Web Profits in the Gutter

The New York Times has an article about the web's one true growth industry: spam, fraud and porn. Societal meltdown or flourishing ecosystem? The talking heads debate.

Comments

Funny

[GigsVT]

Funny because I heard on NPR a couple days ago that "e-commerce was having a great year". I guess it all depends on who you ask, and if the person you ask had a bullshit business model to start with.

Leave it to the New York Times ...

[radicalsubversiv]

... to write an articulate article, with lots of sweeping claims from important-sounding people, which doesn't really offer much to substantiate its claims.

In some ways, I wish the "cyberspace" notion had never been introduced, because it furthers bad analogies like these, comparing the net to a geographical neighborhood, which has apparently become a red-light district.

The reality, of course, is that the internet is a communication medium, not a neighborhood, and the apparently-proliferating number of sleazy businesses making use of it proves very little. Sure, you can make money selling fake penis-enlargement pills at a $57 markup, so long as you can find suckers (although I do admit being a bit surprised that there are so many of them).

Brewster Kahle is right on point, even if his thoughts are buried in the article:

Brewster Kahle, who has created a large Internet archive he calls the Wayback Machine, which contains several times the amount of information in the Library of Congress, said that the number of questionable sites is beside the point so long as search engines do their job.

"We don't worry about how many pages that I don't care about are in the Internet archive," he said. "What you do care about is, `Does it have the pages that I want?' "

Now if only the NY Times would stop running articles about the supposed decline of electronic "civil society," and start commentataing on the actual decline of actual civil society. Or, heaven forbid, the sleazy nature of elected officials and their corporate benefactors.

Re:Changing Times

[Pig Hogger]

I remember when the first talk of web-based shops were on the cards. They were saying it was the 'High Street' stores that would lose profits and business...

Remember the story about the shopping mall who prohibited stores from posting URLs???

The Biggest and Most Forgotten Use

[GroundBounce]

Three years ago, the internet (the web in particular) was hyped into being the biggest change to society since the printing press.

Obviously most of the hype has not materialized. Although it does make some money for some people, the web has basically returned to what it was in the first place: a massive and highly efficient facilitator of information exchange. Much of this is business to business and is behind the scenes, but some of it, such as email, eclectic news sites, file sharing, and software distribution are in public view. Probably 90% of the non-computer-geeks that I know use the web for little more than email, reading news, and occasional shopping. And much of the shopping is from retailers that also have a brick-and-morter establishment.

Probably the biggest single effect of the internet is that more non-mainstream information reaches more people than ever before. This primarily non-economic use has been the major revolution brought about by the web. Although porn and spam are more prevalent than they used to be, they were always there, even before the big web hype bubble.

then proove it

[Rev.LoveJoy]

You know, I registered at NYT about 18 months ago using an aliased address (similar to MyName--NYTStuff@mydomain.com). I have yet to get one spam at this address though it continues to be valid.

Furthermore, I do not even get NYT type spam at this address ("sign up for our premium content" and so forth).

Rather than idle accusations, does anyone have any proof of this accusation I hear so many peddling?

Cheers,
-- RLJ

Re:Nothing changes...

[chill]

My mistake. The "erotic stories" is unsubstantiated and rumored. Gutenberg was under heavy financial pressure and did print calendars and other popular items. Erotic stories were one of the rumored "popular" items.

As far as making sense considering the place and time? How do you figure?

The Bible was certainly controversial and dangerous. Remember, the Catholic church not only had an army, they used it. Private study of the Bible was HERESY punishable by excommunication and death -- porn was a minor offense. The Archbishop of Nassau had troops invade Maniz (sp?) looking for "Gutenberg" Bibles.