The internet as a control mechanism

[leegs]

As one who has been both fascinated and frustrated by the various comments of iTuliper Reggie, I found the linked essay to be quite interesting.
http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2012/01/27...res/#more-3004

As long as I'm plugging this guy's blog (I have no connection to him, and am not actually a regular reader) I can recommend this posting as well:
http://www.ribbonfarm.com/2011/06/08...-1600-to-2100/

[KGW]

Re: The internet as a control mechanism

Another perspective. . .

http://www.infoworld.com/print/185143

Jailbreaking the Internet: For freedom's sake

By Paul Venezia
Created 2012-01-30 03:00AM



Last week, I talked a bit about the history of the Internet and its original goal of enabling the free flow of information [1]. I also talked about the fact that moneyed interests the world over are scrambling to turn the Internet into something closer to cable TV than the open network we currently enjoy.
The past few weeks have shown that public outcry can still somehow influence legislation: SOPA and PIPA are down, if not quite out. Yet the ACTA (Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement) [2] is coming on fast. Plus, who knows what the next year will bring in the form of odious legislation intended to collapse the free and open Internet while masquerading as some pious "save the children" nonsense? The battle may have been won for the moment, but this is going to be a never-ending war.
[ Read the prequel to this post, "Building the next Internet [3]." | Find out why Paul Venezia thinks politicians should never make laws about technology [4]. | Also see Paul's recent investigative project, "Fundamental Oracle flaw revealed [5]." ]
In my last post [1], I also talked about the next Internet. Not necessarily in terms of a separate, new network -- that's not possible at this point -- but a new Internet that would continue to promote the free exchange of ideas and information without the shackles of corporate control. It's a network that already exists and has for some time, but the vast majority of Internet users don't know about it and have never needed to know about it until now.
If the baboons [6] succeed in constraining speech and information flow on the broader Internet, the new Internet will emerge quickly. For an analogy, consider the iPhone and the efforts of a few smart hackers who have allowed anyone to jailbreak an iPhone with only a small downloaded app and a few minutes. Though these apps couldn't be simpler to use, their easy and colorful UIs mask a massive quantity of research and reverse-engineering by a group of determined software and hardware geeks. It's all wrapped up in a nice, accessible package, but the underlying concepts are well beyond what 99 percent of those who jailbreak their phones can truly understand.
So it will be with the jailbroken Internet. In a world where corporations can force just about anyone "off" the Internet by leveraging proposed laws like SOPA and causing ISPs to break DNS, there needs to be a way to maintain connectivity to those sites and that information. If Large Corporation A doesn't like what Average Guy B is saying about it in his blog, it could effectively muzzle that voice with a takedown notice that adheres to the letter of the law, yet crushes our concepts of free speech and the open Internet. While protecting copyright is clearly an important endeavor, these proposed methods are execrable. However, if a significant number of people aren't using those DNS servers, if they aren't using the standard Internet pathways, that voice will still be heard, those sites will still be available.
All that scenario would require would be a way to wrap up existing technologies into a nice, easily-installed package available through any number of methods. Picture the harrowing future described above, and then picture a single installer that runs under Windows, Mac OS X, and Linux that installs tor [7], tools to leverage alternative DNS servers, anonymizing proxies, and even private VPN services. A few clicks of the mouse, and suddenly that machine would be able to access sites "banned" through general means.
This is precisely what technophobic and myopic legislators simply do not understand: You cannot censor the Internet. As John Gilmore famously said, "The Net interprets censorship as damage and routes around it." So it has been and so it will be.
This workaround solution will be technically deficient, but it will be functional. A technically valid solution already exists --the Internet in its current form -- but if that gets mangled, plan B may be one of the only ways through those troubled times.
Make no mistake, these tools and services are readily available now --and have been for quite some time. Tools like Vidalia for Mac OS X wrap up technologies like tor quite well, but tor itself isn't the whole solution. If the day comes when true censorship enfolds to the Internet, deep geeks who have been using these tools for years will start showing their friends how to use them. Then the aforementioned "jailbreaking" apps will appear, and sooner rather than later, those who don't use them will fall into the category we reserve for people who still use AOL today. The rest of us will still be able to access sites and services the world over through alternative means, at least until the baboons figure it out and pay for more legislation crafted to crack down on those methods. Then those methods will change again and the game will continue.

The fact that we may have to play this game is in itself a disgrace. No, this is a sad game, an amoral game, a farce and a crime. The Internet is an engineering marvel that has contributed more to the open exchange of information than anything in history. Seeing it crippled by greed and ignorance is like watching the burning of the Library of Alexandria. To paraphrase one of the most famous fictional computers in history, in the coming contest between those who would control the infrastructure and those who use it, the only way to win is not to play [8]. Unfortunately, those battle lines are being drawn whether we like it or not. So play we must. Play we will.
This story, "Jailbreaking the Internet: For freedom's sake [9]" was originally published at InfoWorld.com [10]. Read more of Paul Venezia's The Deep End blog [11] at InfoWorld.com. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter [12].

[don]

Re: The internet as a control mechanism

The ongoing developments with the internet are analogous to both the telephone and television. Telephones were and are an incredible technological addition to human communication. Not only could you talk to someone out of reach but you could recognize their voice - all of which has become global, expanded (conference calling), etc. The telephone has also enabled government surveillance to a degree once inconceivable. Marketing of goods, services, politicians and fraud all make robust use of the telephone. Television was initially heralded by many as a cultural wonder. Many today feel culture and television are mutually exclusive. The cultural exception in TV Land now proves the rule. Back in the early days when "You Got Mail" was dazzling the unwashed, Washington's conundrum was how to politically de-fang the democracy-besotted internet while transforming it into a more efficient form of commercial television. The digital surveillance adjunct was another leap forward past the telephone. One of the questions in this ongoing conflict of interests is if the polis is denied information, how effective will resistance be to "Washington's" goals?

[leegs]

Re: The internet as a control mechanism

KGW that was an interesting article, and for sure a bit hopeful. I'm not sure that it is an argument against he point of the original post, which is a prediction (possibly bogus) of a much more subtle and pernicious form of influence and control. Don I think your comments are right on.

[Sutter Cane]

Re: The internet as a control mechanism

The ongoing developments with the internet are analogous to both the telephone and television. Telephones were and are an incredible technological addition to human communication. Not only could you talk to someone out of reach but you could recognize their voice - all of which has become global, expanded (conference calling), etc. The telephone has also enabled government surveillance to a degree once inconceivable. Marketing of goods, services, politicians and fraud all make robust use of the telephone. Television was initially heralded by many as a cultural wonder. Many today feel culture and television are mutually exclusive. The cultural exception in TV Land now proves the rule. Back in the early days when "You Got Mail" was dazzling the unwashed, Washington's conundrum was how to politically de-fang the democracy-besotted internet while transforming it into a more efficient form of commercial television. The digital surveillance adjunct was another leap forward past the telephone. One of the questions in this ongoing conflict of interests is if the polis is denied information, how effective will resistance be to "Washington's" goals?

Rather than the telephone or television, the analogy I would draw with the internet is the development of radio. The early days of radio were very wild west style - anybody could have a station, broadcast what they wanted, etc. Startup and programming costs were much lower than they were with television later on. Over time radio became more profitable, and also more tightly regulated, and the freedom of early radio broadcasters became a thing of the past. The internet seems to be following a similar pattern of development, unfortunately. After the initial period of strengthening regulation of radio, the corporate takeover was made possible through the weakening of federal communications regulations regarding station ownership. Now, of course, radio has seen nearly complete corporate takeover thanks to Clear Channel, and is largely unlistenable as a result.

[lakedaemonian]

Re: The internet as a control mechanism

I think the internet represents the last/best force multiplier platform for "any 1 to many" to affordably regain control of and restore the democratic political process.

Unfortunately, there are interests that will expend considerable effort to prevent that from happening.

I also think the internet represents yet another very effective means of filtering out "unsuitable" candidates for officer, who simply possess healthy and normal human foibles, that fail to meet the requirements of entrenched special interests.

As EJ mentioned with the Eliot Spitzer example with him being part of a network where admission is protected guilt/culpability in a prostitution ring as long as you play ball........what happens when it's 2025 and you have political candidates that have been using the internet daily since they were in their early teens?

Once it's on the net.....it's like herpes....it's there forever somewhere...it only needs the right person with the right skills to collect, analysis, interpret, and disseminate it....and not necessarily in support of positive/benign/appropriate purposes.

Are we going to have to choose from political candidates who've been carefully shaped and ring fenced from it from a young age or those who've been potentially compromised?

Do we want political candidates that have been groomed for office thru highly controlled or limited internet access?

Do we want political candidates that are normal, but are highly vulnerable to political compromise due to some indiscretions in their internet past?

I think folks have come a long way in regards to past politician drug use....just look at Clinton/Bush/Obama.

But they were ALL before ubiquitous internet/audio/video...what happens when we have photos of it? Or questionable Google web searches? Or Facebook timeline irregularities?

I think unless we see far greater societal acceptance of widespread human behavior deemed negative....but actually incredibly common.....then we've got problems.

The internet is the world's greatest potential asset to achieve both positive and negative objectives.

[oddlots]

Re: The internet as a control mechanism

Now, of course, radio has seen nearly complete corporate takeover thanks to Clear Channel, and is largely unlistenable as a result.

God, true that, and if that's the future of the net a totally depressing prospect.

[dcarrigg]

Re: The internet as a control mechanism

God, true that, and if that's the future of the net a totally depressing prospect.

Now this one came out when your daddy was in diapers, that's it kids, rock out to another track from Zeppelin II, on the rock, rock, ROCK 106.

[oddlots]

Re: The internet as a control mechanism

So hard to create, so easy to destroy:


http://www.techdirt.com/articles/201...ut-hotel.shtml

Hollywood Gets To Party With TPP Negotiators; Public Interest Groups Get Thrown Out Of Hotel

from the yeah,-that-doesn't-look-corrupt-at-all dept

We've been talking about the ridiculous levels of secrecy around the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership) agreement -- a trade agreement that is being designed to push through basically everything that Hollywood wants in international copyright law. Last week, we mentioned that various civil society groups were planning to hold an open meeting about TPP in the same hotel where the negotiations were being held (in Hollywood, of course).

However, it appears that once the USTR found out about this, it got the hotel to cancel the group's reservation at the hotel. According to Sean Flynn, the Associate Director of the Program on Information Justice and Intellectual Property (PIJIP) at American University:

The public interest briefing was booked last week and advertised to all delegations, including the host USTR. An hour after the invitation was sent, we received a cancellation of our venue by the hotel. The cancellation by by Sophie Jones, Event Sales Manager, Sofitel Los Angeles stated:

“I am sorry to be the bearer of bad news but unfortunately we will not be able to move forward with your luncheon for Tuesday January 31st. It was brought to my attention that we have a confidential group in house and we will not be allowing any other groups in the meeting space that day. Again, my apologies for the late notice. Hopefully we can work together in the near future.”

Okay. I guess if no other groups are allowed in the meeting space that day it's understandable. Except... oops... someone in the group confirmed that the hotel was lying:

After receiving the cancellation, members of an advocacy organization called the hotel and were able to book a room for a claimed private event not related to the TPP. Apparently only TPP-related events were banned from the hotel at the request of an unidentified party. USTR is serving as the host of this meeting.

Well, at least MPAA execs were similarly blocked from access to the negotiators, too, right? Nope:

The film industry did not have similar problems – they hosted a multi-hour tour of 20th Century Fox Studies last night, led by a representative of the studio’s government relations office.

Yeah. This is what corruption looks, smells and tastes like. And the MPAA still doesn't get it. They still think that backroom deals like this are fine and that the public won't notice or care. That's quite a bet to make, and one they may regret.

FWIW I realize that this is a bit of thread high-jack and kind of pedestrian but all the more real for it (no sleep: sorry.)


Love the: from the yeah,-that-doesn't-look-corrupt-at-all dept.

[don]

Re: The internet as a control mechanism

All right, maybe the great recession and near financial apocalypse can compete for significance on a world-historical basis over the last few years with the rise of Facebook. But I'd still vote for Facebook as the big one in its transformative effects on business and culture and human behavior.

And now comes the payoff: a second-quarter IPO.

Never before in the history of breathless internet public offerings has one been so anticipated and so stage-managed. All other major internet IPO's have been relatively rushed affairs: entrepreneurs have needed the money, and investors have been rightly scared that the market might change or close. Not Facebook's. In addition to altering the nature of public and private selves, it's also changed the way young aggressive companies can raise dough: creating a secondary market for buying and selling much-sought-after shares, which acts a lot like the public market (defying the logic, if not rules, of the SEC). As for investor skittishness and market vagaries, Facebook has come to believe – or act like it believes – that the market waits for Facebook. And it seems to.

Facebook, in its eighth year of operation, will be looking for a valuation of $100bn – a number that it may well exceed by another great leap of staging and euphoria.

The seismic nature of the Facebook IPO can hardly be oversold. The IPO creates a currency that will allow the company to buy whatever it needs to vertically integrate all the elements of its massive appetites – to be your wallet, your phone, your search engine, your company's cash register, your entertainment portal, and your publishing platform, as well as your social life. And to do this all in a closed world of protocol enforcement, behavior monitoring and data gathering.

The technology business is an ever-expanding effort at monopoly and control: Microsoft sped past Apple to grab the desktop; Google sped past Microsoft to control the internet itself; Apple reappeared to control mobile devices. Now Facebook seeks to control pretty much … well, you.

I will let someone else take up the moral issues and I will stick to the business point: I don't think that Facebook, with its messianic ambitions and squirrelly zeal, is actually ready for the harsh light of public company life. Even though it comes to market with the weight and hegemonic feel of the biggest brands, it has grown up in such a bubble of cultishness and doctrine, that primetime scrutiny could shortly become very uncomfortable.

For one thing, there is CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Facebook's rapid growth with private capital has allowed Zuckerberg to maintain a vaunted level of control without having to expose himself very much. He exists now only as his movie double, with the reports of him as an odd, nonverbal baby-Jesus figure remaining just low murmurs. (Many technology companies are run by odd people, but Zuckerberg could be the oddest.) He, in turn, is surrounded by robotic executives: the air quickly leaves the room when Facebook President Sheryl Sandberg starts to talk; long-time tech reporter Kara Swisher could think of nothing else to call the company's CFO, David Ebersman, other than the "quiet man" – whose job is to protect him and interpret for Zuckerberg. (The tech world is full of testy PR people, but Facebook's top flack, Elliot Schrage, is a particularly gruesome attack dog.)

Public exposure, rather than fictional movie exposure, could be cruel – even though Zuckerberg is said to be practicing up for earnings calls. Indeed, it is hard to overstate how truly public Facebook is about to become, and how much more difficult it will be to contain the controversies – about its provenance, its financing, its privacy polices and its data thirst – that have always dogged it, and which, in the past, it has largely just gone tightlipped about.

It is now, too, on a world stage: in order to speedily reach its billion-user target, it has to grow internationally. But the company has so often and so ingenuously called itself a utility that, almost everywhere outside the US, it is looking at being regulated as one. This past summer, in an effort at business diplomacy, the company trotted Zuckerberg out to speak before the G8 (hosted by the French, among the most eager regulators) – both in a conference before the formal meeting and, then, in front of the assembled leaders. His performance, at least the public one, might be described as either charming and naive or, if you're keen on a professional approach, other-planetary.

And advertising. It's actually been a rather awkward conversation between Facebook and Madison Avenue. Facebook's trillions of pages views have created something of a speculative frenzy, with every ad agency in the world bragging about its social marketing capabilities, but with almost every big brand being tepid in its response. (WPP's Martin Sorrell suggested this fall that social media might not be such a gripping advertising medium.) As soon as the company is public, real ad numbers – instead of hundreds of millions of consumers who might, one day, pay attention to you – start to count.

On the other hand, as part of the private company "story", they talk at Facebook about advertising in a transitional sense, of it being something they might need now, but which can be left behind as they integrate a further and deeper relationship with users and figure out new and more crafty ways to monetize what they, and only they, understand about individual behavior.

That's, of course, the ultimate Facebook sell: Mark Zuckerberg, a true American savant – Steve Jobs, but better even (and not so nasty) – has created a wholly-owned internet, which can not only monitor behavior but can encourage it, and regulate it, and dominate so much of it that Facebook inevitably becomes the platform for modern life. Spotify, and the infuriating feature that shares all songs you play with god knows who else, is just a recent example of the Facebook plan for universal integration. This is the $100bn-and-climbing vision, which now, in the public glare, will have to walk past cagey regulators, grumpy media, issue-hungry politicians, impatient shareholders and irritated customers.

It's a speculative dream and breathtaking power grab, which, in the end, I don't think they'll get away with. Granted, so far they have.

Michael Wolff

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisf...-user-ambition

[oddlots]

Re: The internet as a control mechanism

A little more on that TPP agreement:

Son-of-ACTA, the TPP, wants to legislate buffers

By Cory Doctorow at 8:02 am Thursday, Feb 2
Ars Technica's Nate Anderson takes a good look at the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the secret copyright treaty whose latest negotiation round just took place in Hollywood (seelast night's post about the scandalous abuse of authority by the US Trade Rep in bullying the hotel to keep out civil society groups).
Now, this is a secret treaty, so we don't know most of what's going on in the room, but one jaw-dropping leak is that that the treaty contemplates requiring licenses for ephemeral copies made in a computer's buffer. That means that every buffer in your machine would need a separate, negotiated license for every playback of copyrighted works, and buffer designs that the entertainment industry doesn't like -- core technical architectures -- would become legally fraught because they'd require millions of license negotiations or they'd put users in danger of lawsuits.
This isn't the first time that buffer licensing was proposed. Way back in 1995, the Lehman white paper, proposed by Clinton's copyright czar to Al Gore's National Information Infrastructure committee, made the same demand. It was roundly rejected then, because the process was transparent and the people who would be adversely affected by it (that is, everyone) could see and object to it.
This is about legislating chip designs and software architecture, and the only people allowed in the room are entertainment execs. The future of silicon itself hangs in the balance. Will Intel and other giants demand a fair, transparent, equitable negotiation process?

http://boingboing.net/2012/02/02/son...-wants-to.html

That shower is cold.

[tsouftsaf]

Re: The internet as a control mechanism

In the Grip of the New Monopolists

How hard would it be to go a week without Google? Or, to up the ante, without Facebook, Amazon, Skype, Twitter, Apple, eBay and Google? It wouldn't be impossible, but for even a moderate Internet user, it would be a real pain. Forgoing Google and Amazon is just inconvenient; forgoing Facebook or Twitter means giving up whole categories of activity. For most of us, avoiding the Internet's dominant firms would be a lot harder than bypassing Starbucks, Wal-Mart or other companies that dominate some corner of what was once called the real world.

The Internet has long been held up as a model for what the free market is supposed to look like—competition in its purest form. So why does it look increasingly like a Monopoly board? Most of the major sectors today are controlled by one dominant company or an oligopoly. Google "owns" search; Facebook, social networking; eBay rules auctions; Apple dominates online content delivery; Amazon, retail; and so on.

There are digital Kashmirs, disputed territories that remain anyone's game, like digital publishing. But the dominions of major firms have enjoyed surprisingly secure borders over the last five years, their core markets secure. Microsoft's Bing, launched last year by a giant with $40 billion in cash on hand, has captured a mere 3.25% of query volume (Google retains 83%). Still, no one expects Google Buzz to seriously encroach on Facebook's market, or, for that matter, Skype to take over from Twitter. Though the border incursions do keep dominant firms on their toes, they have largely foundered as business ventures.

The rise of the app (a dedicated program that runs on a mobile device or Facebook) may seem to challenge the neat sorting of functions among a handful of firms, but even this development is part of the larger trend. To stay alive, all apps must secure a place on a monopolist's platform, thus strengthening the monopolist's market dominance.

Today's Internet borders will probably change eventually, especially as new markets appear. But it's hard to avoid the conclusion that we are living in an age of large information monopolies. Could it be that the free market on the Internet actually tends toward monopolies? Could it even be that demand, of all things, is actually winnowing the online free market—that Americans, so diverse and individualistic, actually love these monopolies?

The history of American information firms suggests that the answer to both questions is "yes." Over the long haul, competition has been the exception, monopoly the rule. Apart from brief periods of openness created by new inventions or antitrust breakups, every medium, starting with the telegraph, has eventually proved to be a case study in monopoly. In fact, many of those firms are still around, if not quite as powerful as they once were, including AT&T, Paramount and NBC.

Internet industries develop pretty much like any other industry that depends on a network: A single firm can dominate the market if the product becomes more valuable to each user as the number of users rises. Such networks have a natural tendency to grow, and that growth leads to dominance. That was the key to Western Union's telegraph monopoly in the 19th century and to the telephone monopoly of its successor, AT&T. The Bell lines simply reached more people than anyone else's, so ever more customers came to depend on them in a feedback loop of expanding market share. The more customers they reached, the more impervious the firm became to challengers.

Still, in a land where at least two mega-colas and two brands of diaper can duke it out indefinitely, why are there so many single-firm information markets? The explanation would seem to lie in the famous American preference for convenience. With networks, size brings convenience.

Consider that, in the late 1990s, there were many competing search engines, like Lycos, AltaVista and Bigfoot. In the 2000s, there were many social networking sites, including Friendster. It was we, collectively, who made Google and Facebook dominant. The biggest sites were faster, better and easier to use than their competitors, and the benefits only grew as more users signed on. But all of those individually rational decisions to sign on to the same sites yielded a result that no one desires in principle—a world with fewer options.
[...]
We wouldn't fret over monopoly so much if it came with a term limit. If Facebook's rule over social networking were somehow restricted to, say, 10 years—or better, ended the moment the firm lost its technical superiority—the very idea of monopoly might seem almost wholesome. The problem is that dominant firms are like congressional incumbents and African dictators: They rarely give up even when they are clearly past their prime. Facing decline, they do everything possible to stay in power. And that's when the rest of us suffer.

AT&T's near-absolute dominion over the telephone lasted from about 1914 until the 1984 breakup, all the while delaying the advent of lower prices and innovative technologies that new entrants would eventually bring. The Hollywood studios took effective control of American film in the 1930s, and even now, weakened versions of them remain in charge. Information monopolies can have very long half-lives.

Declining information monopolists often find a lifeline of last resort in the form of Uncle Sam. The government has conferred its blessing on monopolies in information industries with unusual frequency. Sometimes this protection has yielded reciprocal benefits, with the owner of an information network offering the state something valuable in return, like warrantless wiretaps.

Essential to NBC, CBS and ABC's long domination of broadcasting was the government's protection of them first from FM radio (the networks were stuck on AM) and later from the cable TV industry, which it suppressed for decades. Today, Verizon and AT&T's dominance of wireless phone service can be credited in part to de facto assistance from the U.S., and consequently their niche is probably the safest in the entire industry. Monopolies may be a natural development, but the most enduring ones are usually state-sponsored. All the more so since no one has ever conceived a better way of scotching competitors than to make them comply with complex federal regulation.

Info-monopolies tend to be good-to-great in the short term and bad-to-terrible in the long term. For a time, firms deliver great conveniences, powerful efficiencies and dazzling innovations. That's why a young monopoly is often linked to a medium's golden age. Today, a single search engine has made virtually everyone's life simpler and easier, just as a single phone network did 100 years ago. Monopolies also generate enormous profits that can be reinvested into expansion, research and even public projects: AT&T wired America and invented the transistor; Google is scanning the world's libraries.

The downside shows up later, as the monopolist ages and the will to innovate is replaced by mere will to power. In the 1930s, AT&T took the strangely Luddite measure of suppressing its own invention of magnetic recording, for fear it would deter use of the telephone. The costs of the monopoly are mostly borne by entrepreneurs and innovators. Over the long run, the consequences afflict the public in more subtle ways, as what were once highly dynamic parts of the economy begin to stagnate.

These negative effects are why people like Theodore Roosevelt, Louis Brandeis and Thurman Arnold regarded monopoly as an evil to be destroyed by the federal courts. They took a rather literal reading of the Sherman Act, which states, "Every person who shall monopolize…shall be deemed guilty of a felony." But today we don't have the heart to euthanize a healthy firm like Facebook just because it's huge and happens to know more about us than the IRS.

The Internet is still relatively young, and we remain in the golden age of these monopolists. We can also take comfort from the fact that most of the Internet's giants profess an awareness of their awesome powers and some sense of attendant duty to the public. Perhaps if we're vigilant, we can prolong the benign phase of their rule. But let's not pretend that we live in anything but an age of monopolies.

---

Also check out SOPA, PIPA, ACTA, private property and internet monopolies (part 1)

[don]

Re: The internet as a control mechanism

Is this another watershed moment - not in favor of a mass response but rather as further warning that the net must be restrained and contained . . .

Internet Fury Spurs Komen Reversal


By Elizabeth Lopatto and Drew Armstrong - Feb 3, 2012 9:01 PM PT

Planned Parenthood Federation of America Inc., riding a powerful wave of Internet indignation, raised $3 million in reaction to Susan G. Komen for the Cure’s decision, reversed yesterday, to end its grants.

The dispute between Planned Parenthood and the breast- cancer group Komen, two of the largest health advocacy groups for U.S. women, concluded when Komen overturned its plan to call off $680,000 in Planned Parenthood grants and said in a statement it wanted to “apologize to the American people.”

Komen originally cited a congressional probe of Planned Parenthood in declaring the group ineligible for funding. Planned Parenthood said Komen was pressured by anti-abortion forces, setting off a blaze of Internet protest on Twitter Inc., Facebook Inc (FB). and other websites.

“When it broke, it just caught fire,” Cecile Richards, Planned Parenthood’s president, said yesterday in a conference call. “This is an extraordinary outpouring of support.”

http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2012-0...arenthood.html

[tsouftsaf]

Re: The internet as a control mechanism

A bit off-topic, but well worth the read on "patent wars":
http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2011/...patents-attack

[c1ue]

Re: The internet as a control mechanism

As EJ mentioned with the Eliot Spitzer example with him being part of a network where admission is protected guilt/culpability in a prostitution ring as long as you play ball........what happens when it's 2025 and you have political candidates that have been using the internet daily since they were in their early teens?

I think the result will be only 'approved' candidates backed by the appropriate powers and money will have the resources to hunt down or otherwise nullify any unsavory internet skeletons in the closet.

That or only the Second Coming will provide a sufficiently 'clean' candidate with voter appeal.