Sorry, but media concentration is still a reality and it is getting worse, despite the blooming of many alternatives. I agree that Chomksy and other Left media critics are wrong when they apply this criticism to the Internet, but when it comes to newspapers, radio, and TV, there are only a few companies that own everything. Radio is the worst of the bunch, with 3 corporations owning pretty much all of the airwaves.
I'm also sorry that you find Chomsky to be a crackpot. You are entitled to you ignorant opinion, but Chomsky is well respected around the world. He appears on TV stations in other countries, yet is shut completely off of American TV.
This story about a few corporations controlling the Internet is just another PR stunt from Jupiter Research. Cyber-pundits have been proclaiming the takeover of the Internet by corporations for years--if anything, the situation has improved with the shakeout of all the crappy dot-coms.
The Jupiter Research survey is also fundamentally dishonest: not every surfer going to the "popular websites" is going TO that website. More often than not, they are seeking content created by people whose content is hosted on that website. Corporations like Yahoo have tried to censor and discourage controversial content (like the adult communities) with the result that people go elsewhere.
How did this post get modded so high? You call Stefan a Marxist utopian, when in fact he is an anarchist. Big difference guys. You would think that Slashdot readers would understand the difference, but I think all the old schoolers moved out. Slashdot = Newbieland. The old guard understand the difference between Marxism and anarchism; they understand that anarchist techies are widespread and that they have been pretty important to maintaining the gift economy that used to be a celebrated facet of the Internet.
Capitalism works for those with the most wealth. It doesn't work for most of the world.
PC sales are down. The Internet is old news for people. The dot-com hype is gone. You can spend hours watching your stock values stay at the same level.
If there is not killer app that will create a demand for this new MS product, nobody is going to be interested.
MS.bomb
There are also hundred of thousands of people out there who have the power to buy software. Does Microsoft really expect them to spring scarce bucks for yet another buggy operataing system?
Microsoft does have a relationship with its millions of users. It's called the "blue screen of death" (BSOD). I see this at least once a day and it very effective at reminding me which company is responsible for my OS.
In all the chest-beating about how to defeat "terrorism," there are some interesting things being said by folks who used to be part of the establishment. This article by Robert M. Bowman ( Lt. Col., USAF retired) titled "What Can We Do About Terrorism?" came across my email this afternoon. He makes the following interesting point:
"People in Canada enjoy better democracy, more freedom, and greater human rights than we do. So do the people of Norway and Sweden. Have you heard of
Canadian embassies being bombed? Or Norwegian embassies? Or Swedish embassies. No."
Too bad the spineless cowards in Congress couldn't get testimony from guys like this before they rushed headlong into a decision to take away our constitutional rights.
I think you are way too pessimistic about the amount of corporate control of the Internet in ten years. You forget about the rapidly growing movement against "globalism" which scored decisive victories in Seattle and Washington, DC last month. This movement has a strong anti-capitalist flavor and we're discovering that many normal folks are receptive to our messages. Not only that, many of us cyberactivists have been at it for nearly ten years now.
I think our strength will only grow once new tech like Gnutella and Freenet become operational and widely used. If you asked me a year ago, I would have said that the implementation of anarchic tech like these two examples was still 5 years away. It's good to see them arriving now, when we so desperately need them against the corporations.
Too many predictions about the future tend to leave out the social factor.
I'd like to suggest that DrEldarion read up up on the McLibel case, where a couple of unemployed British anarchists stood up to McDonalds, who sued them over the contents of a flyer. The two technically lost, but the case dragged on for over two years, making the company look bad and costing McDonalds over $14 million in lawyer" fees. Not only that, but the McSpotlight website was visited by millions of people, who were exposed to radical anti-golden arches ads that they wouldn't have, if McD's had simply told it's intellectul property lawyers to shut up.
<p>The McLibel two "won" because they had literally nothing to lose, being poor working class people. If they had been able to afford standard lawyers, they would have been told to settle out fo court. Most lawyers are pretty conservative and urge people to play along with the "justice" system. Slashdot appears to be fortunate in that its lawyers seem willing to make a stand.
<p>So, what I'm saying here is that you don't have to have access to fancy lawyers to make a good stand against corporate bullies like Microsoft.
I think it is really important, if not crucial, that Slashdot stand up to these bullies. That's what the DMCA is all about: controlling free speech in the guise of protecting "commerce."
I suggest that the Slashdot staff read up on the McLibel case. Mention "McLibel case" to the Microsoft lawyers and watch them pee in their pants.
I've been fighting these zealots for several years. Needless to say, they are NOT winning. Censorware has been installed on computers in fewer that 20% of public libraries. If you ask me that is 20% too much, but there is still time to reverse the installation of censorware in those libraries.
What we need is for more people to be outspoken against censorware. People who oppose censorship need to be more outspoken in their communities.
Library techies should refuse to install the software, because installing the software is a violation of librarian ethics.
Lastly, it's important to not get fatalistic about this issue. The religious right is at the lowest point of its power in the past 20 years. They don't have the numbers of people on their side, nor do they have the money. I'm sure they are in worse straits now that Gary Bauer has wasted millions of dollars to get 1% of the vote in New Hampshire.
So, it's far from hopeless. But now is a good time to fight back!
>Every monolithic organization uses the legal system of the country that they're in to bully people when their profits are threatened.
It's called *capitalism*. This system can't exist without an overwhelming apparatus of lawyers, courts, prisons, police, and so on, all of which function to protect the rich crooks from getting challenged by the little guys/gals.
How many rich people do you know who are in prison?
Work WITHIN the system? Give us a break! Nobody believes that anymore, just look at the voter turnout numbers for *any* election. The system works, for the RICH, not for us little guys and gals.
I grew up on Clarke and always loved his stuff, but his main weakness (still) is that he doesn't understand the human factor. If you want a SF writer to make some prediction for you, I'd go with Kim Stanley Robinson. He understands poltics, sociology, and how humans tick.
Clarke completely factors out the innate human tendency to resist totalizing social experiments put together by their governments (or corporations. For example, how would Clarke factor in the major defeat last week of Monsanto's genetically-modifed foods program? That was defeated by the direct action of Indian farmers who burned GM crops and English activist who destroyed fields with games of football.
What about social revolutions?
Clarke's predictions are alot of fun, but I'd like to see the other half of the picture!
GM food becoming accepted in high-tech countries? Give me a break, have you been on vacation? Last week Monsanto finally cried uncle after a hard fought direct action campaign conducted by activists around the world. There is more to come and it's very likely that the Mega Corps will shelve this technology.
GM food is unneeded by farmers because it is simply a technology that helps the agro-pharmaceutical companies sell more pesticides. GM technology doesn't make food taste any better. If you want tastier foodstuffs, there are plenty of heirloom varieties that sit on shelves. Varieties that weren't develop via gene manipulation.
Looks like the trend in agricultural will be towards integrated sustainable farming, which be be less harsh on the environment AND on our health.
Yep, that's what the Munich Censorship Summit is really about: scared corporations who understand that the decentralized nature of the Internet is a cheap distribution system which undermines the channels they have dominated for years. There is an interesting sidebar to this in Steve Kettman's Wired report today on the summit titled "Untangling the Web We Weave" http://www.wired.com/news/ news/politics/story/21719.html Pay careful attention to page 3, especially the four paragraphs which start with: "Established publications like The New York Times and The Washington Post would not rate themselves -- it was agreed they would likely consider the ratings demeaning. But a media white list would identify both papers." I live in Washington, DC and occasionally read the Post. It's a crappy paper, no better than just about any other daily paper in the U.S. It's standards for accuracy are no better than any other paper either. In fact, it can be demonstrated that the Post is simply the official organ of the U.S. State Department. The NY Times is little better, as critics like Noam Chomksy have demonstrated. We need to disabuse people of the notion that just because a website is the official voice of a corporation with lots of name recognition, that this means that the site is more accurate OR USEFUL than some DIY site made by Jane Public. For example, would you rather go to some Star Trek fan site, or the one run by Microsoft? The idea that the "papers of record" would be exampt from any ratings scheme shows what the true intentions of the proposals are: to control the Internet and turn it into a contnet delivery mechanism such as television or the distro networks controlled by newspapers (newstand sales, distro trucks, printing plants, etc.) I think they will fail in the long run, because they really don't understand that the Internet is beyond their control, but they will screw it up as much as they can. Lastly, I greatly prefer and rely on the technology news of Slashdot over anything the Washington Post or the NY Times can dish out. Slashdot is a glowing example of how DIY and alternative media can do a better job of providing information to interested readers, once the barriers of money are removed. Against Bertelsmann's gold-plated soapbox, Chuck0 Mid-Atlantic Infoshop http://www.infoshop.org Editor, Alternative Press Review http://flag.blackened.net/apr/
The morons in Australia who passed these restrictions probably figured they could get away without anybody elsewhere making a peep. Well, they are wrong. You know what? They are also very vulnerable.
You should all be able to see the big Achilles heel of this whole thing. It's called the 2000 Summer Olympics. I will be working with others to organize a boycott of the 2000 games mainly because of these human rights abuses by the Australian government. If Australians aren't free to surf the Net in any way they see fit, how is Australia any different from China?
Slashdot Mirror
Sorry, but media concentration is still a reality and it is getting worse, despite the blooming of many alternatives. I agree that Chomksy and other Left media critics are wrong when they apply this criticism to the Internet, but when it comes to newspapers, radio, and TV, there are only a few companies that own everything. Radio is the worst of the bunch, with 3 corporations owning pretty much all of the airwaves.
I'm also sorry that you find Chomsky to be a crackpot. You are entitled to you ignorant opinion, but Chomsky is well respected around the world. He appears on TV stations in other countries, yet is shut completely off of American TV.
This story about a few corporations controlling the Internet is just another PR stunt from Jupiter Research. Cyber-pundits have been proclaiming the takeover of the Internet by corporations for years--if anything, the situation has improved with the shakeout of all the crappy dot-coms.
The Jupiter Research survey is also fundamentally dishonest: not every surfer going to the "popular websites" is going TO that website. More often than not, they are seeking content created by people whose content is hosted on that website. Corporations like Yahoo have tried to censor and discourage controversial content (like the adult communities) with the result that people go elsewhere.
How did this post get modded so high? You call Stefan a Marxist utopian, when in fact he is an anarchist. Big difference guys. You would think that Slashdot readers would understand the difference, but I think all the old schoolers moved out. Slashdot = Newbieland. The old guard understand the difference between Marxism and anarchism; they understand that anarchist techies are widespread and that they have been pretty important to maintaining the gift economy that used to be a celebrated facet of the Internet.
Capitalism works for those with the most wealth. It doesn't work for most of the world.
PC sales are down. The Internet is old news for people. The dot-com hype is gone. You can spend hours watching your stock values stay at the same level.
If there is not killer app that will create a demand for this new MS product, nobody is going to be interested.
MS.bomb
There are also hundred of thousands of people out there who have the power to buy software. Does Microsoft really expect them to spring scarce bucks for yet another buggy operataing system?
MS.scam
Microsoft does have a relationship with its millions of users. It's called the "blue screen of death" (BSOD). I see this at least once a day and it very effective at reminding me which company is responsible for my OS.
In all the chest-beating about how to defeat "terrorism," there are some interesting things being said by folks who used to be part of the establishment. This article by Robert M. Bowman ( Lt. Col., USAF retired) titled "What Can We Do About Terrorism?" came across my email this afternoon. He makes the following interesting point:
"People in Canada enjoy better democracy, more freedom, and greater human rights than we do. So do the people of Norway and Sweden. Have you heard of Canadian embassies being bombed? Or Norwegian embassies? Or Swedish embassies. No."
Too bad the spineless cowards in Congress couldn't get testimony from guys like this before they rushed headlong into a decision to take away our constitutional rights.
I think you are way too pessimistic about the amount of corporate control of the Internet in ten years. You forget about the rapidly growing movement against "globalism" which scored decisive victories in Seattle and Washington, DC last month. This movement has a strong anti-capitalist flavor and we're discovering that many normal folks are receptive to our messages. Not only that, many of us cyberactivists have been at it for nearly ten years now.
I think our strength will only grow once new tech like Gnutella and Freenet become operational and widely used. If you asked me a year ago, I would have said that the implementation of anarchic tech like these two examples was still 5 years away. It's good to see them arriving now, when we so desperately need them against the corporations.
Too many predictions about the future tend to leave out the social factor.
I'd like to suggest that DrEldarion read up up on the McLibel case, where a couple of unemployed British anarchists stood up to McDonalds, who sued them over the contents of a flyer. The two technically lost, but the case dragged on for over two years, making the company look bad and costing McDonalds over $14 million in lawyer" fees. Not only that, but the McSpotlight website was visited by millions of people, who were exposed to radical anti-golden arches ads that they wouldn't have, if McD's had simply told it's intellectul property lawyers to shut up.
<p>The McLibel two "won" because they had literally nothing to lose, being poor working class people. If they had been able to afford standard lawyers, they would have been told to settle out fo court. Most lawyers are pretty conservative and urge people to play along with the "justice" system. Slashdot appears to be fortunate in that its lawyers seem willing to make a stand.
<p>So, what I'm saying here is that you don't have to have access to fancy lawyers to make a good stand against corporate bullies like Microsoft.
I think it is really important, if not crucial, that Slashdot stand up to these bullies. That's what the DMCA is all about: controlling free speech in the guise of protecting "commerce."
I suggest that the Slashdot staff read up on the McLibel case. Mention "McLibel case" to the Microsoft lawyers and watch them pee in their pants.
I've been fighting these zealots for several years. Needless to say, they are NOT winning. Censorware has been installed on computers in fewer that 20% of public libraries. If you ask me that is 20% too much, but there is still time to reverse the installation of censorware in those libraries.
What we need is for more people to be outspoken against censorware. People who oppose censorship need to be more outspoken in their communities.
Library techies should refuse to install the software, because installing the software is a violation of librarian ethics.
Lastly, it's important to not get fatalistic about this issue. The religious right is at the lowest point of its power in the past 20 years. They don't have the numbers of people on their side, nor do they have the money. I'm sure they are in worse straits now that Gary Bauer has wasted millions of dollars to get 1% of the vote in New Hampshire.
So, it's far from hopeless. But now is a good time to fight back!
>Every monolithic organization uses the legal system of the country that they're in to bully people when their profits are threatened.
It's called *capitalism*. This system can't exist without an overwhelming apparatus of lawyers, courts, prisons, police, and so on, all of which function to protect the rich crooks from getting challenged by the little guys/gals.
How many rich people do you know who are in prison?
Yup, awfully small list isn't it?
Chuck0
Mid-Atlantic Infoshop
www.infoshop.org
Work WITHIN the system? Give us a break! Nobody believes that anymore, just look at the voter turnout numbers for *any* election. The system works, for the RICH, not for us little guys and gals.
Expect to see alot of changes soon though.
Go Anarchy!
www.infoshop.org
I grew up on Clarke and always loved his stuff, but his main weakness (still) is that he doesn't understand the human factor. If you want a SF writer to make some prediction for you, I'd go with Kim Stanley Robinson. He understands poltics, sociology, and how humans tick.
Clarke completely factors out the innate human tendency to resist totalizing social experiments put together by their governments (or corporations. For example, how would Clarke factor in the major defeat last week of Monsanto's genetically-modifed foods program? That was defeated by the direct action of Indian farmers who burned GM crops and English activist who destroyed fields with games of football.
What about social revolutions?
Clarke's predictions are alot of fun, but I'd like to see the other half of the picture!
Chuck0
Mid-Atlantic Infoshop
http://www.infoshop.org
GM food becoming accepted in high-tech countries? Give me a break, have you been on vacation? Last week Monsanto finally cried uncle after a hard fought direct action campaign conducted by activists around the world. There is more to come and it's very likely that the Mega Corps will shelve this technology.
GM food is unneeded by farmers because it is simply a technology that helps the agro-pharmaceutical companies sell more pesticides. GM technology doesn't make food taste any better. If you want tastier foodstuffs, there are plenty of heirloom varieties that sit on shelves. Varieties that weren't develop via gene manipulation.
Looks like the trend in agricultural will be towards integrated sustainable farming, which be be less harsh on the environment AND on our health.
Yep, that's what the Munich Censorship Summit is really about: scared corporations who understand that the decentralized nature of the Internet is a cheap distribution system which undermines the channels they have dominated for years. There is an interesting sidebar to this in Steve Kettman's Wired report today on the summit titled "Untangling the Web We Weave" http://www.wired.com/news/ news/politics/story/21719.html Pay careful attention to page 3, especially the four paragraphs which start with: "Established publications like The New York Times and The Washington Post would not rate themselves -- it was agreed they would likely consider the ratings demeaning. But a media white list would identify both papers." I live in Washington, DC and occasionally read the Post. It's a crappy paper, no better than just about any other daily paper in the U.S. It's standards for accuracy are no better than any other paper either. In fact, it can be demonstrated that the Post is simply the official organ of the U.S. State Department. The NY Times is little better, as critics like Noam Chomksy have demonstrated. We need to disabuse people of the notion that just because a website is the official voice of a corporation with lots of name recognition, that this means that the site is more accurate OR USEFUL than some DIY site made by Jane Public. For example, would you rather go to some Star Trek fan site, or the one run by Microsoft? The idea that the "papers of record" would be exampt from any ratings scheme shows what the true intentions of the proposals are: to control the Internet and turn it into a contnet delivery mechanism such as television or the distro networks controlled by newspapers (newstand sales, distro trucks, printing plants, etc.) I think they will fail in the long run, because they really don't understand that the Internet is beyond their control, but they will screw it up as much as they can. Lastly, I greatly prefer and rely on the technology news of Slashdot over anything the Washington Post or the NY Times can dish out. Slashdot is a glowing example of how DIY and alternative media can do a better job of providing information to interested readers, once the barriers of money are removed. Against Bertelsmann's gold-plated soapbox, Chuck0 Mid-Atlantic Infoshop http://www.infoshop.org Editor, Alternative Press Review http://flag.blackened.net/apr/
The morons in Australia who passed these restrictions probably figured they could get away without anybody elsewhere making a peep. Well, they are wrong. You know what? They are also very vulnerable.
You should all be able to see the big Achilles heel of this whole thing. It's called the 2000 Summer Olympics. I will be working with others to organize a boycott of the 2000 games mainly because of these human rights abuses by the Australian government. If Australians aren't free to surf the Net in any way they see fit, how is Australia any different from China?
So, Boycott the 2000 Olympics!
Chuck0
Mid-Atlantic Infoshop
www.infoshop.org