Before the deluge
Submitted by doc on Mon, 07/11/2005 - 16:51.
Jon "Hannibal" Stokes on the Apple-Intel thing:
I'm going to do something that I almost never do: spill insider information from unnamed sources that I can confirm are in a position to know the score. Note that this isn't the start of some kind of new trend for me. It's just that all this information that I've been sitting on is about to become dated, so it's time to get it out there.
The money quote:
If you think XScale is too powerful for the iPod—it's used in powerful color PDAs—then you're not taking the device seriously enough as a portable media platform. The XScale is plenty powerful enough to do video playback, and I have reason to believe that Apple is currently working on a video iPod to counter the Sony PSP. (My guess is that we might even see it in time for Christmas.) When the video iPod hits the streets, Apple will have an iPod product that plays each of the media formats (music, pictures, video) represented in its iLife suite.
I'm not quoting this post to remark on What Apple's Up To. That's nothing more than an interesting distraction from The real story, which is much, much, bigger than that. For a peek, look at the future mobile mess Russell and Om describe.
Then think a bit about what the Supreme Court's Brand X decision means, for the growing power of the Internet's carriers. (And yes, the Internet is, and will be, carried, just like the phone system was, and still is, to the enduring relief of those who love all the regulatory relief their lobbying dollars can acquire.)
Here's the story nobody's telling because it requires exiting the publicity-gas atmosphere to witness soberly:
All the big boys: the PC makers, the chip makers, the mobile equipment providers, the "consumer experience" deliverers (including Virgin, its many holdings and the rest of the entertainment industry), the patent, copyright and IP (Intellectual Property) absolutists, the parochial national interests, and — most of all — the carriers by the grace of whose fiber and wiring the Net is made available — all want to control you: what you can do with their services and devices, what you can buy, who you can buy it from, and how you can use it. The free and open Internet, a World of Ends built on an end-to-end, peer-to-peer architecture, is slowly being privatized and nationalized, one DRM file, one blocked port, one platform silo, one walled data garden, one legislative action, one regulatory decree, one Supreme Court decision and one national cyberwall after another.
This is what we are fighting, folks. The open and free marketplace the Internet provides is shortly going to look like the best darn mess of few-to-many distribution systems for "content" the world has ever known. It will not be the free and open marketplace it was in the first place, and should remain. The end-state will a vast matrix of national and private silos and walled gardens, each a contained or filtered distribution environment. And most of us won't know what we missed, because it never quite happened.
Let the music keep our spirits high.
I don't actually understand the problem here.
Seriously.
If we all become locked-in eyeballs for some shadowy group of Big Boys who decide what we say and what price we pay for the privilege ...
didn't we actually choose that? Wouldn't it then be, by definition, what we wanted?
Of course there will always be ad-addicted drones who literally aren't aware that news is available from anyone other than CNN/ABC/CBS/NBC/FOX. Of course there will always be bubble gum chewing babes who think that Madonna or Britney or whomever are the be-all end-all of music, and the price is right.
But there will also be people who know read IT Garage, or DailyKOS. There will also be people who discover indie bands at a local festival and tune in via the band's website. These people will have to go a shorter distance to learn about alternatives and excercise their personal choices than ever before, thanks to the internet.
Don't forget, DRM and other lock-in techs are opt-in models for the content producers. If the producers don't like the terms offerred by the Big Boys, they'll go indie at a lower price of entry than ever before. And the indie producers and consumers are already far too big a market for the carriers to ignore. That market is only getting bigger every day.
This gloom/doom/despair/agnony on me prophesy is just too big a pill to swallow. Are ya trolling, Doc?
(Oh, I did like the Jackson Browne reference, though!)
content and the network
The issue is that if network operators and large content entities join forces (many already have), then the available pool of expression is more likely to be diminished. It is not that we "choose" it so much as we will have fewer options to choose amongst.
If I purchase a Verizon internet connection who happens to be allied with Viacom, am I going to be more likely or less likely to see Viacom content? When ESPN rolls out their mobile phone service next year, will I easily be able to get to Fox sports too?
Letting the network control the content, or rather "partner with" (and maybe someday own) the content, joins 2 pieces of the puzzle that by definition devalues the other possible end points on the network. Remember the network in and of itself is a dumb entity--the value is in the end points, but if you can control access to the network, you can control access to the end points.
The indie scene is vibrant, but it is not the mass market---that is Coke and Pepsi land, XGames, ESPN, Disney, Mcdonalds--and if you think there aren't plenty of artists willing to go that route, remember that next time you hear Led Zeppelin selling Cadillacs! DRM might be opt-in today, but slowly it will be ubiquitous, and 95% of the market will accept it (actually they will not even notice it!). There will always be a counter-culture, and maybe it grows, but will it be significant?
Last example---the Dead Kennedys---say Clearchannel partners with (or owns) a cable co providing video and internet access, and Mr Biaffra said a couple choice things about Mr. Bush. They don't have to outright block access ala China, but what if they degraded the quality?, drop a few packets here and there---something far outside the normal user's ability to detect. "page not found" takes on a whole new meaning.
Given our consumer culture educations, there will continue to be a growing mass of willing participants in a segregated, silo'd, DRM'd future----and most of them won't even know that there ever was an alternative. The FCC is OK with rebuilding monopolies, closing access networks and letting the network *be* the content.
Again: what's wrong with that?
1) You haven't made the case that this is actually happening on the internet. Maybe a few real world examples in place of the 'what ifs' would help. The Verizon argument fails in the present time because neither Verizon nor any other bandwidth provider I can think of limits my access to other content. I'm on a Comcast connection right now, and I'm as likely to see their competitor's content as their own.
2) Today's average internet surfer doesn't have fewer choices. Oh no - he has far more choices than ever before. The toothpaste is out of the tube, and it's pretty well impossible to stuff it back in again. Now imagine the uproar the first time someone clicks a link found a friend's weblog and gets 'page not found' when he knows (by checking with friends on IRC) the page is working fine.
3) If someone drops 'a few packets here and there', of course the nature of the internet is that my TCP/IP stack will just request them again. I won't notice their lack and I'll still hear those choice comments about Mr. Bush.
4) You ask if the counter-culture will be significant. Again I say, if the masses choose something else, that's their prerogative, their choice.
The toothpaste is out of the tube. Choice belongs to the surfer, and the content producer. If either decides he'd rather do business with the Big Boys, that's freedom at work.
hi
This is a cool site.richa
If we lose it, it will be to "us"
Sure, "They" have a lot of control ideas in mind. But if we lose end-to-end, it will be "our" own fault.
Not one of the nasty ideas coming from "Them" is as powerful a de-end-to-ender as the widely accepted spam-fighting principle of making lists of "residential" or "dynamic" IP addresses, and treating them differently. Once the Mighty Spam Fighters have everyone neatly divided into "Responsible Server Administrators" and "Home Users/Possible Spammers", filtering out p2p traffic becomes a small matter of regulation and configuration.
Why is Apple moving to Intel? To take advantage of the most powerful marketing program available to the PC business, the transaction-cost-free free sampling program, the warez scene.
Bayosphere thread on the thin client/cell phone business model
Something strikes me about the inevitability of it all
Doc, I think you underestimate their will to control and our need to be commanded.
Isn't this a little too dramatic?
First, the "others" you identify do not constitute some monolithic entity with some shared set of values that lead to one inevitable goal: control of "us." Much of what you describe is the result of the competing and conflicting interests of these groups. Resolving those conflicts in a way that meets everyone's needs or wishes was never even faintly a possibility.
I'd say most of those groups don't _care_ what "we" do, as long as their particular ox isn't being gored (and as long as at least part of what we do involves giving one or more of them some of our money). Just as I'd say you probably don't care what "they" do as long as your ox isn't being gored, and what you're objecting to is the goring of your ox.
How does framing this discussion as "control" of "us" by "them" help anyone to grasp the issues involved here? Are you not simply substituting your "publicity-gas atmosphere" for theirs? Is your description any more "sober" than those you object to?
What are you fighting again? The laws of nature?
keep the faith, Doc
Interesting post, Doc ... but I wonder ... seems I read somewhere that "Intranets naturally tend to route around boredom. The best are built bottom-up by engaged individuals cooperating to construct something far more valuable: an intranetworked corporate conversation."
Yeah, there'll be a "vast matrix of national and private silos and walled gardens, each a contained or filtered distribution environment" ... one of the biggest is called AOL -- and sumbitch if that sucker ain't being routed around and bleeding members as we speak.
--Craig
AOL is a TV station
They're bleeding access clients since the access game has gotten more monopoly-friendly. Their CEO is smart---getting out of access and becoming a TV/content station, someday to be owned by Time-Warner cable----a blessed destination that feeds its ad dollars back to the network operator.
The network will have fewer and fewer routes to "alternative" places----yes, there'll be some backwaters, but the game is not about control (they already have that), it's about training better consumers. Your life isn't composed of what's around you, it's what's on the screen, silly.
I'd ask everyone reading this---where do you get your access now? how are you reading this post? via a monopoly network or a non-monopoly network? If you're surfing via an ILEC, cableco, or LD carrier, you are on a monopoly. If you are on an independent carrier, you are #1 in the minority, and #2 likely going to be switching soon---I'd get that hotmail address now.
thanks Doc
not over the top, not shrill, not Chicken Little (ooops, I might have to pay Disney for mentioning him).
They all want to corner the market at our expense. Lock in. Own the eyeballs. Monetize the attention.
And those outside of the lunatic fringe and early adopter crowd dont see it yet. And sometimes I wonder if they will. WHere are the statesmen who dealt with the law regarding Radio or Cable TV or copyright (nto copyforever)? Where are the guys and gals who are looking out for us?
-Sean
seanbohan.com
Great post Doc. Great.