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Apple the No. 1 Danger To Net Freedom
CWmike writes "Columbia law professor Tim Wu, who coined the term 'net neutrality,' now says that Apple is the company that most endangers the freedom of the Internet. Wu recently published the book The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires, in which he details what he calls 'information empires' such as AT&T, NBC, Facebook, and Google. He told The New York Times, 'It's largely a story of the American affection for information monopolists and the consequences of that fondness.' When asked whether the Internet could similarly be controlled by large companies, he told the Times: 'I know the Internet was designed to resist integration, designed to resist centralized control, and that design defeated firms like AOL and Time Warner. But firms today, like Apple, make it unclear if the Internet is something lasting or just another cycle.' Asked which companies he feared most, Wu replied: 'Right now, I'd have to say Apple.'" Wu has been in the news a bit lately.
Information is the new capital! It should be bought and sold on markets, it should have rates associated with it and Perato Law should be applied!
All hail the new information emporer -- he that knowth what is right and wrong by virtue of his vast information resources! We should herald our new turtlenecked emporer and congratulate him on his victory with abjection, not this slime written by a clearly Oriental socialist!
The entire threat posed by Apple comes to nought if people don't buy Apple products. I'm doing my bit.
Anyone would think he had an agenda, maybe trying to drum up some publicity for a book or something. Oh, wait...
Physicists get Hadrons!
( Wu must be senile. He forgot Google. )
this torturer.
Yours In Electrogorsk,
K. Trout
It was designed to resist centralized control that users don't choose.
We choose to search google, post on facebook and buy apple. We can choose something different just as quickly.
And he wants the power.
But he gives no inkling as to how Apple is actually dangerous to the net. I would think internet-focused companies like Google, Cisco or a raft of ISPs like Comcast would be much higher on the list.
This guy just comes off as paranoid.
http://lkml.org/lkml/2005/8/20/95
Well I think it only affects the isheep which in turn it might clean lots of the internet, is like a form of digital Darwinism
What worries you about Apple?
As I discuss in the book, Steve Jobs has the charisma, vision and instincts of every great information emperor. The man who helped create the personal computer 40 years ago is probably the leading candidate to help exterminate it. His vision has an undeniable appeal, but he wants too much control.
Is this supposed to be a revelation that a omnipotent, profitable monopoly like Apple is too controlling?
He who knows best knows how little he knows. - Thomas Jefferson
Don't you need to dominate the market to be considered a monopoly? Last time I checked Apple only dominates the hipster/ trust-afarian/ techno-snob markets. Plenty of other markets for fledgling entrepreneurs.
Mr. Wu seems to be saying inflammatory things to increase book sales.
Apple's website says there's going to be a big announcement tomorrow.
I wonder what it could be.
Greenpeace recently (a year-ish ago) admitted that they picked on Apple, despite there being significantly more egregious examples of companies manufacturing products that weren't friendly to the environment because they knew that talking about Apple would get their name mentioned in the news. This guy is doing the same thing - talk about Apple, in any way, and people will see what he has to say, even if he's completely full of it and wrong.
And, in this case, he's wrong. There are very few significant tech companies that push open internet standards as much as Apple does. Apple was the first major tech company to significantly push for DRM-free music purchases. They strongly support open standards in many ways. Are they perfect? No. No company is so why would anyone expect them to be? But, regardless of their imperfections, there are actually few companies of their significance that are as pro-open standards as they are. Claiming that they are the biggest threat to internet freedom is simply an attempt to get people to pay attention to what you have to say, similar to what Greenpeace did.
The guy's nuts. Apple is more like number 4. 3 tops.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
As far as I've observed, Apple has done a great job of contributing to a number of open source projects and has used their muscle to force the RIAA/MPAA into the digital space.
Personally, I'd put the RIAA / MPAA / Copyright Monglers at the top of this list. They're the ones trying to shove the COICA through Congress.
Which, by the way, they're trying to sneak through by this Thursday.
So let me get this right, the greatest threat to net neutrality isn't you know, Comcast which violated it, Microsoft which runs the majority of desktop PCs, Google which is approaching number 1 in smartphone OS marketshare, and is number one in a multitude of areas, but instead is Apple which has a decent, but falling smartphone marketshare, has a very low amount of marketshare with desktops/laptops, doesn't cater to the masses, and sells expensive stuff that the average person can't afford.
Of course Apple would want to control everyone's computers, Apple loves control but Apple doesn't like selling cheap stuff. When the choice is between a $450 laptop that can do everything you want to do for the average person or a $350 desktop, an Android handset free on contract on any carrier, etc. or a laptop line -starting- at $999, a tablet -starting- at the price higher than most laptops with less features, desktops -starting- at around $500-600, iPhone on AT&T only for $99-200 on contract, etc.
Apple isn't a threat to net freedom because Apple doesn't produce cheap enough things for most people to buy.
Taxation is legalized theft, no more, no less.
Wrong. No. 1 danger to net freedom is the increasing amount of its users that don't understand its nature and thus fall into the lock-in trap of corporations. The problem here is that you can force people who can't drive and want to to make a drivers licence, but sadly no one is forcing them to learn about computers if they constantly confuse G**gle with the Web.
We suffer more in our imagination than in reality. - Seneca
Some big claims in that article but no where does he explain what the problem is. Apple isn't stifling competition, it's fostering it. Apple is not a monopoly, it's just the leader in some industries. Other companies are free to compete and challenge In those industries and you're free to support them. Steve jobs likes to control...because it's made a massive success for him and apple, why would he change what works and why is that bad.
So, basically what he's saying is that Jobs is the Hitler of the internet?
I know we all like to hate Apple but... really? They're fighting against Flash! Yes, they support DRM, but they also pushed for $1 song downloads. I'm not saying their great, but they can't be the number 1 danger.
I think the idea of the Comcast/NBC merger is far more dangerous. That would be one company with control from content creation all the way to distribution. They could block your access to Fox.com streaming. They could prevent Time Warner customers from viewing NBC shows on Hulu or NBC.com. They would have their own news media outlets to spin the stories about how that blocking is good for customers.
Comment forecast: Bits of genius surrounded by a sea of mediocrity.
Paranoid much, or is this anti-fanboyism of a higher caliber? Apple couldn't control the 'net any more than Microsoft or any other large could, which is to say ... they really can't.
Sure, there can be bandwidth shaping terms and conditions thrown around, there can be prioritization of packets, and all the other things that have been happening on various network segments since the "good old days." I guess it's just more fun to demonize large corporations for taking part in doing business with whatever tools are available to them. Apple, Microsoft, etc. don't own the backbone. Nobody (singly) owns the backbone. Google is moving towards putting a LOT of fiber in the ground, so if you were to throw conspiracy theories around don't you think Mountain View would be more "dangerous" than Cupertino? That's not to say I believe Google is doing anything nefarious, because ultimately they're doing what is in their power to further their own brand, on their own dime. The 'net will operate with or without them - that's the beauty of it. Don't want to use Google's glass? Then don't establish a peering relationship with 'em. Simple.
Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
I think he wants to control as much as he can before he leaves.
The problem is: people will let him...
They're funded by Verizon and convince people to support them because they favor "less taxes" and "smaller government", but they mainly want to get rid of net neutrality.
"As I discuss in the book, Steve Jobs has the charisma, vision and instincts of every great information emperor."
Every great information emperor?
Just how many have there been? Remember the great global Hollerith card empire of the 30s? Or the Napoleonic empire based on the data-storage capacity of jaquard looms.
This is vapid business book bullshit. What a twat.
September 2011: Looking for Cocoa/iOS work in Boston area Cocoa Programmer Quincy, MA
Congress is the #1 danger to internet freedom. AS long as people keep voting in these undereducated old fogeys that are only there to help their personal interests, Freedom in general will continue to erode.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
Apple is the dominant music download service. It also has over 90% of the app market in that most paid for apps exist in the iTunes App store. These markets are a little less impactful than say a Monopoly on the desktop OS or telephone service, and I might say that iTunes dominance has been, in comparatively good for users in this one instance because they have driven down music prices, given users more choices to download only single songs, and created a huge diverse market for consumers to download apps for, but there is no denying that Apple does now have some form of monopoly presence, it's just not in hardware.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
Those bastards.
. I would think internet-focused companies like Google, Cisco or a raft of ISPs like Comcast would be much higher on the list.
Uh, they already are. Check your terms of service. Comcast's, several years ago, had paragraphs outlining how you agreed to be a content CONSUMER, not a content PRODUCER. They banned webservers, mail servers, FTP sites, and most frighteningly: "discussion" systems, aka, web boards, chat systems, etc. Home internet connections long ago went from being a pipe you could do whatever (non-network-abusive) things you wanted to with, to a pipe you're expected to use to read your email hosted somewhere else and watch Netflix.
I also find it laughable that anyone but Google could be #1. They're the largest webmail provider, the largest search engine, the largest advertising network, and the largest video/blog hosting company. For fuck's sakes, they're photographically mapping the world and wardriving while doing so. About the only thing they haven't managed to secure is photo-hosting; I'm pretty sure Flickr (yahoo) still dominates that.
Please help metamoderate.
Apple is more dangerous because the other villains are obvious. Apple makes people want to lock themselves into nice cozy cells. Sure the window is small, but what you can see through the bars is pretty and the chairs are comfy.
Blah blah blah overused quote about safety, security, liberty, yada yada.
The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing.
I'm still not able to run arbitrary code on the processor in my microwave or my refrigerator. Why can't I manually deploy the airbag in my car? How come there's no flash client for my wristwatch.
Apple is small potatoes--this goes all the way to the top.
Apple was, is and will continue to be a hardware company that benefits from open standards. They exert a lot of control over their products, but it only goes as far as their products. Apple will never have monopoly control because they only operate in high-end markets.
AT&T and Google were mentioned, but not MS. Hmm.
It surely isn't because Microsoft is good, not with such things to remember them by as OOXML, which was merely one of the more recent of many attempts at lock in, forced upgrades through contrived changes with their proprietary file formats, and perhaps most of all, the "Microsoft tax". Has Microsoft become that feeble? Strip away Windows and MS Office, and more than half the company is gone. One doesn't hear about the Xbox, and their music players, e-book readers, phones, and other software offerings being that significant.
Intellectual Property is a monopolistic, selfish, and defective concept. It is "tyranny over the mind of man"
stop apple's Nazi like censorship
Most like that they don't have to run anti-virus/malware programs on them.
It's only the belligerent technorati who insist that everyone should either acquire l33t expertise on every device they use, or be afraid of those devices and forced to enlist the aid of some smug expert.
Your argument is that Apple may be doing the right thing, but they are probably doing it for the wrong reasons and who knows what they've got planned once they get us all hooked on a free internet based on open standards?
I mean seriously shut the fuck up and stop existing.
Jobs will announce that The Internet will now be referred to as iTunes.
Read the EFF's Fair Use FAQ
Google thrives on the open internet... well sorta open. Google is a danger but only in that their restrictions on which sites they sponsor, oops advertise on, creates a pressure for sites to comply with their rules on content or risk loosing advertising revenue to pay for their site. It is the same risk that has made TV/Radio/Newspapers such tools of the money market, he that pays the piper (through advertising) calls the song.
Apple on the hand sees the internet as little more then a data network, it itself has no connection to the open internet. No small sites. If the open internet with its unsafe content, piracy and free software was gone, then Apple would not mind one bit. It sells the AOL experience not just in a browser but baked into its hardware. Mind you, the open internet is so pervasive right now it is hard to imagine this changing but IF the move to closed devices like the iPhone continues, it might happen by stealth. Not because Apple directly steers the open internet to become closed but because there is nobody left to fund, power the open internet.
If all the money flows through the app store, all the internet is seen through the iPhone, then a lot of what makes the net, the net will be gone. To understand this, you have to understand that once, TV was made by hobbyists who broadcasted from their own homes, making TV purely for the love of it. Hard to imagine in these days of ad riddled broadcasting where ads are between in programs in progams overlaid on programs and even the programs themselves are ads. How did this change? I am sure that at the time it was changing, you wouldn't be able to spot it.
The internet has already changed. In 1995 running a site was cheap, if you setup slashdot you would have maybe a dozen subscribers, mostly English. Now you have to cater to millions and deal with attacks from all over the world. That changes the landscape, just see how many hobby sites are completly taken over by crackers to spam search engines with fake pages. I ran hobby sites in the past with the worst attack being a person reloading the page to fast for my poor "server". Now? Security is a full time job. Granted it pays but geez.
The humble PC, the Compaq clone more so then the IBM, the IBM-compatible became the device anyone could produce and anyone could use. NOT the closed Apple. Sure, you might look at Microsofts control of the PC OS and see nothing but domination but MS never managed to close or control the hardware, although they did try, read up on its battle with Creative. This has kept the hardware open, extremely open to the point just anyone can install any software. When was the lastime you had to jailbreak a PC? MS doesn't stop me in anyway from using Windows to create a Linux bootdisk and happily launched it. I can run Linux inside Windows. Can I do the same in iOS?
No, and there is the risk. Just because people have consistently managed to jailbreak the iphone doesn't mean the iPhone is open. And when closed computing platforms have become the norm, so does a closed source environment were a single company, a single person gets to say what should exist on it and what shouldn't.
AH, but people are free to choose differently. Yes indeed, people are free to choose wisely. They just rarely do. Especially when shinies are involved.
But what if 99% of the internet users are on a closed system, does that mean the rest can't be free? No, not in theory. In practice, consider this:
Is TV free? Yes, it is. I am free to start a TV station, I only need the massives amount of money to buy a channel, fund the costs for powering an antenna. Where do I get that money? Either from rich donors or advertisers. But WHO are these people and will they support any message I wish to air? See what happened to Oprah when she critized the beef industry. You don't bit the hand that feeds you.
What if all music becomes the iTunes store, which censors what it carries. All tv becomes subject to approval by Steve Jobs? It is possible NOT because people are b
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
In the best /. tradition, I won't even bother to RTFA.
Since the loss of Sun Microsystems, which in retrospect seems to have been one the most open companies ever and with open source contributions surpassing those of almost any other organization's in the world, I have grown extremely suspicious of people dictating to me that this or that is evil, all in the name of "freedom". All those guys that had been bashing Sun must be really happy now that Oracle has taken over.
I can think of several companies that by /. standards can easily rival the "evilness" of Apple, but almost magically they seldom get mentioned as threats to net freedom. Until I see everyone else get their fair share of bashing and flames, I'll assume articles (and comments) of this class as astroturfing.
I was just thinking about this yesterday. It's just the natural evolution. The internet is just an infrastructure. The future is data producers and data consumers. Apple's product suite fits nicely into this. There's not much to be afraid of; it's just the way it will be. No need to browse the internet, now the data you want will follow you and be presented to you in the fashion you need. The winner companies are the ones who generate the most useful data. The losers will be the ones who generate junk. Google has a problem in that spammers are overtaking its usefulness (see free-press-distribution.com as a useless news generator that appears in google news as a top story). Apple's tightfisted control over the quality of its product is a large advantage here. Freedom definitely could suffer in that ecosystem, but unless folks pony up the money to get controversial info published, it's just not going to be economical for anyone to support the fringe viewpoints.
Lack of innovation in both software and hardware allowing the likes of a single company or two to maintain and expand into a majority market share seems to me to be at the heart of the biggest worries. That is unless you count the companies that suck up to WDC's big tits and get special legislation enacted which allows more monopolistic policies. I am completely flabbergasted that HP with a terrific creative history has not mounted an independent OS & hardware system to go to the next generation devices and compete head on with Apple. There is no reason they can not do it, except management creativity.
The Internet was *not* designed to resist centralized control. The Internet was in part designed to resist a centralized attack or failure so organizations could *keep functioning*. MAC, IP, routing protocols, etc...just study the actual implementation and history, not your fantasies.
I must, since I'm pretty much Ok with what Apple products I have and use.
Of course, I just buy something else the instant Apple's offering doesn't do what I want it to do, so I guess I'm not really living dangerously since I have enough of a clue to know Apple has no control over anything I do online what so ever.
And on that note, where the hell can I find a 10" capacitive touch display about the size of the ipad running some desktop windows variant? This is one of those times where Apple isn't an option.
Persistent Volume manager for Kubernetes - https://github.com/dwimsey/openshift-pvmanager
No. The "belligerent technorati" point out that PhoneOS is hardly remarkably in being malware free. You don't have to lock down the platform like a tyrant in order to secure it.
MacOS is a great counter-example to the notion that you need PhoneOS to be safe.
Apple (Fanboy) rhetoric is such NewSpeak.
"Forget about last years ads. Only believe what this years ads tell you."
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
You see this same tactic over on cnet.com ALL the time. Their bloggers will make a questionable assertion about something ... anything, with Apple in the subject -- knowing full-well it will bring in the "hits" from all the people who rush to defend the company, and those who love a good chance to bash the Apple brand.
I'm actually interested in reading Wu's book. I just saw a summary of it online, last night, and think it's an interesting possibility, at the very least; an Internet taken over completely by large corporate interests and/or government, as we saw with radio, TV, etc.
But the suggestion Apple is the "one to fear" the MOST with all of this?! I say, get a grip, Wu!
1. Apple doesn't even have much interest in the "Enterprise" portion of the marketplace. Their ONLY rack-mountable server product, the XServe, is now scheduled to be discontinued as of 2011! They make *no* real network routing/switching gear to speak of, unless you count the Airport Express/Extreme wireless routers. And their former ".Mac" (now Mobile ME) Internet-based service has traditionally been SLOW and of questionable value, save the convenient integration with OS X that twists some people's arms to pay $99 a year for it. They're really not in a technological position to "take over the Internet" at all!
2. Apple's recent experiment selling interactive advertising on their iOS devices hasn't exactly been taking the world by storm. Advertisers are complaining that it's too difficult to work with Apple, because Apple's people want too much input and control of the ad campaigns their people try to produce (imagine that, coming from Apple, huh?).
3. If anything, Apple has been pushing for more "open standards" on things in recent years. Their core products are all based on Unix and get a lot of help from open source projects. Even on the hardware side, they often choose a unique/obscure standard to support, yet one that actually is open and available for others to use (such as the mini displayport video connector). And yes, while they *do* still use DRM on things (and some consider that so evil, it's flatly unacceptable to them), they're not among the strongest proponents of it. I can't speak officially for them, obviously, but I get the idea Apple only employs DRM when they feel it's still needed to get an aspect of digital media sales going strong. Look at the music situation? They basically HAD to employ DRM in the beginning, to get "buy in" from the recording industry, or iTunes wouldn't have ever gotten off the ground. But once it was successful and proven, Apple started removing the DRM from all the tracks.
to escape.
Regarding the AT&T "monopoly", I suggest reading UNNATURAL MONOPOLY: CRITICAL MOMENTS IN THE DEVELOPMENT OF THE BELL SYSTEM MONOPOLY.
Numerous federal and state officials began arguing quite openly that the telephone industry would function most efficiently if unified as one system. Legislators began referring to competition in the same terms as Vail--"duplicative," "destructive," and "wasteful." A Senate Commerce Committee hearing in 1921 stated that "telephoning is a natural monopoly." And a House of Representative committee report noted, "There is nothing to be gained by local competition in the telephone business" (quoted in Loeb 1978: 14). A Michigan Public Utilities Commission report (1921: 315) from that same year also illustrates this prevailing sentiment, "Competition resulted in duplication of investment. . . . The policy of the state was to eliminate this by eliminating as far as possible, duplication." Many state regulatory agencies began refusing requests by telephone companies to construct new lines in areas already served by another carrier and continued to encourage monopoly swapping and consolidation in the name of "efficient service" (Lavey 1987: 184-85). Kellogg, Thorne, and Huber (1992: 17)
AT&T's monopoly happened because of government action.
This is one advantage of mobile devices -- historically they tend to be clean, with relatively (especially considering the size of the market) few exceptions. They are not completely secure, but it is rare to hear of a device being infected or compromised. I have yet to see a compromised phone firsthand. This does not mean it doesn't happen, but it isn't a commonplace problem like malware on Windows is.
I heard the interview with Wu on NPR a couple weeks ago, he didn't have a reason why Apple was so dangerous, it just was.
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130982785
I think he is just adding keywords so he'll get more hits for his book.
Now I don't mean that in "Focused on what consumers want," I mean focused on turning people in to nothing but passive consumers. One of the great things about the Internet is it gives everyone the ability to be a content producer. It can be simple things like forum posts (which can have a lot of influence in some special cases) to grand things. Look at Red vs Blue. Some guys with aspirations to be film makers who liked messing around with Halo. They were able to use their PCs to capture video and sound, edit, and put it online and now it is their full time job.
However Apple's gadgets are very much designed against that. Their interface, their store, their setup is very much one that normal people with them will be passive consumers, just browsing, watching, etc, not creating. Users have noted this too. Scott Adams has talked about how he likes his iPhone, but it sucks for creation, all he does is browse with it. With his Blackberry, he created things even if just mostly simple things like e-mails and so on. With his iPhone he is just a passive consumer.
Now at this point it doesn't matter a whole lot, I mean phones are a big deal. What is a big deal is the iDevice model is clearly Apple's vision of the future. You'll have Apple devices, buy all your media from iTunes, get all your apps from the Apple store and so on. This could really create a divide between normal users who only own devices like that and thus just can't really create, they just consume what is fed their way. Only those that buy expensive "pro" stuff could create. That then of course could be further restricted so that you have to be "approved" for not only the specific content, but just you in general to be allowed to be a creator.
The Internet is a great equalizer and is putting everyone on equal footing production and consumption wise. For the cost of a connection, which is more accessible all the time, you can have access to all the information of the world, and you can add to that. If what you create is something others will like, it can become popular worldwide. That is a wonderful thing, tearing down traditional barriers. An iDevice world could place up those barriers again and create even more restrictive ones.
That isn't something I want to see.
Perfect opportunity for a grass roots movement to create another internet. I've often thought about it myself ....
I hate to post like an Apple fanboy, but his argument is stupid.
His argument, basically, is that "Steve Jobs has the charisma, vision and instincts of every great information emperor." Therefore, Apple is dangerous. WTF? His argument is that any good company is to be feared.
Apple doesn't have anything like control over the internet. So far, the "control" that Apple has is control that has been in the form of designing a user interface that everybody likes, and having all the other companies copy it (e.g., the way desktops mostly now all look like the 1984 Mac desktop).
If there were one company that really does, right now, look as if it's getting control of the internet, that would be Google. (But Facebook is a strong runner up). I suggest if he wants to be afraid, he would do better to fear them.
http://www.geoffreylandis.com
How can a place you don't want to escape from be a prison. Prison is a place you are held in against your will. The moment you are not held against your will, you cease to me in prison. Even if the sign on the wall says "prison".
Apple just makes devices that allow us to access the internet reliably. The greatest threat to the internet ISN'T Apple, MS, Google, or any of the other big tech companies, it's any entity that wants to shut down sites like ED, 4Chan, and /b/. True internet freedom is about content and guaranteeing access to that content, not about the portal you choose to utilize.
Here's to hot beer, cold women, and Glaswegian kisses for all.
I find your comments about the previous poster being daft kind of funny. You're post posits that there is no profit motive for Apple to "lock down the internet"?
Your description paints a picture where it's about the internet... it isn't. It's about access to information, data, and media. Apple's "profit motive" is to slowly pull the different pieces of your day to day experience into a DRM, protected, entitled world that requires you purchase one of their devices to access said information.
This is ALREADY happening, as people who've bought iPods and iPhones and purchased content are forced to buy MORE Apple devices as they upgrade and evolve. Essentially it's the same thing we saw for years with MS, but on a much larger scale sine it's now beginning to consume every type of media you use (music, movies, etc.).
Sure, you can argue that "some stuff" can be moved to another platform, but if the level of technical knowledge required to do it is prohibitive no one will. In the end you arrive at a place where there is no "free" access to the internet as you know it... everything is locked down inside "subscriptions" and entitled accounts, all empowered and enabled by Apple who makes money:
1) Selling hardware to do it
2) Taking 30% off the top
The scariest part is that it's just like an addiction/drug model... before you know it you can't stop taking it without extreme pain/withdrawal, and the downsides appear to outweigh the upsides. Momentum is a bitch.
Not seeing this and not seeing the frightening power of a walled garden is "daft" to say the least. It's the reason EVERY major media company is pursuing a path that involves some form of walled garden.
rt
See, this is how it's done. You make an outrageous statement, then hawk a book. This way the people you troll actually give you money, instead of gratifying your need for attention by "posting". Fucking amateurs.
cat
The guy didn't offer any reason why Apple is a threat to net freedom, other than that it's successful enough to influence things one way or the other. One could certainly argue that Apple is a danger to smartphone developer freedom. But is HTML5 so bad for Internet compared to Flash? I certainly can't see why.
Both Apple and Google use "open" when and where it suits them - and not a smidgen further.
They both harbor incredibly protected secrets and "closed" information loops.
The only difference is that Apple makes no bones about it. Google makes an ad campaign of waxing poetic about "open", despite the fact it is just as closed as Apple when it comes to *the products that actually make it money*. Techies and others lap it up.
You know, say what you will about Apple and control. We all know there is ONE company that controls the world's information flow, and it ain't Apple. Nor is it a democracy, or transparent, or accountable to..... anyone.
It's only my opinion, but Wu is incredibly naive -- and all you have to do is look at the words of Eric Schmidt to know that Google sees the web of the future as a closed, authenticated platform - hardly the opentopia described be Google's many devout.
IPhone OS is remarkable in that it actually has a catalog of software, and is relatively malware free.
There are scads of phones out there with a few dozen applications, that are malware free. There aren't any other phones with more than a tiny fraction of the software catalog that Apple has.
By the way, you do realize that when you write "fanboy" you come off as either a bitter old loon,or a fanboy of some other competing product? Your propaganda would be both more effective and less obvious if you were to leave the embittered attitude out of your posts. Then pele might take your ranting and raving seriously.
...because the fact that they have sufficient influence to push open standards indicates that they also have the power to do a lot of hypothetical bad things? like (I don't know) mass killing of puppies?
Is the solution to make sure that no entity ever has influence?
By your definition, things which are also bad:
1. Every company in the world.
2. every popular organization ever in the history of mankind ever.
3. all forms of functional government.
4. all forms of media, including the internet and the printing press.
5. anyone who has ever been modded +5
"Whirlpool isn't bent on slowly taking over a formerly thriving third-party appliance firmware market"
Is that what the Whirlpool CEO told you to say?
Fucking whirlpool fanboy sheep.
couldn't resist.
look it up. Sometimes it sucks, but everything else sucks harder or whatever.
but that person represents an insignificant fraction of the market, certainly not large enough to make it worthwhile for Whirlpool to potentially endanger the overwhelming majority of their market that just wants a functional appliance.
Now just wait for the metaphor to sink in...take your time.
So if my medical records, credit history, personal and business email, not to mention record of everywhere I go is kept by google thats acceptable but somehow choosing to buy an idevice and agreeing to their terms of service is the worlds greatest threat to freedom? wow...
When I read about Tim Wu's concern that Apple will destroy the internet, I thought, boy that sounds like the monopoly guy. And it just so happens that he is. This is utter fail. Companies aren't monopolies just because they have a large share of the market (something that Apple has yet to do, I might add). And Steve Jobs is not the end of the internet merely because he has "charisma, vision and instincts". You need a lot more than that.
I can't understand how someone can be a professor of law at a good university and not have an inkling of how economics works.
But Google does nothing to restrict how you use their products. In fact, they encourage novel use; that's why all of their services have APIs.
That's not the point- but, yes, of course they do. They want everyone to use them. They want as much market share as possible; same reason the Catholic church bans abortions. And then they start abusing it. Just a few days ago we saw how concerns over Google Adwords revenue were forcing TVtropes to self-censor.
Right now, a number of people can't get to a major site they use for work because...surprise! Google decided that the site hosts adware, and Firefox throws up a billion warnings as a result.
Apple insists on owning your whole experience and is lobbying for legislation to turn their wants into law.
Son, what crack are you smoking? I've owned Macs since 1994 and Apple doesn't own anything of mine, store any of my data, monitor me, or control me.
Google has my address book, my chat logs, all my emails, my location data, search terms, what blogs I read, and what ads I look at. I've limited some of it via tools like OptimizeGoogle, but they still have a tremendous amount of data of mine, and data about me.
Please help metamoderate.
Wu shouldn't be afraid of Apple. None of us should. Fear gets in the way and makes you do stupid things. Let's just keep building the open web. Also, maybe advocacy helps.
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I must not fear. Fear is the mind-killer. Fear is the little-death that brings total obliteration. I will face my fear. I will permit it to pass over me and through me. And when it has gone past I will turn the inner eye to see its path. Where the fear has gone there will be nothing. Only I will remain. --Bene Gesserit, litany against fear.
Wu's money appears to be on Google!
Every day there's Apple related news in almost every technology news source I visit. I am really tired of them. I can't afford an Apple product, I don't want to keep getting "convinced" about it.
With news sites doing the advertising for them I am not even sure they need to actually try to take over the internets.
Yes corporations care most about making money--that's kinda the point. And it is possible that any company will abuse their power. All things considered it probably makes sense to focus your energy on companies which are abusing their power rather than concocting elaborate scenarios about potential abuse by the well-behaved ones and then giving smug soapbox rants about constant vigilance against potential tyranny.
Put another way. I'm not saying that you are a pedophile, but one can never know and it is silly to think that you won't act in your own interest and so I'm just saying that you may start molesting kids and therefore we should keep an eye on you. Oh, and if you disagree then you are a blind fanboy and (of course) a pedophile.
Know your history a little further back please.
I though it would be useful to have a post or two here that mostly ignores exhibit Apple and talks about the book.
A guy by the name of Adam Thierer has put quite a bit of work into Thoughts on Tim Wu's Master Switch. What makes it interesting is the Tim Wu dropped into the discussion thread to rebut several points, and then Adam writes a response to that rebuttal.
Unfortunately, Adam makes a mistake that Russ Roberts sometimes makes on EconTalk (which I generally enjoy). The story goes like this: something big is happening, some enlightened souls speak out "we should worry about this", someone loosely affiliated with the furrowed forehead sect spouts a rabid depiction of this which the MSM circulates aggressively, the bad outcome does not materialize, and in the aftermath, some careless bloghards conclude we were wrong to worry so much in the first place.
This has been said about Y2K. It's still being said about the CDC and the imminent (or not-so-imminent) global influenza pandemic. Big flu blew over. Should the CDC stand down?
Larry Brilliant [still] wants to stop pandemics.
One possible version of the true story is that we might need to maintain a permanent vigilance on the rise of corporate gorillas. Sure AOL/Warner face-planted. Some gorillas are clumsy. And there was a time when Google was vulnerable and might not have become a counter-balancing force. These are contingent outcomes.
I have to say I think it's a bit of a dim bulb argument to argue from a catastrophe averted that there wasn't much risk in the first place, unless the belief is that the warning system was operating in complete isolation on an entirely separate plain of reality.
I loved Google from the outset, but my loyalty hung by a thread if Google had taken certain corporate directions. I've been around long enough to recall IBM as the 800 pound gorilla. I didn't much enjoy living through the Microsoft replacement.
Seth Godin said in a lecture at Google (four years ago) that Google has promoted their brand to such a degree that to backtrack on their declared values would cause them immeasurable brand injury. I tend to agree. They aren't going to poop the bed for small potatoes.
Microsoft did succeed in stifling innovation for a few years. It might have been a lot worse if they hadn't misjudged the internet, and been forced to take a tripping penalty on Netscape, and then spend two minutes in the FTC penalty box around the time of Google's nascence.
There are 17,000 federal lobbyists in Washington, DC. They exist to promote regulatory capture for vested interests. What will Apple do a year after losing Steve when their share price has contracted 40 percent? Will they reinvent, or run for cover?
I'm inclined to ascribe more of our good fortune (so far) to a small group of determined people tirelessly trying to do the right thing as described in RFC 2468.
Should we worry, or not?
How can a place you don't want to escape from be a prison. Prison is a place you are held in against your will. The moment you are not held against your will, you cease to me in prison. Even if the sign on the wall says "prison".
There is no sense trying to use logic with these people. When the exit doors are not locked and you are free to leave the furnished room, it is not a prison but a hotel.
They want us all to stay in a hostel which is sparsely furnished and with a total lack of privacy.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
Lawyers are idiots in general and Tim Wu is leading the pack. He's a sad example of someone who made a bad choice of occupations. Then he made it even worse by becoming a University Professor (another idiot occupational category).
Would some one please get Tim Wu a tin foil hat cause that man is crazy!
Let's not forget webkit didn't fall from the sky but was developed from KHTML sources that were/ and is opensource.
After IE illegally killed Netscape and crippled the HTML4 Web, and Windows XP invented the botnet, it's Apple and their standards-compliant, open source Web browser on certified UNIX systems that is a threat to net freedom?
Apple, who sells one device at a time to users who not only choose that device, but often have to go out of their way to get it, is a bigger threat than fleets of Dells with DOS and MSHTML shipping out even in 2010, decades after free UNIX and years after free HTML5? Dells with viruses and malware that exposes users to criminals and Slashdot readers and other unsavory types are not as big a danger to net freedom as Apple?
Apple, whose world leading ease of use is the only thing that enables many people to even access the Internet? Whose developer tools and GUI were used by Tim Berners Lee to fucking create the Web in the first place so that regular people could use the Internet, is a threat to net freedom?
Apple, who ported the Web to phones and tablets? Not Nokia who sells hundreds of times more phones but they have no fucking Web browser, even today?
Weak.
I sometimes wonder how many people rally against those seeking control simply because they are succeeding in getting control. I dislike Microsoft because they abuse their control. They tie people to their products, they block others from working with them, they stifle competition and more importantly innovation and they produce mostly crappy products. They use their control to lock you in so they can bend your wallet over and rape it for all eternity. Do they admit to this practice? No of course they don't.
Apple blocks porn. More than likely its due to their ties with Disney who would lose massive amounts of money if anyone in middle America got the impression that Apple was pro-porn. So their hands are kind of tied there. Arguing that this should not apply to other countries with different ideals will not work for this argument. Anti-porn sentiments in the US stem mostly from religious fundamentalism, and we are all on "Gods Earth" after all. Can't go enabling the heathens now.
The only other control Apple really exercises is quality. They openly admit that they restrict what you can and can't install and they tell you its because iOS would be an inferior experience if they allowed any old junk like Google and M$ do.
So what about Google? Do they admit to seeking control? No. Quite the opposite. They are billing their systems as "Open". All the while they surreptitiously sneak into our daily lives and gather information on us. They were content to know how we searched and shopped online for a few years. But now they want to know every IP address we have anything to do with and any service that runs from it (Google DNS), they want to read out email and probably keep track of our contacts and phone numbers. They look after our personal files from family photos to business docs and after all that they want control not just our browsers and mail clients but our entire phones and operating systems. Apple just wants us to buy their shiny toys and maybe rent the odd TV show.
Microsoft looked like it was dying not too long ago. It still looks like a bit of a dinosaur. Google has already threatened net neutrality far more than Apple. In the UK there was talk a while back of charging the BBC for all the extra internet traffic generated by iPlayer. I imagine people have had similar thoughts about iTunes and Apple. Especially Google.
I don't agree with everything Apple does. I personally have no issue with 'Page 9 Girls' (Page 3 in the UK), I like Google maps and their search engine is still the best, and over the years even Microsoft has done one or two things I've liked. But of the three of them, who sounds the most scary? Its not Apple.
Note too the h264 push from Apple. A case where Apple want THEM to be the arbiters of what is allowed on the internet (by pushing a standard they have patents on) and how they, unlike in the HTML5 case, have put the kybosh on the open Ogg Theora (and will do the same for Google's open codec), a freely implementable codec that, and I quote, "is capable and not tied to any other company [that] simply provides Apple with a better position to sell devices without worrying about other companies blocking them".
Except that this is how Apple can block others.
Like, for example, KDE, whose work they used...
If your buying decisions didn't affect everyone else, I'd tell you to go ahead and buy Apple products, you deserve to be Apple's bitch.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
The Phone OS lockdown isn't about malware and security --- not primarily, anyway. It's straight up QA.
It's realizing that consumer-level users don't differentiate between the hardware and the software. If third-party software they want to use is slow or buggy, they will say it's the iPhone that sucks.
It's Nintendo imposing certification requirements on third-party NES developers on the heels of the console crash of the early 80s.
It's Jobs not being impressed by hundreds of apps available for PCs when most them are crap and people only use five anyway.
It's knowing that while geeks prize choice (for many good reasons), consumers will take "works well" over choice 9.5 times out of 10 (do you really think Dad cares that there are multiple browsers on the market? He just wants to use the Web.)
It's reading article after article about why Linux and Android are struggling partly because of the fragmentation brought on by choice. Netflix on Android anyone?
It's understanding that Apple went along with DRM schemes not because they love DRM but because it was necessary to get the labels to play ball.
I love Linux and Android, and I am no Apple fan boy. They are not perfect. I just get tired of geeks that think how they use computers is how everyone uses them. If you can hack the registry, install software using apt-get or hand-hack a config file, YOU/WE ARE SQUARELY IN THE MINORITY. The general public wants a device where they can watch their Youtube and could give a flyin' rip about Flash v HTML5. They just want it to work easily and well and be pretty doing it.
Apple remains successful not because they are out to get you, but because they understand this.