Posted by
Kyle McInnes
• 06.04.08 12:22 pm 
We haven’t heard about this in a while. Is it still an issue? Is the internet still at risk?
We haven’t heard about this in a while. Is it still an issue?
Is the internet still at risk?
But aren’t printing presses cheaper now than they’ve ever been? You can make a zine for about 80 cents per or you can do a run of a thousand newsprint papers for even less.
so it goes, printed media to audio media to televised media and now the internet all being controlled and then created one after the other does that mean if the internet becomes corporatly controlled, i wonder what the next free media outlet will be
change the title to: Is The Internet Fucked?
Yeah and ham and CB radio still exists (not to mention pirate stations), as does public access TV. This speaker really blows it describing the transition in publishing from small-run pamphlets to large-run print media. Just because newspapers overtook pamphlets and essays in terms of audience size and popularity doesn’t mean that these forms of printing were no longer available to the public or even of diminished social relevance. He also fails to consider that as adult literacy rates in most Western countries only began to spike around the time of the Industrial Revolution (thereby creating the audience necessary for large-run publications), pamphleteers and their readers in the golden era of the late 16, early 1700s were not made up of the hoi polloi but rather the social and intellectual elite. Reductivist claptrap tailored to his pet cause.
I just don’t understand how it is all possible. But here’s the thing, formats like radio and television died out because of the FCC. A government bureacratic entity who act like a freakin’ babysitter/ Big Brother of the media formats. They would have killed the internet as we know it off a LONG time ago if that was possible. They just couldn’t do it.
Of course internet service providers are now working with all internet service and networking companies into a monopolized scheme into ending net neutriality. But even then, I’m not sure how the hell it is possible. You will run into problems with anti-trust laws for those guys.
i surf the niggernet
This sounds like another case of Liberal Arts students avoiding math class and thinking they still understand the world. The fatal flaw they are making is they are forgetting the “per capita” factor. For example, say The People had 3 radio stations. Then NBC and ABC came in and made 97 more. You could say The People used to own 100% of the radio stations and now they only own 3% but the difference is those corporations didn’t take any radio away they just added to it. Sure they own 97% of the stations but they created those stations.
You hear the same about Starbucks and how it’s killing Mom & Pop coffee joints. The truth is Starbucks made coffee culture what it is today in the States and you wouldn’t have those Mom & Pop joints without Starbucks.
Bingo about the radio stations, but a lot of places (especially in the pacific northwest) had mom and pop coffee joints before the Starbucks juggernaut rolled across the country. Starbucks made its own sort of coffee culture, but saying it created American coffee-drinking is like saying McDonald’s created the diner.