Cyberspace: doomed to become a "vaster wasteland"?

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Cyberspace: doomed to become a "vaster wasteland"?
by Paul Saffo
<http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/saffo/detail?entry_id=38565>
Nearly 50 years ago, then-FCC Commissioner Newton Minow lamented in a  
speech to the National Association of Broadcasters that the once- 
promising young medium of Television had become a "vast wasteland."  
Well, history is repeating itself as the once-promising medium of the  
Web is maturing into a vaster wasteland of cyberspace. The latest  
horrifying indicator comes in this recent report from the Interactive  
Advertising Bureau, noting that 2008 Internet advertising revenues  
totaled $23.4 billion, up 10.6 percent from 2007. That makes Internet  
advertising the fastest growing advertising medium in history. Ever.

Advertising matters because it generates the money that inspires the  
established media players to meddle with the Internet at the expense  
of the greater public good. For example, Time Warner is rolling out  
new "consumption based billing" with tiered caps on how much users can  
download. Time Warner claims this is in response to the few Internet  
"hogs" who are overusing their pipes at the expense of ordinary  
customers, but even a cursory examination of their numbers show that  
the goal is to save their cable TV franchise by making movie downloads  
as expensive over the internet as pay-per-view is today. The current  
model of prix fixe pricing will be replaced by an à la carte billing  
where the hapless customer will be forced to pay more than ever even  
as the actual cost of service delivery for the provider continues to  
drop.

Look for Time Warner's competitors to follow suit, and count on the  
fact they won't stop at usage charges. As today's media giants flee a  
crumbling mass media order, we can count on the big players doing  
everything they can to make cyberspace ever more friendly to corporate  
interests at the expense of innovative upstarts and the public at  
large. The media establishment is determined to create an Internet  
where not all packets are treated equally. As fans of Bit-torrent  
learned two years ago, bit-flows from sites favored by your provider  
will arrive faster than bit-flows from unapproved sites.

[snip]

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