[Reader-list] Controlling the Web by Scott Rosenberg

[Shuddhabrata Sengupta]

Here is an interesting take on the increasing levels of control on the 
interent that we may be asked to be accustomed to, I found this on Salon at 
http://www.salon.com/tech/feature/2001/06/26/locking_up_the_web/print.html

Cheers(?)

Shuddha


Assimilating the Web
Like "Star Trek's" all-powerful Borg, AOL and Microsoft are determined to 
crush the spirit of online independence. Is resistance futile?
  - - - - - - - - - - -
By Scott Rosenberg

June 26, 2001 | There are moments, these days, when I sit at my desk, 
watching the spam pour into my in box, and think, Well, we did it! We built 
the Internet and created the most efficient means in human history for 
delivering penis enlargement pitches and come-ons from Nigerian scam artists.

As spam keeps multiplying, it reminds us of the persistence of the original 
nightmare of the Net as a borderless, centerless anarchy -- a medium in 
which anyone is free to tell outrageous lies or steal collective resources 
because, hey, who can stop them? Each new spam is an irritating reminder: 
This network is out of control.

Except. A couple of weeks ago, in between the spammed "Become your own 
boss!" and "herbal Viagra" offers, I received a cluster of real e-mail from 
friends and colleagues, all pointing to the same news blip: "Four Web 
sites," the headlines read, "control half of surfing time."

My God! Talk about media concentration! Has the entire Web really come down 
to America Online, Microsoft, Yahoo and Napster?

Of course, look a little more closely at that report and you find all sorts 
of holes. For starters, there's the notoriously inaccurate methodology of 
the survey takers at Jupiter Media Metrix. Then there's the definitions of 
all these terms -- "site," "surfing," "control." Does AOL "control" the 
time that its users are sending e-mail? Are Napster users "surfing" when 
they're trading music files? What idiot assembled this ludicrous data, anyway?

Still, the sound bite touched a nerve because -- whatever the flaws in 
Jupiter's study -- we know in our guts that control of the Web is 
concentrating at an alarming rate. Sure, it's still possible for anyone to 
put up a Web site. But as the carcasses of independent Web start-ups litter 
the landscape, the once-wild online free-for-all is rapidly devolving into 
a showdown between AOL and Microsoft. AOL controls the subscriber lists and 
a huge chunk of the content; Microsoft controls the consumer operating 
system and browser. Anarchy? No way -- this is a bipolar Cold War, waged 
with software standards and lawsuits and marketing blitzes.

In fact, the Web today, in this grim summer of 2001 -- seven long years 
after its first flush of popularity -- faces a paradoxical and perplexing 
impasse. It's still too anarchic to be made a completely smooth, 
convenient, ready-for-prime-time experience; but it's also losing the vital 
ferment of its "let a hundred flowers bloom" youth to the gray monotony of 
corporate control.

We're reaping the worst of both worlds, networked chaos and monopolistic 
consolidation. The least common denominator of individual behavior 
multiplies, while the least common denominator of mass taste prevails.

In other words, we're screwed.

How did we -- the users of the Internet, promised untold new vistas of 
individual empowerment and a renaissance of political and cultural 
expression -- wind up in such straits? To answer that, we have to look back 
to the roots of today's commercial Internet, the heady days of 1994 and 1995.

What made that time so exciting? For the first time in our experience, the 
spread of the Web had, momentarily at least, leveled the playing field of 
media distribution. The Web's open design and standards meant that 
publishers of all stripes could stop worrying about getting their products 
to people; all you had to do was plug your content into the Web, and anyone 
who had access to the Web could get it. You didn't have to pay for shelf 
space or rack space or airtime, or pay off regulators to reserve spectrum 
for you, or worry about delivery truck drivers going on strike. The Web 
didn't eliminate distribution costs (there are still servers to buy and 
bandwidth charges to pay), but it dramatically reduced them, and gave the 
notion that "everyone's a publisher" some credence beyond hype.

"Publisher" covers a vast spectrum, though, from AOL Time Warner to your 
local HTML whiz kid. As commercial publishers colonized the Web and private 
individuals flexed their new publishing muscles, two vastly different 
visions of the Web's purpose and value emerged. Old-line media corporations 
that viewed the Web as a threat and commercial start-ups that saw it as an 
opportunity shared one perspective: The Web had to be made a safe place for 
profits, whatever it took in the way of advertising, subscriptions, privacy 
invasions and other increasingly desperate measures. Meanwhile, the 
do-it-yourself Web publishers -- from the "build your own page" 
homesteaders of 1995 to the more recent explosion of weblogs -- reveled in 
the new ease with which they could post information, from personal trivia 
to headline-making revelations, to the entire world, and didn't worry much 
about money.

In no other medium have "pro" and amateur, commercial and "just for fun" 
found themselves so inseparably intertwined. But along the way each camp 
tended to conveniently forget some facts: The amateurs lost sight of how 
heavily their "free" publishing was subsidized by venture-capital 
investments in Net infrastructure -- investments that, having proved 
largely unprofitable, are no longer flowing. The pros, meanwhile, talked up 
projections of vast growth for Internet usage, without acknowledging how 
much of that use went to e-mail or Britney Spears fan pages, neither of 
which was likely to boost a media company's bottom line.

Thanks to this dynamic, the Web we know today evolved. The medium became a 
laboratory for big corporate media and technology companies to test new 
software and new business models at relatively low risk and cost. Much of 
the Web's seven-year history is a chronicle of these failures: The 
e-commerce missteps of 1996 (remember Marketplace MCI?), the city-site wars 
of 1997, the me-too portal mania of 1998 and 1999, the dot-com dollar 
palooza that peaked and then cratered in 2000. At the same time, the Web 
became an enormous global water cooler and party line, a gossip-amplifying, 
hobby-driven cornucopia of trivial pursuits -- ham radio on speed, only you 
didn't have to learn Morse code.

A lot of predictions made with great idealism didn't pan out. After a brief 
first wave of innovative new sites -- Hotwired, Feed, Word, Suck, Salon and 
Slate -- the notion that the Web would foster a renaissance of independent 
publishing quickly withered in the face of some hard truths about Web 
media: Yes, it's easier and cheaper to put up a site than to print a 
newspaper or magazine or start a TV station, but journalism and information 
still cost money. And once you hang out your Web shingle you still have to 
figure out a way for people to find out that it's there.

So of that first wave of high-profile "indies," Hotwired and Word are long 
gone, Feed and Suck have just gone into deepfreeze and Salon's financial 
difficulties have become a long-running soap opera in the financial press. 
(Slate may belong to this group in its target audience, but it is now so 
deeply intertwined with the Microsoft Network that its Web address has 
become a mere redirect from "www.slate.com" to "slate.msn.com," and its 
editor, Michael Kinsley, says he doesn't even have a separate balance sheet.)

There's no reason the Web can't support a flourishing field of independent 
professional publishers in the middle ground between Big Media and feisty 
amateur -- no reason, that is, as long as you give this still-fledgling 
business time to sort itself out. Web users will, eventually, accept the 
necessity of paying subscription fees for the content they really want. 
Advertisers will, eventually, stop holding the Web to standards of 
guaranteed effectiveness that their bloated print and broadcast budgets 
could never meet. Sustainable businesses will evolve out of the carnage of 
the dot-com downturn, or grow off the corpses of failed start-ups. 
Broadband connections and software improvements will, across a decade-long 
vista, reduce users' frustration and impatience. Anyone, anywhere, will 
still be able to put up a Web site and reach anyone else online with news, 
gossip, truth or lies.

One big "but" hangs in the way of this rosy scenario, however. As Microsoft 
and AOL play out their corporate duel, each will inevitably seek to lock in 
customers and lock out competitors. I think a significant number of Web 
users, myself included, would be happy to see these two giants cripple each 
other in the process. The trouble is, their moves are more likely to injure 
bystanders -- and could wreck the Net itself.

While no one company may "control" the Web, Microsoft and AOL each have it 
within their power to wreak a lot of damage on the network and its users. 
At the moment, the pressure is on Microsoft to whittle down AOL's 
overwhelming lead in the subscriber rolls, so it's Microsoft that's causing 
the most trouble. Since Microsoft controls the operating system and Web 
browser that most consumers use, Microsoft looks to bend its software in 
directions that will help drive users to its Web sites and other 
businesses. This is what Microsoft calls "innovation" and "integration" -- 
and what the U.S. legal system, depending on which court's ruling is 
currently in force, calls "monopolistic behavior" and "antitrust violation."

As Microsoft readies the next mass-market version of Windows, XP (which 
supposedly stands, in some bizarre tip of the hat to Jimi Hendrix, for 
"Experience"), provocative tidbits of its "integrations" have surfaced. The 
most outrageous gambit is a little innovation known as Smart Tags -- a tool 
already built into the Office XP software package that automatically adds 
new links to documents. You don't choose where on the Internet these links 
point to; Microsoft does. In Windows XP, Microsoft intends to extend Smart 
Tags to the Web browser, usurping the heretofore-unchallenged right of a 
Web site operator to decide where links point.

This sets off very loud alarm bells: Site editors rightly fear the 
hijacking of their content; site proprietors rightly foresee the hijacking 
of their businesses. (In my previous paragraph, imagine a link from 
"Hendrix" to a Microsoft-owned or -partnered music shop -- or, more 
outrageously, from "antitrust violation" to a Microsoft-slanted definition 
of that term.) Microsoft, feebly, murmurs that XP remains an unfinished 
product, and Smart Tags don't look like other links, and maybe they will be 
turned off by default, and maybe it will be easy for sites to override 
them. The bottom line remains: Microsoft will choose new directions for its 
technology, and the very directions the company insists its users are 
clamoring for will -- by sheer coincidence -- move power over content and 
commerce into its own hands.

The Smart Tags tool isn't the only trick up Microsoft's XP sleeve. The new 
Windows will also herd users toward Windows Media Player for multimedia 
content. It will "integrate" its instant-messaging service to take on AOL's 
dominance in this arena. And it will aggressively push its Passport service 
for storing personal information.

Passport is Microsoft's scheme for getting your credit card number and 
personal information on file; sure, it will offer one-click convenience at 
many Microsoft-affiliated sites, but it also puts Microsoft in an ideal 
position to finally make good on its long-held dream of cutting itself a 
slice of online transactions. (In memos and interviews a few years ago, the 
company's then chief technology officer, Nathan Myhrvold, referred to this 
tollbooth charge as a "vig" -- a term from the patois of bookies, which 
gives you an idea of the direction from which Microsoft has been drawing 
its inspiration.) Once we all need to register for Passport to pay the 
subscription fees Microsoft intends to charge for use of its operating 
system, Passport will be ubiquitous and unavoidable -- except by those who 
opt out of the Windows world completely, fleeing for the high ground of 
Apple's newly reinvigorated operating system or the freehold of Linux, as 
more and more adventurous souls will do.

Microsoft's role in the ecology of the Internet business has long been to 
"cut off the air supply" of competitors. Microsoft execs deny coining that 
memorable phrase, which emerged during the antitrust trial -- but whether 
they used it or not, it accurately describes the company's tactics. Today, 
AOL -- with its tens of millions of subscribers -- has the luxury of, in 
essence, being the atmosphere of the online world. Where Microsoft needs to 
subsidize its online efforts with the obscene profits generated by its 
desktop-software monopoly, AOL controls the world's largest stream of 
direct revenue from online services. This is thanks to the company's unique 
position in serving as the country's biggest Internet service provider and 
its largest producer of content (since the merger with Time Warner).

AOL won this position by offering new users a genuinely easy method of 
getting online, and by locking those users into AOL buddy lists and 
instant-messaging services. Users pay AOL their monthly connection fee 
(which seems to creep up a couple of dollars every year or two) and then 
AOL tries to leverage the relationship through advertising and promotions. 
Smart business? Sure -- but one that relies on users' lack of smarts.

It's not yet clear how AOL will respond to Microsoft's offensive, but you 
can be sure it will give up no ground without a battle -- in the courts or 
the consumer market or the software arena or everywhere at once. AOL will 
do everything in its power, as it always has, to keep users' eyes and 
dollars from roaming beyond AOL turf -- and now that AOL's turf is so vast, 
that's an easier task.

Before asking whether either of these companies could control the Web or 
the Net, you have to pin down what you mean by "control." There's control 
of speech -- of individual users' ability to say what they want. There's 
control of access -- of whether and how we're able to find and reach others 
across the network. And of course there's control of the ability to make 
money online.

As long as AOL's and Microsoft's struggle is fought primarily in that final 
realm, the fight won't be one that most Net users will care about; one 
mega-corporation's money grab looks pretty much like another's. Things will 
get far more interesting, however, if the conflict spills over into the 
other two categories. The Smart Tag controversy is a glimpse of what 
corporate speech control on the Net looks like -- that's why it has so much 
of the active Net up in arms. Meanwhile, the more AOL and Microsoft 
"leverage" their advantages in, respectively, subscribership and software, 
the more likely they are to start closing off entrances and exits and 
transforming their fiefdoms into private networks. In the world of instant 
messaging, each company's users are unable to connect with the other's -- a 
preview of what corporate control of access on the Net looks like. Think of 
how it would feel if e-mail worked that way!

In fact, it's not hard to imagine this at all -- because it's exactly how 
the commercial online world worked before 1994. The smoke of today's 
AOL/Microsoft war obscures a secret agenda the two companies will never 
admit to publicly: They don't like the Internet -- and never have.

Microsoft's MSN and AOL were both closed, proprietary networks when the Web 
exploded and upended their business plans, forcing each to change course 
radically: Microsoft turned its battleship around to sink Netscape in the 
browser wars, while AOL dropped its hourly charges. Both companies hooked 
up their networks to the open Net, while conniving to keep their users just 
a little fuzzy about where the "branded" AOL or Microsoft turf ended and 
the rest of the Net began.

Both companies, you can bet, would be far more comfortable in a world 
without the Internet -- a world in which they governed who could post 
content on their networks and taxed anyone who made money from it. Seven 
years ago, only one thing made them accept and embrace the strange new 
notion of a network that nobody owned or controlled: the overwhelming 
enthusiasm for the Net on the part of masses of users and developers.

A kind of online "people power" forced open Microsoft's and AOL's doors 
seven years ago. Today both companies are itching to turn back the clock. 
Can they do it? They'll certainly try. But if these companies push too 
hard, those who care about the survival of an independent Web may simply 
vote with their feet and wallets, as they did once before. If they don't -- 
and only if they don't -- it will be time to sing a requiem for the Net.

Shuddhabrata Sengupta
SARAI: The New Media Initiative
Centre for the Study of Developing Societies
29, Rajpur Road, Delhi 110 052, India
www.sarai.net