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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.
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.
Its a oligopoly, like Coke and Pepsi. Bad for consumers, but not quite as bad as a Monopoly. Its a very hard market failure to correct however, because actually breaking up Microsoft and Apple would cripple computing for 5-10 years. Kind of like At&t. In a decade we would all be better off, but in the short term it would be rough. It'll never happen anyway because the lobby system has become so powerful, and I don't think any politician wants to lose all that sweet money.
There are two places where someone can gain that power.
He who controls the servers.
and
He who controls the clients.
If one party controls a high portion one side, and no one party controls the opposing side, the opposing side has to adapt to the side under a monopoly. If one side is controlled by one party, and the opposing side is controlled by a conflicting party, then they either need to come to a compromise (where both win and the consumers, usually, lose) or one/both of them will be wrestled out by third parties who can work with the other side.
Basically, if the decline of the desktop/laptop comes into play and Apple gets the iGadgets (Phone, Pod, Pad, etc.), into a high level of dominance, or Apple continues it's popularity upswing too far, then Apple will have the client side under it's belt, and suddenly, it has a very strong control of the internet - If Apple prevents Flash players on it's clients for HTML5, Flash is gone, if Apple prevents HTML5 on it's client for ProprietaryAppleWebMarkupLanguage, HTML5 is gone, if Apple says AmazingAwesomeNewTech isn't allowed, AmazingAwesomeNewTech is gone, etc.
Mind you, I don't think it's remotely reasonable that Apple will get this kind of power, they have a habit of shaking their iron fists a little too soon. Still, surprises sometimes happen.
Self proclaimed typo king, and inventor of the bear destroying coffee table (patent not pending).
Just how many (great information emperors) have there been?
Several. William Randoph Hearst (newspapers) and David Sarnoff (RCA, NBC) definitely qualify. Not only did they dominate their respective industries for years, they had the arrogance to go with it. Hearst, of course, actually built a castle. Sarnoff made his people call him "The General". Thomas J. Watson Jr. (IBM) was certainly a "great information emperor", although he wasn't as personally arrogant. He moved IBM into electronic computers and ruled computing for three decades. Today, Rupert Murdoch qualifies.
>Of course, if you buy Android you'll be using the extremely standards-compliant WebKit engine Apple put together
Err, webkit is a fork of KHTML, which Apple forked in 2002 and rebadged "webkit." Thank the KDE guys who wrote KHTML under a license that allows such things.
The only market that Apple competes in that this wouldn't apply to is smart-phones.
Apple is part of an oligopoly controlling input devices, music players, Web editors, and laptops? Umm, maybe you need to go do a bit more research on what an oligopoly is.
Music sales, personal computers and music players would all count
So Apple is part of an oligopoly on the personal computer market? So fully 25% of the market belongs to small players and the remaining 75% is divided among five major companies with no one company dominating. So I guess my question for you is, how do you differentiate an oligopoly from a healthy, competitive market? I mean you can literally choose from hundreds of PC manufacturers when making a purchase. I really don't see it.
but I would call the market I'm referring to "general computing".
You need to take an economics course. "general computing" isn't a market. A market is defined by sellers and buyers and the subset of offerings where those sellers are competing for a transaction from the buyer. For example, a person buying a PC might look at a Dell, and HP, an Apple, and a Microtel. All the people offering competing options make up the market. Microsoft does not sell a PC, nor does AMD so they are not part of the market. IBM sells large contracts that include many PCs and support and services, so they too are not part of the market. You see how it works? "General computing" would be an industry (maybe), not a market.
The oligopoly is between Microsoft and Apple, and although it is close to a monopoly for Microsoft I would still consider it a oligopoly because the only choices most consumers consider are Apple and Microsoft, and most consumers do consider both.
That's not an oligopoly because Microsoft sells into the desktop OS market and Apple does not sell a stand alone desktop OS. Microsoft has a monopoly in that market. Apple bypasses the market entirely by insourcing and competes in the fairly robust desktop and laptop computer markets. The lack of choice you're complaining about is called a "monopoly".
The reason I haven't been answering this specific question is because it should be obvious to most people.
That's not a very good reason, especially because you seem to be misusing the terms and failing to understand the basic principals of markets. It's only obvious if people understand your misuse terms and share your imprecise perception of how markets are working.
Of course, if you buy Android you'll be using the extremely standards-compliant WebKit engine Apple put together
Err, webkit is a fork of KHTML, which Apple forked in 2002 and rebadged "webkit." Thank the KDE guys who wrote KHTML under a license that allows such things.
Yes, Webkit is a fork of KHTML, but with a huge amount of code added. Do thank the KHTML team for much of the initial work. Do thank Google and Nokia and several other players for contributing significant amounts of code to the project. But don't ignore Apple's contribution of a huge amount of the code and for taking KHTML, modernizing it, organizing it into a first class HTML and javascript engine, and funding and supporting the effort to make it a collaborative mainstream project that can truly utilize the contributions of several major players. Also, don't overlook that it is indicative of much of Apple's strategy regarding openness and the Web.