If indeed a new era of global responsibility has come into being with measures that actually restrain banks and isolate tax havens, it may be time for the planet's dominant economic powers to focus on the destructive, anti-civic forces of the internet. Exactly 20 years after Sir Tim Berners-Lee wrote the blueprint for the world wide web, the internet has become the host to a small number of dangerous WWMs - worldwide monopolies that sweep all before them with exuberant contempt for people's rights, their property and the past.
What do you guys think?
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2 comments:
That's a very interesting article. Sure that information circulation(and control)became as important as money circulation.
"Some ideas are so absurd only an intellectual could believe them".
George Orwell
Opinions on actual bailouts and additional market's regulations are at least divided. There is huge group of respected economists who claims that proposed rescue plan do more harm and will deepen recession. Here is the full page ad from Financial Times signed by hundreds of academics who disagrees with the whole stimulus package.
I wouldn't be to worried about monopolies. Pre dot-com/web 2.0 times proved that the only effective way to dismantle any monopoly is to deregulate the market. Us Steel founded by Andrew Carnegie quickly become monopolist in steel market. For couple of decades US government was trying to fight it's position. Fight "so successfully" that every year prices went up and US Steel was becoming stronger and stronger. Only deregulation of this part of the market helped. Now US Steel has below 10% of market-share. Did you remember origins of jpeg format? People behind GIF decided theirs position is so strong they can impose fee on every user as they hold copyrights. Jpeg was an answer. There is quite long list of companies from IT sector which once were "the biggest & almighty": DEC, Texas Instruments, Atari...
I would be more worried about politicians who want to introduce control over internet in the name of fighting "child abuse", "monopolies" and "terrorism".
Internet is the last medium that isn't controlled and regulated by governments and politicians. Unfortunately it looks like it's going to be changed pretty soon...
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