There has to be unity among us small business peopl in order to survive. I love being able to sit on my laptop at home and make money, and I know everyone else here at DP does to. I'm willing to donate money to a non profit ISP company if the internet we have today comes under attack. The Internet is the only place left that is truly "free market." It is a level playing field where anyone who works and studies hard can make money. Bill Gates got on the news this week and laid down a plan to create an electronic postage stamp where you will have to pay to send out emails. He claims this will stop spam, but he is full of it. It is just going to allow companies with lots of money to send out more email than anyone else, thus giving them an advantage. Some people here at DP say its just for small businesses, but I don't think anyone should have to pay to send out emails, business or personal. We haven't been paying, why pay now?
Go and read this article, its a very good article. Its the second time I have seen this story popup in the past couple months. The telco's want to ruin the internet for everyone. http://www.seochat.com/c/a/Search-Engine-News/Google-and-the-Big-ATT-Extortion-Scheme/
this hippie nonsense is just too much. you can't regulate the net, if the gov could there wouldnt be servers over seas hosting kiddie porn. you think they havent tried to stop that? paying for the internet is nonsense as well. fortunately we live in a capitalist society where someone could always offer the same services for cheaper, or better yet for free. if anything you will see online access provided for free in the future as a gov service. the source of the original article appears to be a 12 year old on his new dell. have fun freaking out over bs conspiracy theories, i am going to keep working on promoting my site in the free internet, while it lasts, boogie boogie boogie! bwahahhaa!
I love your forward thinking approach. Your critical analysis powers are truly amazing. People in this thread are philosophising potential roads that the internet could go down, whereas you are simply blocking any ideas that arise from creative thought. If you don't keep up with change then you will get swallowed up. Do you work for MSN? If you are not interested in the course that the www takes because you do not think it will affect you then what the hell are you doing on the www?
You guys are all ignoring one small fact, that Google will come to the rescue. Anyone remember reading about how google is rolling out wireless in the US, and it wants to cover the world in Google Wireless? I think its bye bye to mobile phone companies in a few years if google goes through with this...not to mention it would ruin these cable companies intentions...
creative, yes. accurate probably not. i have no problem with thoughts of what might happen. however i was referring to the original article which is conspiracy theory garbage. thank god no. i am a small business owner. a business that is flourishing due to my seo work. what statement made you think i wasnt interested in the course the internet takes? it is my livelyhood. i just don't see it taking the same path as others. learn more about capilist markets and you will figure out why you will not have to pay per email or other rediculous ideas.
Uh, ok, well good luck to them. That article reminds me of any speech by Boris Yeltsin - there is a lot of talking, but no answers. They say a lot but they haven't really put down how they plan on doing this? How exactly are they going to control all the servers in the world? And from reading that article it appears that a lot of what they want to do is software based (ie: making super cookies and reading packets) which we all know will be hacked even before it is released (think Windows XP). Trying to control the Internet is like trying to control a virus, just when they get one area under control, another strain will form. Than there is always private companies that will jump at this opportunity to offer their services knowing that a lot of people will jump to them IF the Internet does become controlled. -Life always finds a way (Jurrasic Park)
its very common knowledge that whenever small companies start to thrive, a larger company will do something about it. I live in Canada and we experienced it first hand every since we signed the Free Trade agreement. Canada used to be a country of small shops and happy people running the shops. Now all the big companies bought almost all our small shops and now hire 16 year olds 7 dollars an hour to do something they dont want to do. The majority of the money is pooled into a major corporation and makes a select few rich, while giving everyone else just enough so they dont complain. what you are describing about the Internet is similar to what happened with the Television. We were origionally suppose to get free television. Then some big companies figured they could monetize it more so (other than ads) by selling cable. At the time, twice as many stations as before were available with cable. Now it is common that almost everyone has either cable or satelite. And since everyone has cable and satelite, noone is willing to shell out the money to invest in free antenna stations. the same thing is in the process of happening with radio. Radio is free on FM and AM bands. But soon satelite radio (for a fee) will put AM and FM in the likes of shortwave. FM is still adequate, but in maybe 10 years time noone will listen to FM or AM radio. It will all be for a charge with satelite radio. I was actually surprised at how long the Internet has been around without anyone privatizing it somehow and making huge money. I suppose at the time being there was just too much competition to comprehend. example, if google all of a sudden wanted to be evil they COULD, but then we would just start using another search engine. It all comes down to a flaw in the capitalist idea. Even though i support capitalism, the major flaw is that EVERYTHING CAN be owned by one company, and money CAN buy anything. and when one company has enough money to own everything, it will, and it will suck.
that is unfortunately how capitalism works. now that you get the concept, make sure you are on top. Now it is common that almost everyone has either cable or satelite. And since everyone has cable and satelite, noone is willing to shell out the money to invest in free antenna stations.[/quote]how do you suggest the cable companies pay for installation and maintenanc of the cable lines? they offered a service that was otherwise unavailable due to limited air waves. you dont have to get cable tv if you insist on only watching free tv, that option is still available. so then dont buy it! some people prefer to have the additional channels, clearer quality, and use in any state. if you dont want it dont buy it, fm/am are still free. think about how democratic societies work not dictatorships. the internet will operate in a similar mannor. yes this happens, but that is where the gov break up companies. ever hear of US Oil? Bell Atlantic? US Steel? they all got too big and the gov forced them to break into smaller companies so there is once again competition.
I don't really get how this will be the end of the internet. For one, we already pay for having the internet, to our ISPs. All that you are claiming will happen is that the price goes up...so what...everything's price always goes up. Second, just because some american companies decide to regulate the internet doesnt mean that the UK, or France, or smaller countries like Jamaica will follow suit. Which would of course suck for americans, but I doubt it would be a worldwide thing.
I don't get it either... I think the guy who wrote the article has twisted some internet technology barriers into a "end of the world" scenario. From the vague details he gives, I'm assuming he's talking about the Telecom/Cable companies who have been giving lower priority to third party VOIP traffic. I agree this is a bad thing, but I really didn't expect them to sit by and do nothing while their major sources of income (TV and phone service) are being moved to the internet. This has nothing to do with controlling content, it has to do with controlling which services are given higher priority. This is something that HAS to be done if we want to be able to do phone/TV/streaming media over the internet. The internet wasn't designed to handle this kind of traffic and without some sort of control, those things just won't work. Email and website traffic is not what the Telecom/Cable companies are worried about, it's the high volume traffic that they are worried about. And if someone wants to do VOIP/TV/P2P over the internet, they should be charged more because they are using more of the ISP's resources. These companies would never control what sites you can go to because it would be like a cable company phoning you up and saying, "Tomorrow you're only going to get 10% of the channels you used to get but you'll still pay the same price.". It just wouldn't happen. People don't want an internet which only has 10 sites, they want one with millions/billions of sites. The only people who could try to control this would be the government of whatever country you live in. In most countries, this violates basic rights and would therefore never happen.
I have always been a firm beleiver that the internet is a wealth of free information and the ability to find what you are looking for. And dont beleive it should be controlled, except in the circumstances of child pornography and other similar things lik terrorism. Otherwise why should china be able to filter out history etc etc? Thats obsurd. Brad
I started this thread, and the reason I did is because I know for sure the the UN and the Pentagon want to fight the net. A document was recently declassified under the FOIA in which the Pentagon says they will fight the net. I don't necessarily believe they will be able to accomplish this, because internet users are some of the most intelligent people in the world. Most of the hackers, phreakers, and other computer savvy people won't sit back and allow a government take over. The government can't win in the digital world. The FBI shut down a P2P site, and a week later 10 more replaced it. But you better believe the UN and Pentagon have been trying to go after the net, and have talked about attacking hostile computer networks. For most of history the government has filtered information and controlled people. Big corps know if they can control information, they can control people. But with the internet(a tool that wasn't supposed to become available to the common man) people are able to unite and spread information and exchange ideas. I'll tell everyone here something that happened to me the other day. I was working on my sites when I got a call. It was from some guy with a company saying they can write content for my websites. I cut to the chase and asked him how much they charged. He told me something ridiculous like 200 bucks an article. I told him I was doing freelance work for webmasters here at DP, and I only charge 5 bucks for each 400 word article. The guy got depressed and quickly hung up. The bottom line is, big corps can't compete with people like me who have less overhead. They may have more money than me, but I have cheaper overhead than them, and can charge lower prices. Outsourcing is no longer something I fear. The internet has made outsourcing obsolete for those who understand it.
I agree. I don't think the government does like it. With most media like TV and newspaper they can control the content (Fox News), but with the internet, that's not possible. When the information comes from one place or a select few places, it's easily manipulated, but with the internet, with millions of sources of information, they have no control. I don't think it's possible for any democratic government to filter content on the internet because the backlash from the people would be too strong.
Yes, I'm sure if there is some way to profit from things, google will be more than happy to do some rescuing. Google the savior lol I'd place my money on Chuck Norris to rescue us first... http://www.4q.cc/index.php?pid=top100&person=chuck