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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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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
"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"
. 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.
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.
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.
I went ahead and bolded the relevant part (which I happen to agree with). Steve Jobs is a charismatic leader who desires more control than is good for us. Regardless, the guy is clearly just trying to sell his book, so if you want to know what he really thinks, and why he thinks it, you know what to do. It's not real fair to judge his reasoning based on the transcript blurbs that the newspaper chose to use. The reason he has a book is because he has a lot to say about it.
As for why anyone having "too much control" over the internet is not a good thing for the internet, that should be fairly obvious. The main reason the internet is as powerful as it is is because no one controls it.
"Our two-party system is like a bowl of shit looking at itself in a mirror." - Lewis Black
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.
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.
It means that once those wrong reasons are fulfilled they may decide that open standards are no longer in their business interests. The great deal of control they have over their platforms makes this a potential problem for their users. Then there are network effects that mean people other than Apple's customers could be affected. So yes, the reason why something is done is important.
I'm curious, did you think that being rude and mistreating the GP somehow negates this concern? It is a legitimate issue and will remain such as long as single vendors have enough power in the marketplace to decide whether open standards will be used. That, in turn, won't change until average users are educated and understand why vendorlock and proprietary standards are not in their interests. When that happens devices that don't support open standards simply won't sell. Until then, potential loss of freedom is a very real problem.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
So you didn't get the sarcasm from his username which you actually used that name in your reply? Or notice that it was modded funny, even though you didn't get the joke?
Honestly, people like you are scary. Lots scarier than clowns, anyway.
Free Martian Whores!
Did you seriously just argue that Apple pushing for "open standards" would suddenly lead to them controlling everything on the Web? Pray tell, what nefarious sequence of events would accomplish this, when HTML5, and "open standards" are, by definition, open for people to implement on their own?
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.).
Umm, I don't see it. I have plenty of friends with smartphones and I've seen most migrate between devices, including away from an iPhone at least once. The music is portable. Not many people buy reusable video content. Many apps have versions for multiple platforms and often even provide them free to switchers. For portable apps, Apple and Google are pushing HTML5 and it's gained significant traction not only on smartphones but now for Web apps on those Microsoft computers you mention.
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.
Umm, the only way to do that is for you to already have bought one, and Apple hasn't been problematic for interoperability in any way. They've been pretty good about standards and protocols. Having 14% of the market, that makes sense as breaking cross platform interoperability hurts them more than helps.
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.
And your evidence that this is the case?
all empowered and enabled by Apple who makes money: 1) Selling hardware to do it 2) Taking 30% off the top
Except according to all the credible market analysis, 30% off the top covers the hosting costs, management, overhead for free apps, credit card processing, and a tiny profit that barely shows up on Apple's bottom line. They make money on hardware. Hell, they make more money selling premium apps for OS X than they do selling iPhone apps to date.
Not seeing this and not seeing the frightening power of a walled garden is "daft" to say the least.
No, it's daft to assume Apple is going to take an action that will make things harder for their customers and lose them hardware sales while chasing a mythical profit using a business model they've not only never used, but specifically told their shareholders they aren't using.
It's daft to say a company with a fairly small market share that has driven most of the recent innovation and growth in a market is "stifling" competition without supporting that assertion with anything.