Re: The Great Internet Bandwidth Crisis

[chatski carl <chatski@gl.umbc.edu>]

On Thu, 16 Apr 1998, Anonymous wrote:

> It seems to me that the chief impediment standing in the way of the
> Internet becoming a propaganda and marketing tool suitable for use
> and control by a few rich and powerful business entities is the 
> comparatively inexpensive and easy access of millions of users to
> the same technologies available to megacorporations.
> 
> History itself leads me to suspect that the money and power moguls
> will use a variety of real and imaginary issues to place greater
> monetary burdens and access restrictions on many aspects of the
> Internet and Web, particularly those that have commercial potential.
> 
> A current example is the attempt by various Telecos to raise the cost
> of access for other businesses, citing alleged burdens placed on their
> resources by ISPs at the same time that they are scrambling to enter
> the same market by undercutting their competitors.
> The Great Teleco Resource Crisis will undoubtedly be mirrored at some
> point in the future by the Great Internet Bandwidth Crisis. I suspect
> that although it will be as bogus as the Telecos' current imaginary
> crisis, it will come at a time when the major players have divided up
> enough of the infrastructure pie among themselves to be unanimous in
> their nod-and-wink agreement as to the severity of the crisis.
> 
> Undoubtedly, this will be just one of a variety of crisis in which 
> will require restrictive legislation and cost-increasing regulations
> that will save bandwidth for future children and protect adult citizens
> from the extreme danger of engaging in commerce with other average
> adult citizens such as themselves.
> It seems to me that the *only* way that the Internet can be kept from
> being used as just another tool for herding the masses into larger and
> more efficient feeding pens is to enable and empower the citizens to
> freely and safely control their own financial and commercial destiny
> in their Internet transactions.
> The more accessible and widespread the control over one-to-one monetary
> transactions, the more difficult it will be for a few entities to lead
> the citizens around by financial rings run through their noses.
> 
> The government currently has a variety of budgetary axes held over the
> heads of the citizens, such as federal funding and grants in which
> money taken away from the citizens is returned to them on a statewide,
> local or individual basis only upon conditions that involve giving up
> rights and liberties that are due them.
> 
> In order to resist being herded by a myriad of legal, licensing and
> regulatory 'axes' into increasingly global feeding pens, the citizens
> will need access to tools which allow secure financial transactions with
> differing levels of identity versus anonymity available to them.
> 
> The reason that major business has not yet been able to divide up the
> financial pie available through the Internet is the excessive amount
> of resources that they need in order to compete for the attention of
> Internet users, given that average citizens are providing equal or
> better information and services for free or for a low cost.
> The sooner that the masses are able to engage in free commerce with
> one another via the Internet--whether it be giving Grandma Jones a
> dollar for her cookie recipies, or engaging a student across the
> continent in private research in return for money, for goods or 
> for services--then the sooner the masses will scream loud and long
> when government or corporate entities threaten to take this ability
> to be self-sufficient away from them.
> 
> Those who wish to circumvent the loss of privacy, liberty and freedom
> that they forsee as being possible on the Internet need to realize 
> that most of those who are not currently empowered to manifest those
> possibilities in their individual life will little recognize or
> protest the 'present' loss of those 'future' possibilities.
> Unless there is a widespread dissemination of working tools accessible
> to the average citizen, then the future will be controlled by those
> with the funds and resources to limit financial transactions on the
> Internet to a self-defined 'way things are.'
> 
> "Teach a man to buy his fish from you, and you'll feed yourself for
>  a lifetime."
> 
> 

- Carl