Sunday, March 28, 2010

An Idealistic veiw of Internet Policy

When considering internet policy, it is good to consider, in my opinion the different ways in which governments are created, policed, and which succeed and which fail. I may be taking this at a reach, but like in the article by Langdon Winner, he discusses the idea that artifacts like the internet or bombs have political incentives. In that case, when discussing internet policy and how it should be used and distributed, should we consider it a new form of community which would then need its own government?
When I consider this, I believe that, although I am not happy to see it Capitalism may be the thriving force which will allow the internet to continue, as we can see already with companies like ebay, google, and apple making gazillions of dollars through internet capitalism and owning possible monopolies in their own piece of the internet.
With that in mind, when internet policy is considered, the regulations should be on the companies in my opinion who provide the services to the users of it, while the users themselves should be given a hypothetical "free reign" on what they do and how they go about it.
I believe some companies like w3schools.com and creativecommons.org are pushing in a direction which some would think that the internet is becoming to much "free reign" and "socialist." These companies in fact, are two which I believe are ones which should the example of how internet policy should be implemented. W3schools uses the internet as a teaching tool, providing information to its users of how to manipulate the web and discover new ways to use it. Creative Commons allows users to set open source availability to their creative pieces of work and allows for the promotion of arts and sciences, which laid down in the constitution is the very reason for copyright in the first place. On the opposite end companies like Disney are using their money to extend copyright terms beyond what I consider "a limited amount of time" before they are released into the public domain, which is another example of how if internet policy is similar to that of government law, would major corporations abuse their power in order to change the way the internet is used in order to benefit their own wallets? I think so.
Internet policy should be determined by the people and not how much money a corporation will make or the potential loss of money. Although my ideas may be considered idealistic, it is what I would like to see in my own perfect view of how the internet should be ran.

No comments:

Post a Comment

Followers