It's Not An Open vs. Closed Internet, But Ours vs. Theirs

from the one-way-to-look-at-it dept

Dave Weinberger has a thought-provoking post where he discusses why an "open" internet is so important, and suggests that we may be thinking about things incorrectly due to the term "open."

The Net as a medium is not for anything in particular -- not for making calls, sending videos, etc. It also works at every scale, from one to one to many to many. This makes it highly unusual as a medium. In fact, we generally don't treat it as a medium but as a world, rich with connections, persistent, and social. Because everything we encounter in this world is something that we as humans made (albeit sometimes indirectly), it feels like it's ours. Obviously it's not ours in the property sense. Rather, it's ours in the way that our government is ours and our culture is ours. There aren't too many other things that are ours in that way.

If we allow others to make decisions about what the Net is for -- preferring some content and services to others -- the Net won't feel like it's ours, and we'll lose some of the enthusiasm (= love) that drives our participation, innovation, and collaborative efforts.

So, if we're going to talk about the value of the open Internet, we have to ask what the opposite of "open" is. No one is proposing a closed Internet. When it comes to the Internet, the opposite of "open" is "theirs."

I'd certainly never thought about it that way, but it does make a point. I do think that many more people feel "at home" on the internet in a way that they never could or would in other platforms or media. And part of the fear that people have about losing an "open" internet is that it will decrease any incentive for participation. There is definitely a sense that part of the reason why some folks would like to pull back on openness is to turn the internet from a platform for users towards a more controlled broadcast sort of platform. That is, it won't be about communication, but about content delivery -- and when you do that, it loses a significant portion of its value. And I think that's where the shift from "ours" to "theirs" comes from. Not everyone can put a show on TV, but anyone can put a video on YouTube or just create a website. The internet is about communication, and when you start mitigating who can communicate and how, you lose the value of community.

Filed Under: culture, dave weinberger, openness

Dave Weinberger Shows How Fans Can Help Support An Artist As Well

from the connect-with-fans dept

We're getting pretty much overwhelmed these days by people sending in different examples of artists embracing new business models or the concept of connecting with fans and giving a reason to buy. It's really great to see, though we just don't have the time to write all of them up. Still, some are unique enough to merit a mention. Michael Bennett Cohn alerts us to the fact that Dave Weinberger didn't just want to get more people to listen to the band Brad Sucks, he decided to pay Brad money for the first 50 people who downloaded his album. Brad Sucks has long been a big supporter of free business models, and eschewing copyright as being unnecessary. He's actually done quite a bit himself to try to better connect with fans over the years, and even though he lets you download all his music for free, Weinberger wanted to get more people to hear Brad's music, but also help Brad make some money. Apparently, it took about an hour for people to claim all 50 copies. This is similar, in some ways, to the experiment we wrote about a few months ago when the band Officer Roseland started offering to pay people a dollar to download its album. This is definitely different in a few ways, but perhaps the most compelling of all is that it shows how a fan can really step up and try to help an artist he or she likes, while also helping to promote the music.

Filed Under: brad sucks, business models, dave weinberger, music, supporting artists