Thursday, January 19, 2012

The False Ideals of the Web

Jaron Lanier, The New York Times, Jan. 18, 2012

From the OP-ED: "There is, however, an outdated brand of digital orthodoxy that ought to be retired. In this worldview, the Internet is a never-ending battle of good guys who love freedom against bad guys like old-fashioned Hollywood media moguls. The bad guys want to strengthen copyright law, and make it impossible to post anonymously copied videos and storiesOur melodrama is driven by a vision of an open Internet that has already been distorted, though not by the old industries that fear piracyThis belief in "free" information is blocking future potential paths for the InternetTo my friends in the "open" Internet movement, I have to ask: what did you think would happen? We in Silicon Valley undermined copyright to make commerce become more about services instead of content — more about our code instead of their files. The inevitable endgame was always that we would lose control of our own personal content, our own files. We haven’t just weakened Hollywood and old-fashioned publishers. We’ve weakened ourselves." Read more