Another bit in the wall

By Jelke de Boer on 19 October 2009

With the vast growth of the internet the world is getting smaller. We all connect, share and contribute to this new glory of mankind, and if the guru’s are right we’re entering a new era. Life as we know it is changing so fast, look the other way a few seconds and you may have missed it. In this new world order new values are emphasised; openness, transparency, co-operation, sharing are key to be successful in a global economy. It’s a wonderful development, too bad there is just one little thing wrong:

The internet is not growing, its shrinking.

Now you may think I’ve finally lost my mind but give me the benefit of the doubt just to clarify this statement. If you think I’m a madman hold that thought.

In absolute numbers the internet will keep growing, new sites will be launched, new pages added and new services will be developed. Social media will keep expanding and our online and off-line life will blend more and more. So if that’s true how can the internet be shrinking?

If you think about digital information key thing is access, if the content is there but i cant get access to it its pretty useless to me. Inaccessible information is as good (or as bad) as non existing information. More and more information is locked for vast groups of people, and sometimes it’s good to keep information safe. You would not want your employer (or your parents, or maybe even husband or wife) to browse your private life too much, they just may find out things that could complicate your life. Or get you fired. Or in a divorce lawsuit. Or, worse of all, grounded for life. It’s good to be able to control who can access your Facebook, Myspace, Linkedin or Hyves page, on the same time all those pages and profiles may as well be non existent for the broad public. Social media do not necessarily add any useful or accessible information to anyone but an inner circle of closely related people with some sort of off-line relationship.

So, you may say, that’s the private or amateur stuff we are not interested in anyway, how about other content? Online video for example? Or weblogs? I think there’s two flavours in online content, user generated content and professionally produced content. At this moment the user generated contend seems pretty much freely accessible and with sites like Youtube everyone can distribute their own creations easy and fast. Can they really? For us in the western world that seems pretty obvious but in large parts of the world it is not. In China posting your opinion on the web can have serious consequences, even if posted in a more or less locked environment. In China there is no need for a “this is not ok” button, since there are at least 40.000 civil servants monitoring the internet for “inappropriate comments”. The Chinese government also blocks a vast number of web-sites, creating a digital great wall around its territory. How far away is China in a digital world?

Commercial content providers don’t have an interest in monitoring comments on such a massive scale, but they are most willing to help a government if the market is big enough to be of interest. Google doesn’t mind censoring search results for the Chinese audience. Hey it’s the law and Google’s slogan is “don’t be evil”. What can be wrong in obeying local laws? New technologies make it even easier for third parties to help local governments maintain law and order, especially the blocking of content based on a visitors location seems to have taken quite a flight. But commercial enterprises now also realise this same technology can be used to put new life in their outdated business models. Does the following sentence look familiar?

“Thank you for your interest, this content is currently only available for viewers living in the United States.”

More and more information and content is being distributed across the internet using the same strategy as in the old economy. Global providers distribute their goods across local markets, allowing them much more control over their products. After all what’s the difference between a shipload of CD’s or DVD’s and a few gigabytes of data? Remember the region code system on the first generations of DVD players? The only use of these codes was to separate markets to protect copyrighted material. Is the internet moving towards a similar system, or are we already there? Although a border in bits does not make much sense in a technical view, those borders are being constructed on a massive scale. And it’s not just the commercial world, the publicly financed broadcasters are doing exactly the same. I can’t watch the BBc online, it would interfere with a deal they made with a local broadcaster which has the exclusive rights on BBC content. All-together it’s a strange contradiction; while the off-line world of real goods tends toward a more open and global economy the digital world moves into the exact opposite direction. It may save the mayor dinosaurs of content creation by revitalising their business model but at what price?

Just ask yourself… do you prefer a world wide web or would you rather have a local area network?

tagged with: online censorship, accessibility, business models, geoblocking

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