involved in any way you can...
:wq
So now the RBOCs and ILECs sweep up the pieces for virtually nothing, and consolidate the landscape. This was obvious years ago.
Add the hegemony of the likes of Disney and Microsoft, and their political champions/marionettes, and we're all set for high-priced enslaved mediocrity!
Can you say Palladium? I know you can!
"Just a spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go dowwwwwwnnnnnn...."
The internet grass movement is called the open source movement. We're bigger than corporations and we're bigger than governments.
If anyone thinks they're conscripting me, I'll move to some other Internet in protest.
Who would provide hosting services to the majority of the people out there? Who would provide them with software that they can actually use? Sorry boys, but most free software is a POS for the average user. Mozilla and OpenOffice are the exceptions, not the rule. Who would provide the bandwidth? The hardware you use? Who would let you buy stuff online that you couldn't get locally?
The real question is, how far should corporations be protected? The answer is no more than they are offline. A DDoS should be treated with no more severity than throwing a brick through a window during peak hours. The existing copyright statutes were plenty for prosecuting infringers. It isn't illegal to teach someone how to make an explosive, it is to tell them how to use it if your goal is nefarious. Thus there is no logical, let alone ethical, reason to outlaw academic research on copy restriction systems. That research actually benefits copyright holders because it makes them more informed customers.
I will say right now and get it over with WE ARE NOT AT WAR WITH ALL OF CORPORATE AMERICA!!!! The enemy is each and every copyright cartel in the country and those that wield their patents against us. You want to worry about an economic issue (Americans) worry about Bush's hypocrisy. Subsidize American corporations to the tune of $100B a year then protect them from foreign subsidized corporations. We do it, they do it. Corporate protection is about securing votes, not good capitalism. Remember kids, your friends at the LP oppose the DMCA and while the EFF is nice and all, it isn't trying to get people elected to remove that kind of bullshit from the USC. If this kind of issue really bothers you all, vote for the LP. It isn't pissing in the wind if they don't get elected in the next few cycles. The longer they keep getting on the ballot, the more people will see their name. If you vote for a lesser evil, you are still voting for evil. Remember that in the next election cycle (which is IIRC 2 months from now for many of us).
As I am doing with Mattel, fighting back to make sure they are stung enough that they won't try with others. I hope that other companies that think about the same and realize that no matter how big they are, they cannot step on the rights of individuals.
Fight Spammers!
One of the biggest grassroots movement right now is run by Voice of Webcasters, who're running a campaign to save Internet Radio by sending one million faxes to Congress. It would be a shame to see a fledging technology like Internet Radio go to /dev/null. If you truly care about Internet Radio technology, I urge you to send a free fax to Congress right now. The US House of Representatives go on Summer Recess on July 26th, while the Senate goes August 2nd. If we don't do anything now, a LOT of non-commercial and small Internet Radio stations will be gone by September!
Even if you don't listen to Net Radio now, you might in the future. Sending a free fax doesn't cost you anything, apart from two minutes of your time.
So I urge you. Please. Prove this article wrong. Show that the grassroots movement is definitely still there.
Same thing happens in real life. Consider small settlements with only a few people and a single general store. As the town grows the number of stores increase until big consumer interests see a profitable market. Then WalMart steps in and is soon followed by McDonalds, etc.
Sure these large stores (and web sites) drive the mom and pop shops out of business, but the reason for that is they can afford lower prices with a greater selection. The real problem is after all the competition is gone, they can raise prices to whatever they want.
P2P file-sharing networks might keep prices in check, but only for those who consider them competition (such as Listen.com). The xIAAs still consider them unlawful enemies of capitalism and are attempting to legislate them out of existence. Hopefully it will have as much success as Prohibition.
A steaming cup of soykaf would be real wiz right now.
Everyone knows that the Internet is moving from free to fee. So why isn't the Internet army fighting back?
..and they never will be. People need to EAT. (When is this everything-free fantasy going to go away? IT DOESN'T EXIST!!)
Because for all the yelping and whining, they realize, like everyone else, that bandwidth and "content" (I hate that term) are NOT free, and that giving away a product is an inherently flawed business model that will cost jobs and good products.
People who want everything for free are indirectly supporting a minimum-wage, no-opportunity society where the only companies allowed to make money are those who charge for Internet access.
Want to see some of the cool sites/businesses on the Internet succeed? Great! BUY SOMETHING AND QUIT WHINING ABOUT HOW EVERYTHING ISN'T FREE!
Votes with dollars sometimes count just as much as votes with voices or ballots when it comes to the economy.
And so the end of free content nears.
There was never "free" content. It was just donated. "Free" content is only free if your time is worth nothing.
calls it "the counterrevolution": mature companies in mature categories striking back at Silicon Valley technology and the pricing-power collapse that it implies.
And they are doing this with employment and B2B purchasing *at least* as much as they are with on-line customers.
Their efforts are meeting with considerable success.
For now.
in the future ( through Internet-Protocol telephony ), all voice calls would be free.
No, they would be less expensive, and paid to someone else.
Voice calls are still not free.
but it is a measure of Hollywood's clout that California senator Dianne Feinstein -- formerly the mayor of San Francisco -- has cosponsored it.
Huh? She's a democrat senator from the state where Hollywood is. Hello? McFly?
may well pass both houses of Congress. That's real power.
Which is well-balanced by a certain pen at the other end of Pennsylvania avenue, and a gavel or three around the corner.
These days, their business depends on it.
What business? I thought everything was free?
Basic Rule of the Internet: Bandwidth is not free. Therefore content is not free. Period.
The Internet will continue to change business until it is totally dissimilar to what it is today. It will provide opportunity on a scale unimaginable 20 years ago for people to start and grow their own businesses, PROVIDED those who are served by those businesses participate without the incessant whining about having to fork over/cough up/shell out/plunk down a few dollars here and there.
It's a classic pattern of economics that the big businesses will move in and take over the Internet over the next few years. Economic boom-bust cycles for new technologies follow the pattern of: Innovation, Growth Boom, Shakeout, Maturity Boom.
The Innovation phase happened when the Internet first gained the attention of commercial interests (I'm not saying that this is technological innovation). The Growth Boom happened during the late 1990's. Lots of small companies try lots of different things. The Internet growth boom was particularly excessive and lots investments were made in nonsense ideas, and the feeding frenzy started feeding on itself.
These poor investments and hair-brained schemes lead to the Shakeout phase (which we are presently in), and the crap is washed away. But, not all is crap, and the good ideas and technologies survive the shakeout.
After the Shakeout comes the Maturity Boom, where the good ideas that survives from the Growth Boom come to fruition and are adopted by the survivors, which tend to be large businesses. This is a consolidation phase, and you can expect the large-caps to be throwing their weight around, and we will enter this phase sometime soon. Since large businesses aren't particularly innovative, they resort to heavy-handed tactics to consolidate power.
These economic patterns repeat at micro and macro levels.
How about EFF? 2600? ACLU? No shortage of organizations: most of us agree with them, do you donate to them?
That's exactly the drawback to entities like the EFF, though; the ways in which one can get involved are usually limited to writing out a check, which is certainly useful but hardly motivational. And in no way will it rally the troops in the way Mr. Ellis seems to desire here.
(Mandatory disclaimer: I have tremendous respect for, and am greatly indebted to, the EFF. They perform a great service for this entire community on a daily basis and I'm not questioning their goals or motives. Just worndering aloud whether or not they fit the definition of a "grass-roots" movement into which the "internet army" could be actively conscripted.)
So while it's great to have rallying cries like this FastCompany article, perhaps what we really need are a few ramparts on which we can all stand, wave flags, and yell somewhat threatening slogans in French. Help me out here, folks. That is to say, in addition to all this writing -- either a checks to foundations or letters to government reps, what we really need are some good old-fashioned symbolic activities that, while not incredibly effective on their own, serve to get a large segement of a population involved in and excited about a movement on a personal level.
A perfect example, in my mind, would be the wartime "victory gardens" found in U.S. backyards during the first half of the 20th century.
So... any suggestions?
P.S. - Pardon any typos. Sliced my right hand on a piece of case metal while slotting a card this morning, so I'm down to pecking at keys with the left. Please mod this at (-1, Klutz) accordingly.
Date: Mon, 15 Jul 2002 11:40:47 -0400
From: Declan McCullagh
To: politech@politechbot.com
Subject: FC: Public Knowledge hopes to turn geeks into, well, geektivists
X-URL: Politech is at http://www.politechbot.com/
Bring in the geeks
By Declan McCullagh
July 15, 2002, 4:00 AM PT
WASHINGTON--Gigi Sohn hopes that geeks have become so enraged by recent anti-piracy schemes that they'll finally want to fight back.
The 40-year old lawyer, head of the Public Knowledge nonprofit group here, plans to recruit ragtag band of technophiles and train them to become a corps of effective political activists on the Internet front.
To Sohn, this means seizing on widespread discontent created by the attempts of Hollywood and the music labels to curtail file-swapping networks while promoting sweeping new anti-copying laws and standards.
E-mail campaigns are easily ignored, and transforming online ire into effective political action is hardly a trivial task.
Geek armies have always been eager to vent in online forums and clog the e-mail inboxes of errant congressional types. As far back as 1995, over 50,000 peeved Netizens signed an electronic petition slamming the Clinton administration's privacy-invasive Clipper Chip.
[...]
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What isn't from Declan's post to politech is that Gigi has already raised $1.1M.
At last, we have the chance to work with something with at least the possibility of success.
No, $1.1M isn't enough so we can afford to sit on her asses and let her solve the problems for us. It's only a start. We're going to have to put our own time and effort into this or we won't be making a living in high-tech in the USA.
Will she spend the money she's raised on the heavy artillery we need to back up our grassroots efforts and make them effective? (fax servers, ad purchases, campaign contributions, a top-bracket political lobbyist, political consultants, etc.) We'll see.
The good news is that if those of us trying to make a living at high-tech do get in and pitch and Public Knowledge does the right things, we might wind up with our own lobbying organization line NRA and AARP, and we'll never have to worry about politicians not listening to us again.
Tech Public Policy stuff
We have to stop saying: The Internet should be free as in beer, and start designing, specing and implementing payment mechanisms. They should be implemented in "our" browsers, and who knows, perhaps it could be a "killer app" that breaks MS monopoly.
Employee of Inrupt, Project Release Manager and Community Manager for Solid
Scorecards can also list Who is donating to the Congress critters and the people running against them, and how much they given each of the people running. Federal law requires that donation lists be made public, so it's just a matter of gathering the data, putting it in one place, and making sure as many people as possible know where it is by posting it on sites like /.
Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est
I got PD/Freeware stuff for my amiga, I dont think people will ever stop making freely available software.
How will you be able to make it if you can't afford a computer that will run it? How do you know that it won't cost 20 times more to get a "developer's computer" that can run binaries that have not been approved by the computer vendor? This is already the situation with the Xbox and GameCube, and it's pretty close to the situation with the PS2 (that is, until somebody reverses the I/O subsystem).
Scene: Computer store of the future.
Personal computer that runs only signed binaries: $500.
Personal computer that runs unsigned binaries: $10,000.
Tools for signing binaries: $1,000,000.
Look on Bill Gates's face once his company wields its DRM OS patent to control the entire industry: Priceless.
There are some things money can't buy. U.S. Senators aren't one of them.
Will I retire or break 10K?
There are plenty of organizations, the problem is clout. Of the three you mentioned, only the ACLU has any real clout in DC and thus far have been unwilling to take up our cause. What really needs to happen is a a true lobby group needs to be formed. One that is staffed by people who know how the system works and isn't afraid to walk into a politicians office with a $100,000 dollar campaign donation and list of demands. Yes its unethical, yes it sickens me to think about it, but it is the way things get done in DC, like it or not.
"Our products just aren't engineered for security,"
-Brian Valentine,VP in charge of MS Windows Development
This parallels the history of radio in the late twenties and early thirties.
Broadcast radio was pioneered by universities, amateurs, and visionary entrepreneurs. It started out as a sort of friendly enterprise. In fact, in the early days of broadcast radio, it was normal practice for radio stations to keep their transmitters off for one (randomly selected) day each week in order to make it easier for listeners to receive more distant stations.
Basically the Communications Act of 1934 represented a victory for the commercial interests.
The "educational" licenses that still exist at the low end of the FM dial are the bone that was thrown to the noncommercial interests.
"How to Do Nothing," kids activities, back in print!
Our Congressmen and Senators need to hear from us. They don't read Slashdot, so us preching only to each other does no good. The best way to get their attention is with a fax. Unlike e-mail, a fax is tangible, and not going to just be killed by a spam filter, or easily ignored. Unlike snail mail, fax gets there quickly. Want your Congressmen and Senators to hear your thoughts? Fax them.
The Uncoveror: It's the real news.
Mention Disney to most people and the first thing that will pop in their heads is lovable cartoons. They associate the word "Disney" with wholesome family entertainment. Most people will consider being associated with Disney as being a good thing.
When you call Fritz the "Senator from Disney" some geeks might get the message, but a hell of more people will get this message "The Senator is for family entertainment" and is something that will help him far more than hurt him.
Put the right spin on it. Point out that Fritz is spending a hell of a lot of time representing the intrests of an out of state company that made big donations to him instead of representing the intrests of the people who elected him.
There are only 6 Senators who can claim they are representing the intrests of the people in their state when they back Media Companies, the ones from California, New York, and Tennessee. If you don't live in one of these 3 states you have a damn good reason to make representating out of state intrests into a campaign issuse.
Quemadmodum gladius neminem occidit, occidentis telum est
I'm trying to figure out if this is the same John Ellis, cousin of George W. Bush, who misreported election 2000 for FoxNews?
I can't find any confirmation as he appears to be trying to hide his history, but the tone of the article, and the subjects of his other comments seems to point to that conclusion.
Reading the column it seems to be a case of someone trying to manipulate people by playing off their hot buttons. It's pretty standard political boilerplate opinion column. Reading through his blog I see a variety of the same.
Anyway, I guess the point is, it's good to know whose opinion it is you are reading. This certainly appears to be the same John Ellis, and I personally would not trust him to have my interests in mind.
The big problem with representative democracy has finally become apparent to even the most distracted and deluded (Americans): Your representatives are for sale, highest bidder wins. Been true for the past 200+ years, still true now. Need to bone up on that history, Homer.
Here's a clue: The power in America resides with those who control the law making process _and_ have control of the means to enforce the laws, that is, fine, lock up, or kill.
The phrase should read, "Of the people, by the government, for the big business interests" which seems much more accurate of our historical reality. The really, truely sad thing is this has been true for so long and folks just don't want to acknowledge it.
Another phrase comes to mind which could be more accurately modified: "Those who ignore history are screwed."
Ancient Greece, representative democracy. Rome, representative democracy for most of its existence. Ever wonder why the representative democracy types get so rankled when direct democracy is discussed? Have a clue yet? Ever wonder why those great states died even with the supposed strength of democracy? Here's a hint: The word "corruption."
Wake up, time to get a clue!
Sorry if I sound sarcastic, it's not my intent here.
Everything in the Universe sucks: It's the law!
In an area that I follow, access to financial data, Edgar Online bought up most of the other services that reprocessed and indexed SEC filings, such as FreeEdgar. Then they introduced pay services and mandatory registration, moving away from a service funded by DoubleClick ad revenue. They're still losing money, and their stock is down from a high of around $20 to $1.71 today. The free services that compete with them, including mine, are doing fine.
The article mentions a service that charges for online access to baseball game audio feeds. If that thing makes money, I'd be surprised. If it has more than a few thousand paying customers, I'd be surprised. Major League Baseball as an organization has been in financial trouble recently. This sounds like a "maybe we can make some extra cash on the Internet" thing.
Charging for marginal content on the Internet seems to just be a phase companies go through right before they go bankrupt.
No, 4. If Hollywood had a large rock on it, SoCal would go through a moderate recession.
WHAT HAPPENS TO THE CALIFORNIA ECONOMY IF SILICON VALLEY GOES OUT OF BUSINESS?
The difference... the entertainment industry knows that their only hope of preserving their business model is via buttering up Congress.
Now try explaining this to Jerry Sanders of AMD, for instance.
The high-tech industries have only started to figure out that what happens in DC affects all of us, and they're hoping they can spend a little money on conventional lobbying to straighten this all out.
Perhaps, say, Apple will get the idea when they suddenly realize that the only way they can legally manufacture computers the rest of the world will buy will be to move to anywhere but the USA... as they start scouting real estate in Canada and Ireland.
What's needed is a mass movement backed by serious corporate money from the people CBDTPA will hit hardest. Though in fact, if such a mass movement is to be effective, we're going to have to match the corporate donations out of our own pockets AND actually get off our butts and participate... when the mail from the mailing lists gets to us, click the URLs and send the faxes to Congress... when we're asked to volunteer to work in campaigns of people we despise who vote right on Hollywood control of technology, get out from in front of our computers and GO.
Your choices?
Tech Public Policy stuff
See http://www.stand.org.uk/weblog/archive/2002/06/ind ex.php for details of how a UK group successfully mobilised over a thousand people to fax their MPs (members of parliament). This was in response to an extension of the government's surveillance powers (including who you are calling, faxing, emailing, and which URLs you visit) to a huge range of agencies include local government, the food standards agency, etc. The government tried to do this without debate or new legislation, which is possible through the RIP Act - however, that was made law with much discussion of the need to track criminals and terrorists, which is not exactly something that local government and food standards people are concerned with...
This mobilisation took just one week, and was incredibly effective - the use of fax means that the MPs treat it like a letter. My MP has sent me two letters in reply and followup, including the weasel words sent out by the government after they completely backed down.
See also www.faxyourmp.com, which makes faxing your MP as easy as sending an email - very, very smart idea to bypass the way that email is sometimes perceived by MPs as 'too easy to send, so not worth reading'. And every MP reads faxes even if they don't have an email address...