The Internet Is A Communications Platform, Not A Content Platform
from the wait-a-second... dept
It seems that any time you hear someone saying they're trying to reach the "middle ground" on an argument, you might want to suspect their motives. That was the case a few months ago when some think tank wanted to reach a middle ground on file sharing, which was really a thinly veiled explanation for why the entertainment industry should control the internet. We've now got another one, which is even scarier. TheRegister has published an excerpt from a paper supposedly about "media literacy" which claims its looking for a "middle ground" between "etopians" who want the internet to remain open and the regulate and control crowd who want to ban and filter everything. However, the conclusions are anything but a middle ground. They're saying that people are stupid and can't handle the internet as is, and that there should be a separate internet that is more like TV, with acceptable providers handling the content, and acting as the guides to all the content out there. This is mischaracterizing the debate. It's not a middle ground at all, but a fairly radical solution. There's already a TV out there. This is designed from the wrong mindset. The internet is not a content platform, but a communications one. This article flips that around and assumes that it's a content platform -- for the sake of the content providers.
Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
Techdirt is one of the few remaining truly independent media outlets. We do not have a giant corporation behind us, and we rely heavily on our community to support us, in an age when advertisers are increasingly uninterested in sponsoring small, independent sites — especially a site like ours that is unwilling to pull punches in its reporting and analysis.
While other websites have resorted to paywalls, registration requirements, and increasingly annoying/intrusive advertising, we have always kept Techdirt open and available to anyone. But in order to continue doing so, we need your support. We offer a variety of ways for our readers to support us, from direct donations to special subscriptions and cool merchandise — and every little bit helps. Thank you.
–The Techdirt Team
Reader Comments
Subscribe: RSS
View by: Time | Thread
creating a falsehood to weight appearance of a middle ground
One woman in the left is onto the truth.
What we want isn't a middle ground.
Democracy is not a middle ground between slavery and anarchy.
It's a valuable thing in itself.
Freedom of speech is not a middleground, it's a battleground.
We'd like the internet to be a battleground of ideas.
We lost out having the airwaves be such a thing. Corporations won and the people were left out. This overwhelming takeover (0f the possibilities of communication) has been a detriment for the workig faceoff of ideas that is the source of power of a free people.
Let them go on and on. It's time to take over some of their time and equipment. The airwaves do not belong to any corporation and cannot truely be sold, only rented.
Take back the broadcast bandwidth. There is no room for a middleground, only for the free expression of ideas.
(Apologies to all the Muslims who may have read this. Please forgive me for anything I have said to offend you or that I have not said that may offend you. The women must cover their bodies and then the men must shut their ears and eyes, excepting the call of the Muzzein and the pages of the Koran. Make it so believers.)
[ link to this | view in thread ]