You Don't Encourage Innovation By Hobbling The Innovative Platform
from the ah,-politicians dept
We've pointed out in the past, that the internet has always been a communications platform, not a broadcast platform, and that distinction is actually the key to understanding many of the "conflicts" you see online these days. The internet was built with core principles based on being a communication platform, and it was only much later, when the big broadcast content providers realized what was going on, that they started acting as if the internet must be a broadcast platform. That's why they freak out about file sharing -- because while it fits perfectly with the "communication" aspect, it violates their sense of what a broadcast platform should be.The problem, though, is that the big media companies have simply decided that rather than change to reflect the nature of the platform, the platform should change to reflect the nature of that ONE industry's business. Unfortunately, at times they're somehow able to convince politicians that the platform should change to adapt to them, rather than the other way around. That's evident from this story submitted by SteveD about comments made by the UK's "culture secretary" about "tightening up" online regulations to make them match TV regulations. This is really code for saying that we're going to hobble the internet to make it act more like a broadcast medium, to keep those media companies happy. The column at the link above, by Bill Thompson, does a pretty good job destroying this argument, but it's still worth noting that it's even being made.
It's amazing how clear the strategies are of the various companies when you view it through this lens. As a communications platform, there's little reason to change most of the way the internet works. It does a great job. The only issue is how other companies should change to work with it. But too many politicians and industry insiders seem to think that they should totally inhibit this communications platform because they're not able to simply wedge their existing business model onto that platform.
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Filed Under: broadcast platform, communications platform, regulations, uk
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Hobbling The Innovative Platform
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This also dashes the fear that the totalitarian solution (China) will spread. It does not address eavesdropping, however, and the Internet model doesn't really include provisions for snooping at the source.
Unfortunately, there's no apparent solution to this attempt at perverting the net to fit an outdated paradigm. Firms which are actively trying to force their old models on the net have the ear of the legislature, evidenced by the UK's Culture Secretary. How long until the US follows suit?
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Re:
What, a small conspiracy then ?
John -> "just simple politics and business seeing a mutual interest"
That mutual interest is just simple world domination ?
I cant tell if John is being sarcastic or not.
Why would politicians amd corporations need control of the media ?
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rebuild FIDONET
every time someone has tried to choke down modes of communications, there would be alternative channels established...
it could take a few years, but we could rebuild FIDONET, this time via wireless routers...
for those who were not yet born, FIDONET was a distributed no centralized packet switching network which provided nation wide e-mail prior to AOL and when MA BELL controlled access to copper cables... it provided an average thru put measured in KB/S not MB/S nor GB/S, but it was unstoppable...
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Re:
Those rules exist for TV broadcasters because they are licensing the airwaves (a public resource). There are a finite number of TV frequencies available, so they must be regulated (if they don't want to follow the rules, they lose their frequency and someone else gets it). The internet has no such restrictions, so regulation does not make sense.
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Media = How can I make money off this information?
Our aim surely must be to find a way to stay true the the former whilst using the latter to improve and better what is available?
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SPAM
I think I'll start calling it splog
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Crazy Brittania
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Re:
I dunno, I could care less if the media can successfully monitize services on the internet. If they can great, but if they cant, well it is still an amazingly powerful tool, just in the hands of us "regular joes" and I have plenty of other places to access "media content". I think this idea of "compromize" offers no real attraction to me. On the one hand we are giving up something the world has never had before (the ability for one to reach many with very little investment), in return for more of the same stuff we have had for hundreds of years (the ability for one to reach many, with substantial investment).
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Broadcast platform vs Communications platform
On one end, television is most certainly a broadcast medium. At the other end, a phone is very much a communications tool. I see the internet being along the continuum between the two. To make things more complicated, it's placement on that continuum shifts with the website. Social media sites would fall closer to the communications end. Many, many other sites would fall not far from the broadcast side.
In the end, I think that by applying one label or the other and saying the other side is wrong, oversimplifies the issue to the point where it invalidates the original idea.
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Part of the internet is broadcast
The answer to the clowns that want to treat the whole internet as Broadcast would be to let them play in the IP Multicast space, and leave the point-to-point internet to continue running by its point-to-point practices.
Oh, you mean nobody uses the internet broadcast/multicast features? Maybe that should tell you that the internet is not a broadcast facility.
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