Resistance is futile (or how I learned to love the Internet)

People often say that as more things change the more they stay the same.

To a large extent I would agree with that, people basically don't change, just the social values change and people adapt.

Mostly.

The industrial revolution changed the world forever with mass production and enforced working hours, factory life and dangerous conditions.

People adapted to this then changed the system to make it more acceptable and livable and built on it. Those that opposed it failed miserably as you would expect.

A basic fact in life is that changes in technology, while not always good, are irreversible. Once its there its not going to go away. You may suppress it for a while or hold it back for a while but you will never stop it.

Things today are slightly different. The industrial revolution threatened the poor, the workers that made up the bulk of the manufacturing and agricultural labour intensive industries to the advantage of the factory owners. Todays technology is threatening industry to the benefit of the average person on the street.

For those who haven't seen the point yet, I am referring to the huge international businesses of the music and movie industries who are now threatened as never before by the new industrial revolution ... the Internet.
Here we have a situation where it is so easy to jump on your computer and download whatever you want from movies to music and more.
Legal? No.
Easy? very.

OK so why do people do this obviously illegal activity? Lets look at a few examples.
You love music and want to buy a cd from your favourite group so you go to the CD shop and what do you find? One CD with all the good songs on it?
No.
A number of cd's, each with a couple of good songs and a lot of dross, or singles at a high price per track.
Secondly you want to watch a popular TV show. Here in Australia, particularly with the commercial channels you get a swinging programme guide.
Programs never show on time. They always swap time slots and some of them, particularly UK programmes have been cut down to accomodate the commercials. The series is very likely to stop in the middle or be 2-3 years behind the country it's made in.

Download and you can watch it commercial free with 24 hours or less of it being first shown.
This brings us to the point of what I believe is the single major reason of why the internet will change the leisure world the way the industrial revolution change the work world.

In one word CONVENIENCE.

I can fire up my computer and play a juke box selection of my favourite music through my stereo. Legally bought originally on CD and now (legally) stored digitally on my computer. I sync it to my IPOD and can have that anywhere I want any time I want it. I can cut tracks to a cd and play them in my car.

How convenient.

I could download any tv show I want and watch it whenever I want wherever I want.
Legal? No. Convenient? Very..and commercial free.

Ok so now we have a technology that is very very widespread in homes and businesses. Heavily used (and abused). Is it going to go away?
Absolutely not.
So what do we do about it?

From the user perspective we have huge numbers of people downloading all of the tv shows they watch. They no longer watch Commercial TV at all.
Many of them also download their music. I am one of these. All my music is digital. I want a new song I buy it from Itunes or get a cheap "best of" cd and rip it to my computer and delete all the crap tracks and keep the ones I want.
Would I buy a full, new CD over the counter?
No.

From the media industries perspective the file sharing downloaders are criminals.
End of story.
They hurt the industry and are scum of the earth. They should buy what's offered them, not do whats convenient for them because they own it and have the right to control it as they see fit.
If people don't like that the will be sued or have the internet providors cut off their access.

Will this stop downloading?

No.

Because its so damn convenient and in this day and age its a convenience society and its all about making things easier and faster.

So whats the answer?

The more things change the more they stay the same, people basically don't change, just the social values change and people adapt. So its a matter of people adapting to new technologies.

The people out there have already adapted, the media industry hasn't.

Itunes is a great step forward but the industry has a long long way to go. Lets hope that they consider more sustainable change, and, as change is inevitable, they don't waste too much more time catering for their own convenience and finally think about the people.

Locking down the music, time bombed movie downloads and commercial laden streaming tv are just not convenient for anyone but the media industry.
Suing your own customers and threatening your main delivery system providers with lawsuits is not going to do any one any good and will harm your reputation even further. The recent case in the US of awarding more that 2 million dollars against a single mother for uploading 24 songs is a major victory for the music industry, technically at least, but has made a laughing stock of them world wide for overkill and insensitivity.

Because for once, this is a true peoples revolution, and in the words of a group from the seventies,
"its only just begun".

Internet filter on hold, reality or election ploy?

Today the ABC has reported that "the filter will not be put in place until an independent review can be carried out into what content would be banned.
The review, which Senator Conroy says is likely to take about a year, will look at what makes up "refused classification" rated content."

A filter that blocks a miniscule fraction of the nasty stuff out there, is trivially bypassed and is universally hated because of the potential for political abuse is, again, put on hold.

One has to ask is this because of the forthcoming election, or could the minister actually have begun to listen to people after all this time?

I would hope that sense has prevailed and they are doing the work that should have been done 3 years ago, but we are talking about politicians so it's more than likely an attempt to defuse yet another political timebomb ticking under the floor.

I really hope that I am wrong, but I won't be holding my breath.

The internet and where it's taking us.

This blog is my view of the world of the Internet and where it is taking us.

I hope to have many entries here and will attempt to make interesting and understandable.

Initially I will give a little history so you can hopefully understand the Internet a little better.

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The Internet has to be one of the greatest changes in the way that the world works in human history, or since the industrial revolution at least.

Not that its all good, there is a dark dangerous side to it as well, but, whatever it is, it is here to stay.

Its not going to go away any time soon.

Lets examine the Internet in a little more detail.

It origins come from a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) which is is the development arm of the US military.

The military wanted an early warning system using the new technology called "computers" and using a safe internally repairing network to connect them.

This led to the creation of the first network which became ARPANET. This was the invention of packet switching, where if one site went down the traffic would re-rout around the problem. A great idea in wartime where you could guarantee connections even if sites were taken out.

From this developed the Internet as we know it today.

Many of the principles of the Internet follow the original ideals and extend on them so now we have a world wide mass of networks interconnected and accessible from anywhere.

For many industries and governments this now creates a problem. How do you control or block a network that inherently was designed to resist being taken down?

The naming and routing systems of the Internet is designed to work under adverse conditions and has so many ways of bypassing attempted controls that it is to all intents and purposes unblockable.

Now we come to the root of the matter and what I believe are a few basic principals:

• Governments tend to fear anything they can't control
• Governments don't always understand what they try to control
• Governments will always attempt to control
• Governments believe they always know whats best for the people
• Once a course of action is decided, a government will never admit it was wrong unless they have a scapegoat ready.
• Once a new technology is developed it won't go away

A lot of the above also apply to business but there are a few extra things:

• Business needs to adapt or they become redundant
• Businesses will always initially oppose change
• Businesses will not adopt new technology if it affects their bottom line

So, coming back to the Internet we have some MAJOR social upheavals.

The Internet is used for illegal and immoral purposes.

That pretty much sums up many of the problems facing both government and business.

For government there are a multitude of issues:

• Pedophile networks
• Terrorist networks
• Anti government activity
• Cyber stalking
• identity theft
• Phishing
• scams
• spams

Business is in much the same boat:

• Data theft
• Hackers
• File sharing for TV, music, software, Film and books.

Having said all that, there is a huge upside to the Internet.

Both government and businesses could no longer survive without it.

Attempting to hold back the tide.

Unfortunately because of the ideas above both government and business don't like the inherent freedom of the Internet.

Catchphrase of the age is "Knowledge is power"

To many governments knowledge is dangerous. Therefore the Internet is dangerous and needs to be controlled to protect the people from themselves.

This is very evident in China, Iran and more recently in Australia.

Media companies are fighting all over the world to hold onto what they have always had and are prepared to use legal action and legislation to preserve the status quo.

Both governments and business are fighting a losing battle because they don't or won't understand what it is they are fighting against.

Being an Australian I am very interested in whats happening here on both these fronts and the following blogs will be about these issues in more detail.

I hope you find the journey interesting.