[10164] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Adbusters article on net.commericialism needs your input
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Stanton McCandlish)
Wed Feb 9 23:43:03 1994
From: Stanton McCandlish <mech@eff.org>
To: comp-org-eff-talk@cs.utexas.edu
Date: Wed, 9 Feb 1994 12:08:30 -0500 (EST)
Cc: com-priv@psi.com, alt-activism@cs.utexas.edu, alt-censorship@cs.utexas.edu,
Reply-To: shell@sfu.ca
[To forestall any questions, it should be noted that Adbusters and EFF see
things in the same light (IMHO): we are for the *privatization* of the net,
and for the development of a "data superhighway" that is a many-to-many
medium of participation, not just a one-to-many broadcast paradigm
nightmare of 500 tv channels with nothing on but "multimedia" sitcoms and
"interactive" commericals. EFF, and presumably Adbusters, are not for the
proverbial crass *commercialization* of the net - if we are subjected to
storms of e-junkmail and advertising, if corporations control all content,
and if "interactive" means only "press this button to make your purchase",
then this is not a network, it is nothing but a giant commercial. EFF and
Adbusters are not tied in any way, and this note is simply to clarify any
misperceptions that may arise due to their identification with our mission
in the following notice. EFF's position paper on NII development, the
Open Platform Initiative, can be had from:
ftp://ftp.eff.org/pub/EFF/Papers/OP/op2.0 - S.McC. <mech@eff.org>
PS: I don't subscribe to Adbusters, and don't know a thing about their
political slant if any. Rather than send tired political flames to Barry,
or especially to me or the newsgroup/list, please reserve them for alt.flame
or talk.politics.misc. Constructive criticism should go to Barry, nothing
should go to me, I'm just passing this on neutrally, and have other things
to do. Thanks.]
Forwarded message:
Date: Mon, 7 Feb 1994 15:02:41 -0800
>From: Barry Shell <shell@cs.sfu.ca>
Message-Id: <199402072302.AA16151@css.cs.sfu.ca>
Subject: Adbusters campaign to temper net.commercialism
I am a writer who has got the job from Adbusters Magazine to try
and come up with some ideas for a petition campaign they want to
run to draw out grassroots support to counter the plans of
big business for the data-superhighway.
Adbusters Quarterly is a publication dedicated
to the "Battle For the Mental Environment". My article, CyberEncounters
of the First Kind, in the current issue (Winter 94) attempts a kind
of critique of the evangelical reports that are commonly found
in the popular media describing the Internet. However, I and
Adbusters would like to see the new medium go in the same direction
that Mitch Kapor and the EFF also envision: toward a freer better
democracy, a world of communication and liberation, etc. etc.
We, like most, see the terrible awesome threat of big business
and the takeover (or subsuming or replacing or whatever you
want to call it) of the Net as a really frightening eventuality
and would like to stop or divert this juggernaut before it's too
late.
But before we do anything, we wanted to check with you, who may have
been at this game a lot longer to see if some formal or global
action of this sort has already been started. Have you or
anyone you know begun a formal campaign to kindle public awareness
of the **ALTERNATIVE** to endless home-shopping networks and
Rambo-Content 500 channels that is being promoted in the popular
media? We rarely see anything about what really makes the net
great: 1. It's Free (in many ways) 2. It's two way (we are all
equally producers and consumers). We need a major, simple,
all-media campaign to get this message across and Adbusters is
prepared to start it, but we want to check what others are
already doing.
HERE are some of the ideas I cobbled together for the editors
and publishers of Adbusters. I'd sure like to hear from
people after you read this. Thanks.
......................
SOME CONCEPTS TO BE PART OF A NET AWARENESS CAMPAIGN FOR ADBUSTERS
(Note: These are my ideas alone, so far, not necessarily anyone elses.)
1.a: Contrary to what "they" (meaning corporate commercial market
forces) would have you believe, the Internet *is* free. The actual
cost of the largest chunk of the Net--the NSF Backbone--is about
$20 million per year (source: Stephen S. Wolff, the director of the
Division of Networking and Communications Research and
Infrastructure at the National Science Foundation). Divided by the
20,000,000 users of the net, this equals one dollar a person. I say
this is equal to zero for all intents and purposes. Even if we are
very conservative and say that we are off by a factor of 10, it
works out to $10 per person per year--also virtually nothing. Even
if we are off by a factor of a hundred, it costs only $100/yr per
person--three to five times *less* than what users currently pay
per year on services like CompuServe, AppleLink, and Genie. That
backbone cost of $20 million is the cost of doing a big fast
efficient nationwide switching network. Not surprisingly, commercial
analogues of this network have sprung up in recent years and more
are planned. Why? Because "they" realize how cheap it actually is
to do--and how profitable.
1.b: But the "freedom" of the Net goes a lot further than just its
capital cost-- its "hardware". There is a *free software ethic*
that prevails as well. I think that the following note, attached to
every copy of Steve Christensen's 'SuperClock!' is indicative of
that spirit. (SuperClock! is probably the most popular clock
program for the Mac):
SuperClock! is free, but I reserve all rights to it. Give it
to your friends if you like. It may not be distributed
commercially (public domain and shareware disks come to mind),
however user's groups and on-line services may distribute it as
long as any costs are for the service (i.e., connect time or media
costs), AND that it's accompanied by this documentation.
If you really feel an urge to send me something, don't. I do this
for the fun of it. If the urge just won't go away, send a donation
to the Stanford Children's Hospital instead since they're always
happy to receive donations from people like you for software like
this. Their address is:
The Lucile Salter Packard
Children's Hospital at Stanford
725 Welch Road
Palo Alto, California 94304
--------------------------
Steve Christensen is doing it for the fun of it. The original
students that hacked the first Internet links in 1979 for the
American military also did it for the fun of it. Before "hacker"
was a bad word, they shared the ethic that software should be free.
This generalized "freedom of information", freedom of thought,
freedom of ideas is popular on the Internet and is alive and well.
1.c: There is yet another kind of freedom represented by the
Internet: the distributed nature of the Net's control systems.
There is no central control or authority. A type of freedom of
expression prevails there unlike any other place on Earth. Somehow
it is all self-regulating, I believe partly because of the first
two freedoms mentioned.
2. One must ask, when considering the future of the data
superhighway, "The Internet is growing exponentially while
commercial services like Compuserve grow relatively slowly, so
what is it that makes the Internet so popular?" I believe the
answer to that question lies in the following three reasons:
2a. As stated above the Net is "free."
2b. The Net is a haven from commercialism. It was conceived as a
commercial-free network to begin with and it has stayed that way. I
put it to you: Where else on earth can you find a human social
construct that is free from commercial market-driven values?
Especially on the scale of the Internet. In short, people are
turning to the Net in droves as a haven from the all-pervasive
market-driven madness that is gripping this planet. The reason for
this I believe is because the technology to run it is inherently
cheap (as noted in point 1 above) NOT because it is a socialist
government funded entity. Even if it was privately funded, it
would be just as cheap, costing users somewhere around $10 or $20
per year each. Note: this is cheaper than any other form of mass
communication. I couldn't believe this at first, so I checked it
with Hal Varian, Professor of Finance, School of Business Admin,
U. Mich. He has been studying net economics for years. His
conclusions are that the increasingly inexpensive computer
technology of which the net is composed is just so incredibly
efficient, that costs are in fact minimal. Sure, bigger bandwidth
and more users is going to cost more, but the price of the
technology is also falling. We must not let ourselves be duped
by big business, who want us to believe it will cost billions
to implement the kind of superhighway that America needs.
With ATM (Asynchronous Transfer Mode) and existing
phone and cable lines, much can be done for very cheap. And even
so, say the new infrastructure costs $2 billion. If you divide this
by the current 20 million users (and growing by 1 million per month)
you get only $100 per user. In other words, if each user paid only
$8.34/mo for a year the whole thing would be paid for!
2c. The decentralized "anarchic-like" control stucture of the
Net. A network of over a million machines, the Internet has no
central control structure. Net activity and behavior is
self-moderated for the most part. In fact, many cite this as a
reason why the "Powers that be" can never "shut down" the Net. The
Internet's highly distributed global web of cheap connections pays
no attention to political boundaries. Some say that short of
"turning off" the whole telephone system, there is no way of
shutting down the Net or of taking it over.
3. The Internet is a two way street. Each user is free to lurk, or
take, or give as much information as they please, (within certain
generous guidlines to avoid network congestion). Part of the
success of the decentralized "anarchic" control of the net is due
to this two-way quality of net communications.
4. Though the corporate interests have designs on the net as the
ultimate entertainment and information *delivery* system, (i.e.
broadcast paradigm), the observed fact of the matter is that the
main activity in cyberspace is person-to-person communication.
Email is the heaviest used service. Netnews is a forum for
discussion. MUSH's and MUD's are popular because you are
interacting and communicating with other people. You're not
watching a movie or playing a video game. You might be playing a
game, but you're playing with *people*. The Net is a social thing,
a people thing, perhaps a substitute for Real Life community
activities that have essentially been stripped away by our
market-oriented value system. (There's no easy money in community!)
5. Somehow one must characterize the extent to which Big Business
is working in backrooms to either take over the Internet or to
popularize and offer something much more expensive and without the
ideals of the Internet (see above) that have made it so popular.
6. The Net encourages creative freedom and experimentation. The
best network tools like Gopher and Veronica, or the World Wide Web
were created in a spirit of experimentation and were offered to
the community for free. This quality would probably be lost in a
commercialized Data Superhighway. And that would be a big loss.
That's it for now. Hope this generates some good debate.
Barry
shell@sfu.ca
--
Stanton McCandlish * mech@eff.org * Electronic Frontier Found. OnlineActivist
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