The Net’s Runaway Infrastructure
The web has certainly been a nice treat. It’s too bad to see it go. The threat of history repeating itself with large multi-billion dollar corporations consuming a new and powerful medium is at our doorstep. This time at the expense of net neutrality. Such a trend’s not an evil conspiracy (not always, anyway), nor is it destined to suffer death-by-monetization. But it’s a threat that’s well worth attention. I received a beta invitation to the Space Collective today, where a nicely put-together video titled ‘Runaway Infrastructure’ caught my attention.
The video’s a little bit biased in its bold statements (ie. wire electricity chosen over wireless was perhaps not as it sounds) but the point is valid and Christopher Lloyd psychotic in his allegorical role in Who Framed Roger Rabbit? — a combo that’s hard to argue with.
For a recent example of some dubious, related developments, Tony at CompSci Canada discusses the exploits of Rogers, one of the main Internet Service Providers in Canada, injecting information into the pages a user is browsing. Sure, it’s just server information, but as noted by Tony — it’s a slippery slope:
While the technique is said to be used only to serve account information messages (as oppose to using email or calling their customers), the technology itself is developed to inject any sort of advertisements into webpages not owned by the ISP. It’s a short path from serving account information to “relevant” Rogers offers, to offers from 3rd party partners. The idea might be too tempting to pass up.
Unfortunately this is not an isolated case of pushing the limits; and we all know what kind of plumbers are sometimes left in charge at the governmental level. Stay vigilant. The web is free. For now.
2 Comments, Comment or Ping
Nils
The web definitely is a weird place. Free, but not really, open to all, but not really either. While no one has “a button” they can press to shut it down, a lot can go wrong.
If it ever does, I suppose a small set of clever guys will get something up and running again (it’s only a matter of distributing stuff, agreeing on a protocol, and talking to each other, right?) but it would be bad news for many of us.
As far as the Rogers thing, you think it may lead to something like this: free, but ad-supported virtual ISPs? You know, like the phone companies that offer low rates but use the infrastructure of the established providers. I could see a Google ISP offering cheap or free connections that are ad-supported instead. Well, maybe…
Dec 19th, 2007
Hrafn
Very quotable
Well, not if the big corps regulate traffic (i.e. block competitor sites, or limit the line speed to sites they don’t like). Then it’d be more than software issues. But I suppose that’s a worst case scenario.
The main thing I’m concerned with is that they’re putting their fingers into the content (by editing the packets); ‘hardwiring’ ads to the user. At the moment it’s somewhat harmless, but once the fingers are in the content they’ve opened a certain door that could be hard to close. What else will ‘they’ want to do to our content? (*Put on your 3D glasses*) But, I’ll end this appropriately with your words: Well, maybe …
Dec 22nd, 2007
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