Industry Threatened by Innovation at the 'Edge'?

penciling_in writes "In an article on CircleID, Bob Frankston, best known as the co-developer of the legendary VisiCalc and Lotus Express, shares his concern regarding industries desperate effort to control 'the edge' -- VoIP, P2P, Video on Demand... 'The commoditization of the transport is making it increasingly difficult to make money just because you own the pipe. The cable industries have a long history of owning the content and demanding a share in companies whose signals they deign to carry. As gatekeepers they have the ability to command a high fee for passage. The problem is that the scarcity is going away and with the shift to narrowcasting (as in Video on Demand) there is no scarcity. Instead they must own the content themselves if they are to retain any advantage. The Comcast/Disney issue (see: Comcast Family Protects Power) is portrayed as a media consolidation and convergence but that doesn't make sense. With transport becoming increasingly abundant it is easier for new players to enter the market and we should see increasing divergence once millions of people can experiment with new ideas.'"

Comments

common sense people

[Shakrai]

regarding industries desperate effort to control 'the edge'

He forgot to mention RIAA/MPAA's attempts to control the very way we can use their products after we legally purchase and pay for them.

Why don't these companies wake up and realize the paradigms have changed? It's not like there isn't ample opportunity to make money with the new technology. Why stick to the failing methods of yesteryear?

Re:common sense people

[rholliday]

Profitable industries and large conglomerates suffer from insane amounts of inertia. Thank that these days there's the mitigating factor of elements like the open source community to force innovation in the their staid business models.

Too bad half the time they end up just stealing the ideas, though ... :)

Re:common sense people

[stiggle]

You mean in the same way that ANY copyright holder controls the way we use their product after the legally obtain the right to use it?

The FSF attempts to control the way I can use the source code of GPL programs I obtain in the same way that the RIAA attempts to control their artists copyrighted materials.

If you don't like the licensing - then don't use the product. No one forced you to buy that Spice Girls CD! :-)

Re:common sense people

[Ed Avis]

Why don't these companies wake up and realize the paradigms have changed? It's not like there isn't ample opportunity to make money with the new technology. Why stick to the failing methods of yesteryear?

They are adapting to new technologies, and that is the problem. Under the 'failing methods of yesteryear', you would buy a record and then be able to play it when and where you wanted, subject to copyright law's restrictions on public performance. When you'd listened to it enough you could sell it to a secondhand record shop, or maybe even donate it to a library.

What the record / movie companies would like to do is to use new technologies to stop all that. They are moving with the times, just not in the way that you would like. Progress is not always a good thing.

Re:common sense people

[Jim Starx]

The FSF attempts to control the way I can use the source code of GPL programs I obtain in the same way that the RIAA attempts to control their artists copyrighted materials.

How in the world is "we gave you this for free, you have to extend that same curtesy to others" even in the same ballpark as "you are not allowed to safeguard your property, if it breaks you'll just have to buy it from us again"...??

Both are control's, that much is true. But that's like comparing a murderer with a firefighter just because both wield an axe. CD's don't come with a license agreement that says you can do this... you can't do this... you can do this under these circumstances... etc. The FSF uses licenses which are openly available to read before you use the product, the RIAA uses legal mauvering and threats after the fact and it uses those techniques to control actions that have been determined by law to be legal! If I want to make a copy of my cd in case the original gets scratched it's my right to do that and when I bought that CD I damn sure never agreed to a license that said I couldn't.

More generic article of him

[Reinout]

He's got a more generic article about what he means with "edge". It looks to have a bit more generic reading value than the article referenced here on slashdot.

Reinout

Hrmm

[acehole]

When new technologies appear and make things more convinent, someone who was making money off the older technology loses out. Some companies want to simply protect their revenue without either pre-empting the change in technology or changing after a new technology has been adopted by the mainstream.

If VoIP became mainstream, how many telephone companies would go bankrupt? how many would fight tooth and nail to implement measures that would ensure that they got a piece of the pie?

Re:Hrmm

[sql*kitten]

how many would fight tooth and nail to implement measures that would ensure that they got a piece of the pie?

You raise an interesting point: the only way an entrenched technology can fight innovation is if its supporters can get a government to intervene on its behalf. If government can be kept from interfering in the market, the best (in terms of cost/benefit ratio) technology will always win in the end.

Re:Hrmm

[tanveer1979]

If VoIP became mainstream, how many telephone companies would go bankrupt? how many would fight tooth and nail to implement measures that would ensure that they got a piece of the pie?

Not only that, in India VoIP is mostly illegal(you cannot connect to PSTN). This has come about because the telephone companies can bribe the Govt, and Govt also does not want VoIP coz it will mean lost revenue to state own telecom mammoth BSNL which has more than 100 Million Subscibers.

It is a classic case of corrupt govt and greedy industry screwing the consumer

Re:Hrmm

[madfgurtbn]

Why should a *monopoly* need superbowl ads and an army of salespeople, anyways?

That's the point. They are losing their monopoly. That means they are no longer going to be able to collect monopoly rents.

When the telephone and cable tv monopolies were granted in your locality, it was based on the idea that it would be inefficient to build more than one phone system and more than one cable system in your locality. Now the cable system is just another TCP/IP network and the phone system is just another TCP/IP network.

What happens when the phone company sells video and the cable system sells voip? Worse yet (from the corporate perspective), what happens when the end users realize their cable (or satellite) tv, cell phone, home phone, etc., are really just nodes on the internet and begin to treat them as such? What happens when big bandwidth, omnipresent and too-cheap-to-meter wireless connectivity to the net becomes commonplace?

His analysis is akin to the design of the Internet

[ObviousGuy]

The Internet is designed such that any single network node can be obliterated and the network will continue to function by rerouting itself around the problem. Whole networks can be destroyed or otherwise cut off from the main network and the main network will still continue to function (as well, the cut off network will continue to function within itself).

This is basically his premise of how technology adjusts itself around attacks against it by industries that seek to limit it. However, what I think he fails to take into consideration is that given enough time, enough laws can be enacted that any technology that would work its way around a company's defenses would be illegal to possess or at the very least execute. We are already seeing this type of legislation coming into effect with such things as the DMCA.

The time for Artists to gather together is NOW!

[torpor]

Content-delivery ain't what it used to be. Joe Bob Basement Studio can put his mp3's in the same pipeline that Mega-Record Pimp Corp can.

The difference is, whether people will pay attention to you or not - not whether they -can- through whatever means are available, but whether they will.

At ampfea.org we've been gathering together, as a crew of Artists, to present a united front and stable base of operations for use by our individual members to use for promoting their artistic efforts.

This is the future. There's no -need- any more for media giants banded together to share/consume resources for promotion, there is now the need for Content Producers to cut through the dreck and get good material online, and deliverable. It costs nothing to promote an .mp3 track these days, far and wide, to all and sundry, and it can be done very, very, effectively.

I see the day when those 80's Golden Dreams of media control in the hands of the people is actually feasible. Lets hope we avoid some of those other predictions ...

Re:The time for Artists to gather together is NOW!

[Anonymous Coward]

There are many independant artists who are far better than anything in the RIAA stables, but there are far more producing crap.

The problem with the emerging model you're talking about is finding a way to for the end users to find music they like.

Re:The time for Artists to gather together is NOW!

[torpor]

That's what I'm saying: its not getting the material to the end-user, that is easy now in this digital age, for anyone. Its cheap. Super cheap.

The problem is, getting the attention of the end-user. There's too much other stuff going on to compete for that persons attention.

Artists banding together to solve this problem, technologically, I imagine is the worst nightmare of the Big Media Board ... but it is being solved. My fans, combined with your fans, combined with our other muso buddies fans == a massive fanbase to which we can all cross-promote together. Collectively, an Artists Group promoting to a Fan Group will result in both groups expanding in size ...

The means to do this are now in our hands, as artists. What's needed, is more artists, banding together collectively, and then doing it. There are no longer any technologically significant barriers to this problem.

Change the business model

[anandcp]

The business model of the past is changing just like Alvin Toffler predicted.
Communication will increasingly become cheaper/free. What is communicated matters more than how you communicate. So, in near future we will see a flat rate for communicating using Landline telephones, mobiles, broadband. Iam talking about convergence as people use a variety of devices to communicate and a variety of modes of communication (wired, wireless, IR, etc). The industry will fracture so fast that Verizon will be flat-footed before it can say cheese. Traditional companies can hope to survive only if they change into content providers soon.

Re:Change the business model

[El Torico]

I want to agree to this, but with a few caveats.

The costs of transmission will decrease for every new technology as it is used and matures. However, it isn't cheap to maintain a large network since it becomes less expensive, but it never becomes cheap.

Technology is only one variable; people, law, markets, etc. all have to be factored in. It isn't so easy to predict the death of an organization since it has options for staying alive that you didn't consider. As much as I don't like Verizon either (especially the old Nynex part), they have managed to stick around.

Being a content provider is no guarantee of success. There have been more than a few spectacular failures of media companies (Vivendi comes to mind as a recent one).

On a side note, I have always wondered why the 5 or 6 largest ISPs never tried to build a true cartel (aside from the law).

This is not news

[abiggerhammer]

Robert Heinlein had an interesting, if cynical, remark about how long it takes to conquer a nation. Three generations, he said, because by that time, all the people who were born under the old regime are dead.

If you look at the songwriters' attempt to shut down radio stations back in the first half of the twentieth century, there's a great deal of similarity with the current file-sharing situation. BMI, ASCAP and other licensing schemes grew out of this (and the EFF has just proposed a similar licensing scenario which would place a great deal of the (fairly light) burden on broadband ISPs, who could then offset that by raising costs slightly. Not a bad idea -- but at the same time, it's one of a very small number of times that something like this has been proposed in the last century. The old model is still perceived as viable simply because so many people see it as viable; sadly, the only thing that will finally put it to rest is time and boring effort.

Social progress, much like scientific progress, often moves forward one funeral at a time.

That's raw capitalism

[xixax]

Why is "industry" so surprised? This is what capitalism is supposed to be about; the inefficient are driven to extinction and new, more efficient players take their place. They have to take the good with the bad and shouldn't be allowed to legislate protection everytime the wind blows their way.

Xix.

Re:That's raw capitalism

[hachete]

No. Capitalism is about making money. To make money you have something someone wants. You maximise making money by being the sole supplier of that "something". In it's raw state, *any* means of making that money is seen as legitimate.

The pop-Darwinian overlay you put on it is simplistic: competition itself leads to "monopolies", even if that of species. The drive to survive will include the drive to exclude *all others* from their food-sources. In other words, winners monopolise.

In fact, monopolies abound in capitalism - in the patent market, for example. Other include the monopolies granted by King James I. A more recent example would be the shipment of ice from Connecticut to the West Indies and India in the last century. The entrepreneur involved got himself into a monopoly and made a lot of money.

I agree that the RIAA et al should not be allowed to use legislation to consolidate their position, but this is a moral view which is probably unpopular with said legislators and with the organisations - the drive to monopolise being seen as a legitimate business strategy. IMV,the role of the legislator is to ensure that the winner-takes-all Darwinian situation *does not* arise, thus avoiding the catastrophe of an industry collapsing under it's age. But that requires foresight and common-sense, and looks almost like a Planned Political economy which is probably something you hate as well.

h

Why not take capitalism into account?

[ebbomega]

My attitude on this matter so far has always been the same.

Free Market.

Face it. The music industry in its current form is dead. The only reason that they're getting away with suing people is because the government is letting them with crap like the DMCA, something I personally think was entirely developped to stunt the inevitable change of the global market.

CDs are obsolete as a distribution form. The internet is cheaper, quicker, easier. CDs used to be a marketable product: People wanted music in a decent high-quality format and CDs were the best thing available for it.

But now that's changed. CDs are no longer worth the same money that we pay for it because it has less value. So why are the governments bending over for the music industry and outright saying "I don't care what they're worth now. They were worth $20 20 years ago, they should be so now too."

When Henry Ford invented the assembly line, cars dropped radically in price. We're looking at the new economic revolution, and it's digital. An exceptionally cheap means of distibuting any digital media, be it software, music, videos or anything along the way. But the fact that it's not patentable or marketable has a lot of these now obsolete industries going crazy. Granted, the software industry always had to cope with this, and Microsoft did a great job at it by basically cramming their product down everybody's throats to the point of dependency. But the fact of the matter is that these distributors of software and data are becoming more and more obsolete the more accessible stuff is becoming through digital media.

And of course, lobbying seems to have forced the government's hand to agree with them, and so technology as we know it isn't being given the breathing room it needs to flourish, and so these companies are refusing to adapt, with disasterous results: Suing 12 year old girls, awful mediocre music giving us outright reason to stop listening to radios and stop buying CDs, buggy software with no less than 3 major worms in the last year hitting a bunch of people and making everybody pissed off with their computers (honestly. Your computer didn't do anything wrong. It did exactly what it was supposed to in that situation. Maybe next time you'll think twice before you shell out $150 to those boys in Redmond).

But of course, in this so called "Capitalist" society we're going to completely refuse the concept of the Open Market because it seems now that people will actually have to play the game of supply and demand instead of venture into Count-Zero like mafia-war tactics of Big Business. And of course we can't let that happen because... well... I can't think of any reason other than to let the rich get richer. 1984 here we come!

This is why I support open software. This is why I download my music. This is why I waste hours on the internet trying to learn as much as possible about computers. Because I ultimately want to help this world progress into something better than it is now, rather than let it perpetuate itself into staleness.

Direct purchase

[Anonymous Coward]

Imagine purchasing your shows direct from the producing company. One new copy made available per week. Mine to download and then view when I felt like it. No 'channels' or 'networks' in the traditional sense.
No adds.

Or another scenario; I live in a large city ( > 4 million). Only the very largest of companies can afford to advertise. With narrowcasting a sort of advertising model could be supported where a small business might only choose to advertise in a 2km radius - or maybe only to profiled recieptients.

Dunnno.... but things have got to get better.

AC

Re:Direct purchase

[blincoln]

Imagine purchasing your shows direct from the producing company. One new copy made available per week. Mine to download and then view when I felt like it. No 'channels' or 'networks' in the traditional sense.
No adds.

If someone were to do this with reasonably high quality (say a 300-400MB DivX file for a single 40-60 minute episode, $25 or so per "season"), I might start watching TV again.

Right now I just wait until the series I want is out on DVD and buy that. I lost my patience for commercials when broadcasters started split-screening them into the ending credits of the few shows I was still watching.

I would be willing to pay more (e.g. $30+ per season) if I could get a discount when the DVDs were released if I wanted high quality copies.

Parallels to the history of print

[kompiluj]

You might not know but the inventor of print, Gutenberg did not want to print large volumes of books - he wanted to print books that would look similar to the hand-copied ones (hence fancy font and illuminations) - see the Gutenberg bible - these were the incunabuli
He wanted to make much money. Were it not for his followers that stole his invention and started mass production of books (very similar to those we now nowadays - set up in antiqua typeface) that cheap books started to exist and made wide dissemination of knowledge possible.
If there were patents in Medieval Times, surely Gutenberg would obtain a one, and no print as we know it would be possible.

Re:Parallels to the history of print

[cmacb]

"If there were patents in Medieval Times, surely Gutenberg would obtain a one, and no print as we know it would be possible."

Don't be silly! Of course there would be print today.

The Gutenberg/RIAA (hey, maybe they'd even call it project Gutenberg) foundation would monitor it all and make sure that the "right" things were done. Your newspaper would cost $15 or so and you'd have to make sure that when you were done with it you either shredded or burned it so that nobody else could ILLEGALLY read it.

Quoting from a newpaper, book , or magazine would of course be out of the question. The Internet would represent a big threat, in fact the GRIAA would attempt to pass laws that ALL written content be on PAPER DAMMIT! and not appear on our video screens. Both Democrats and Republicans would fall all over themselves to help the GRIAA maintain law and order, after all, our laws are recorded on paper, in writing, and all of that would be property of the GRIAA. Can't afford to piss them off (and besides, Orin Hatch is no doubt an author as well as an accomplished composer and would have all sorts of personal reasons to wish that GRIAA violators would have their houses burned down).

I think things will change. When a lot of the old farts at the head of these industries (and our government) die, and probably not before. Lets hope they are all heavy smokers and drinkers. Actually I think it's a safe bet. (Except for Orin that is).

suffice it to say..

[zeruch]

...what he is saying is not new. In past eras it was the rush to vertically integrate all soup to nuts related items (and some not related items) into a single conglomerate that supposedly trumpeted the 'efficiency' of a larger player, when in fact all it really amounted to was a stock inflation that eventually sank and resulting in spinning off or eradication of units that were formerly productive entities on their own.

While written long before the issues brought up in this article, a great read about similar behavior and how it pertains to public policy is Corporations and Political Accountability by Mark V. Nadel. Personally, I like the Comcast/Disney deal, because chances are Comcast will not know how to run it and the gelatinous radioactive mess that results will cause Disney to become a footnote in entertainment history.

How about a distributed wireless network?

[Quizo69]

The problem of content and transmission today have to do with one thing - making money for someone. Everybody thinks in terms of paying for either bandwidth speed or throughput, or paying for content exclusive to one provider. This is not going to get us anywhere.

What I envision is much simpler - pay for a piece of hardware once(high speed wireless transmitter/receiver with intelligent peer routing), and then the bandwidth is not paid for by anyone, because there's no traditional infrastructure to set up. If a company would just make this type of equipment it could set free all those who currently are beholden to their ISP/cable companies for "giving" them a certain amount of bandwidth in exchange for $$$. If you make these wireless internet nodes in such a way that they auto-aggregate and reorder themselves based on surrounding nodes, you would effectively have unlimited bandwidth (to the limit of transmission tech of course) not monopolised by anyone. Much like Bittorrent, the more nodes you had, the faster it would be. Conversely, you could have high power models for remote areas to transmit/receive further.

It's a paradigm shift in thinking (since the very notion of not needing to pay constantly for access is foreign to most), and I don't have all the technical answers to this sort of idea, but surely the idea itself has merit?

Re:How about a distributed wireless network?

[coopaq]

Every geek I know dreams of this. Of course the cable that is in the ground right now is faster than the wireless technology which you propose.

While some may settle for, let's say, 10Mb/s bandwidth they get from sharing their "neighborhood" wireless connections the physical wires directly to the cable/phone/ISP will be faster due to their really expensive hardware and fiberoptics which they own. We all will have a tough time putting Cisco routers in our houses.

All of us here seem to have this otaku for wireless and free internet service so we can download our free content and free music which will all be produced for free of course.

We will find a way to live in a globalised world with more competition and commodities and a balance will be found around the monopolies we see today.

One could make the argument (easily) that our country (the US)is a monopoly and soon, if not already, we will be experiencing serious and unexpected competition which will drive many of our standards of living downward or sideways at least. It will make these industries that are threatened by the edge actually threatened more frequently and more rapidly.

Re:How about a distributed wireless network?

[ndecker]

I see one problem with a completely free network. This creates a limited resource ( by the number of nodes, ... ) that can be used by anybody as much as they want without charge. This is very much like Air. If there were no environmental regulations, every factory would blow out any dirt they can because it is a little bit cheaper for them.
In a shared wireless network there would be leechers that modify their access points to use all the bandwith of their neighbours making the network useless for others.

Re:Now I understand

[chess]

Of Course You have.

And it surely is as well for the masses of people that have the Operating System "Word" at work and the Operating System "Internet Explorer" at home.

These kind of people may be able to understand CNN.com ( TV news), eBay ( flea market) and amazon ( mail order retail).

But I seriously doubt, if they ever understand the idea behind sites like slashdot or groklaw. And I suspect they thoroughly misunderstand P2P filesharing services.

Evidence: When BMG bought Napster, I thought they'll made it a subscription service for small money and just count (on the central servers) how often which song was downloaded and then routed the income accordingly to musicians and their expenses.
But no, it was killed off.
Which lead to decentralized filesharing systems.
Seems like EFF is a little late? Or are Record Labels already distressed enough?

chess

Someone just sues you,

[Bender Unit 22]

Why try to invent anything, someone will just come up and sue you, claiming the have a patent on it.
It is much better to take an existing product and put a clock in it.

Article raises an interesting question.

[Duderstadt]

While most people are ignorant of this fact, unlimited access to the Internet requires nothing more than an access point into the global communications infrastucture.

You certainly do not need a so-called Internet Service Provider.

So, what would it take to create your own access point?

Re:Article raises an interesting question.

[ComputerSlicer23]

Hmmm, you appear to be ignorant of the facts (no disrespect). Unfettered access to the internet, is a series of red tape issues that must be traversed. You can't get service to the Internet without some type of ISP. All but the largest ISP's have a transit provider which is for all intents and purposes, their ISP.

So if you really want your own access to the Internet, where you are in control of as much as you can be without having an international network, these are the steps:

First, you have to aquire IP addresses. This used to be a relatively simple process (or so I'm told). You can either get them from the people who give you connectivity (read: your ISP).

However, you say, we don't have an ISP. So we have to go get them from the source. So, you'll have to get them from one of the regional IP providers. In this case, it'd be ARIN (in North America at least). You can pick them up for the bargin basement price of $20K for a /20 (2^12 = 4096). Oh, and part of the paperwork is to prove you'll use it all.

Actually, after poking around, I've found that is the route you have to go if you are an actual ISP. It appears you can apply directly for IP's yourself. For a /24, that'll cost $2,500, plus an additional $100/year. If you want to have the numbers be publically routable, you'll probably want an AS number ($500 initial fee, plus $100/year). You can apply for these, buy you need a pretty good reason it appears, all of which must be justified periodically on why you get to keep the IP's. Also note, that these IP's are very likely to be filtered by large ISP's, because the routing table is getting too big, so they just drop routes that are for too small a block of addresses. So there will be significant parts of the Internet that can't get to you.

Now, you have IP's reserved especially for you. However, you have to actually get get physical access to someone or something that will allow you to connect to the Internet. Most people do this by an ISP. However, that again is out in this case. So, now, you have to setup a peering agreement with someone.

Essentially, a peering agreement is a deal where several groups throw in together, and line of physical data lines to some one else on the internet. They create a Point of Presense (PoP) where that data line is terminated. Each group gets access to this PoP to get connected to the Internet at large. Now, they all agree to pay the fees associated with the lines. One of which is to pay the company that owns the line (unless they paid to have it buried). They have to pay for the physical space that houses the equipment. They also have to pay the entity at the other end of the line.

That entity is the PoP's ISP. Normally, in this case they are referred to as a "Transit Provider", as opposed to an ISP. The fees associated with this are contractually drawn up by the entity you are connecting to. Normally, it's done by the byte, or by a threshhold of bandwidth utilization.

If really big transit providers (Tier 1 ISP's) construct a peering point, generally no money changes hands. However, at this point, you are an ISP to other large ISP's, as opposed to having one.

In the end, unless you are an ISP (and have a global worldwide network), you MUST have an ISP. It might be a no frills, IP transit only arrangment. However, in the end, you must have an ISP. Unless you can convince someone who currently has access to the Internet to lop off some numbers and give them to you. However, they are still the entity providing you Transit, and in some sense are your ISP.

Where I work, we have UUNet (WorldCom) as our ISP. They are the have the single largest network in the world. They give us unfettered access to the internet, but they are still an ISP. They give us a block of 128 IP addresses, and we have T1 connectivity for about $1,200/month (roughly, between them and the phone company). Technically speaking, we setup a peering agreement with UU

that's a different topic

[sacrilicious]

He forgot to mention RIAA/MPAA's attempts to control the very way we can use their products after we legally purchase and pay for them.

It's not that he forgot, it's that this topic actually doesn't fall into the domain he's discussing. He's talking about re-conceptualizing the end-to-end substrate of the internet, and hinting at some simple technical protocols/implementations to accompany and bolster such a shift in conceptualization. The goal of this shift is to enable innovation again. This does have some similarities to the topic you suggest, but only to the extent that there are technical and legal issues, and that big companies want more money at the expense of the public... which pretty much includes just about everything.

Re:His analysis is akin to the design of the Inter

[segment]

I wouldn't even worry about the DMCA affecting any outcome of law more than I would the governments of every country trying to capitalize on which gets to control what via which regulations they want to impose. Now I know it sounds like a trollish rant, but take a look at the so called war on terror where anything that happens is automagically al Qaeda. it stirs the emotions and leads people to believe more needs to be done to fight these terrorists, hence somebody has to do something, hence the abuse of corporations, Halliburton, Bechtel, nuff said. Hear me out before you truly think I'm trolling.

Considering the gov in the US started the entire FUD based game on hackers in the mid 80's and steroided it up, what do you see now...? Let me give you an example...

• High Performance Computers and Export Control Policy: Issues for Congress
• A Primer on E-Government: Sectors, Stages, Opportunities, and Challenges of Online Governance
• Computer Attack and Cyber Terrorism: Vulnerabilities and Policy Issues for Congress

All studies pointing to the same thing read the titles... A Primer on E-Government: Sectors, Stages, Opportunities, and Challenges of Online Governance, throw that in with consortiums like CALEA, and you get a handful of companies that get to dictate what is "law" now it sounds fair but law according to whom? It the UK tried to pass their law here, Americans would be in an uproar (or too busy looking at Martha Stewart), so what makes you think other countries should/will stand for our rules. Talk about the potential for fallout.

So if you think it's about the DMCA only, or MS only, you're really short sighted. It's about anyone willing to kick up some cash for those in office. Hey one hand washes the other. And for those who don't believe or think it's some "tin foil on the head" -what you misconstrue and call - conspiracy, I suggest you look into the words perception management, cognitive dissonance on google. There are studies done daily in hopes of finding a way to make you believe whatever they'd like:

1.4. Perception management in support of Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom

With or without the OSI, the US Defense Department, State Department, and White House conducted large-scale "perception management" or "strategic influence" campaigns in support of Operations Enduring Freedom and Iraqi Freedom as well as in support of the broader war on terrorism.

...

2. Shaping the public discourse on civilian casualties: case studies from the Iraq war

In the remainder of this report, we analyze key aspects of the US public discourse on collateral damage in the Afghan and Iraqi wars, with special attention to those concepts advanced by the US defense establishment to define and explicate the issue.

Just owning the pipes counts for something...

[transporter]

I have been involved in a wireless ISP providing high speed Internet access to people in rural areas who can't get DSL. As innovative as our product is, as we use Motorola Canopy to get to the customers the phone company didn't want to spend the money on, our backend is still provided by...that same phone company. The phone company makes about 18,000-plus a year just on its T1 line to us. We get more customers and need another T1 or to go to a T3. The phone company makes even more off of us.

So the moral of the story is, don't discount owning the pipes. Some people may find a way around part of your business, but you can still stick it to your remaining customers for quite some time and get away with it!

Transporter