http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2012/dec/23/internet-will-oligarchs-control-it
Ever since the internet burst into public consciousness in 1993, the big question has been whether the most disruptive communications technology since print would be captured by the established power structures – and giant corporations – that dominate our world and shape its development.
But because the ITU is a UN body on which every member country has a vote, some regimes construed the conference as an opportunity for enabling governments to begin getting a grip on controlling the net.
motives for doing so varied: some countries saw revised IT regulations as a way of enabling them to levy charges on the giant western companies that currently dominate the net
The underlying reality was that most western countries simply refused to buy into the agendas of the authoritarian and/or developing countries who sought to use the conference as a means to the ends that they desired.
-->>> Instagram, a photo-sharing service that Facebook recently acquired for an unconscionable sum, abruptly changed its terms and conditions
users of the service were required to agree that Instagram could use any or all of their photographs for advertising and other purposes, at its sole discretion.
Most people saw this as just another illustration of the old internet adage: if the service is free then you are the product.
Others saw it as evidence that Facebook is determined to "monetise" its billion-plus users in any way it can.
But however one interprets it, the inescapable fact is that it demonstrates the extent to which giant internet corporations will try to control their users.
And Facebook is a giant corporation in a way that we haven't seen before. It has over a billion customers, er, users. That's just under half of all the world's internet population.
During a coffee break at a Royal Society conference, I mentioned this to Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the web.
"That's nothing," he said. "There are probably 200 million people now who think that Facebook is the internet." Multiply that number by four or five and you have the current position.
John Perry Barlow, the lyricist of the Grateful Dead, launched his Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace with its stinging contempt for the established order.
"Governments of the Industrial World", it opened, loftily, "you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather."
Barlow didn't recognise, that another gang of control freaks would also get in on the act – the Facebooks, Googles, Amazons and Apples of this world. And, in a way, they're making more progress than governments at the moment
Ever since the internet burst into public consciousness in 1993, the big question has been whether the most disruptive communications technology since print would be captured by the established power structures – and giant corporations – that dominate our world and shape its development.
But because the ITU is a UN body on which every member country has a vote, some regimes construed the conference as an opportunity for enabling governments to begin getting a grip on controlling the net.
motives for doing so varied: some countries saw revised IT regulations as a way of enabling them to levy charges on the giant western companies that currently dominate the net
The underlying reality was that most western countries simply refused to buy into the agendas of the authoritarian and/or developing countries who sought to use the conference as a means to the ends that they desired.
-->>> Instagram, a photo-sharing service that Facebook recently acquired for an unconscionable sum, abruptly changed its terms and conditions
users of the service were required to agree that Instagram could use any or all of their photographs for advertising and other purposes, at its sole discretion.
Most people saw this as just another illustration of the old internet adage: if the service is free then you are the product.
Others saw it as evidence that Facebook is determined to "monetise" its billion-plus users in any way it can.
But however one interprets it, the inescapable fact is that it demonstrates the extent to which giant internet corporations will try to control their users.
And Facebook is a giant corporation in a way that we haven't seen before. It has over a billion customers, er, users. That's just under half of all the world's internet population.
During a coffee break at a Royal Society conference, I mentioned this to Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the web.
"That's nothing," he said. "There are probably 200 million people now who think that Facebook is the internet." Multiply that number by four or five and you have the current position.
John Perry Barlow, the lyricist of the Grateful Dead, launched his Declaration of the Independence of Cyberspace with its stinging contempt for the established order.
"Governments of the Industrial World", it opened, loftily, "you weary giants of flesh and steel, I come from Cyberspace, the new home of Mind. On behalf of the future, I ask you of the past to leave us alone. You are not welcome among us. You have no sovereignty where we gather."
Barlow didn't recognise, that another gang of control freaks would also get in on the act – the Facebooks, Googles, Amazons and Apples of this world. And, in a way, they're making more progress than governments at the moment
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