The Information Super-Sewer: Will the Internet be Hijacked by Corporate Interests

[Liffrea]

The Internet has become one more tool hijacked by corporate interests to accelerate our cultural, political and economic decline. The great promise of the Internet, to open up dialogue, break down cultural barriers, promote democracy and unleash innovation and creativity, has been exposed as a scam. The Internet is dividing us into antagonistic clans, in which we chant the same slogans and hate the same enemies, while our creative work is handed for free to Web providers who use it as bait for advertising.

Ask journalists, photographers, musicians, cartoonists or artists what they think of the Web. Ask movie and film producers. Ask architects or engineers. The Web efficiently disseminates content, but it does not protect intellectual property rights. Writers and artists are increasingly unable to make a living. And technical professions are under heavy assault. Anything that can be digitized can and is being outsourced to countries such as India and China where wages are miserable and benefits nonexistent. Welcome to the new global serfdom where the only professions that pay a living wage are propaganda and corporate management.

The Web, at the same time it is destroying creative work, is forming anonymous crowds that vent collective rage, intolerance and bigotry. These virtual slums do not expand communication or dialogue. They do not enrich our culture. They create a herd mentality in which those who express empathy for “the enemy”—and the liberal class is as guilty of this as the right wing—are denounced by their fellow travelers for their impurity. Racism toward Muslims may be as evil as anti-Semitism, but try to express this simple truth on a partisan Palestinian or Israeli website.

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17681

[Sol Invictus]

I read an article saying that peeps wanted to have internet users licensed.

[SwordoftheVistula]

That article is a bunch of crap. The things the article is complaining about undermine the headline premise of 'the internet hijacked by corporate interests'

Bypassing 'intellectual property rights' allows people access to whatever information they need or want without having to pay for it, which obviously undermines the corporate interests which have ownership of these things. This might be a good or bad thing for society as a whole, but it obviously helps out the 'common people' to the detriment of the 'corporations'

Also by allowing the creating of 'clans', the internet combats globalized conformity in which everyone gets pushed into the same box, the process the world moved towards over the 20th century.

Ask journalists, photographers, musicians, cartoonists or artists what they think of the Web. Ask movie and film producers...Welcome to the new global serfdom where the only professions that pay a living wage are propaganda and corporate management.

Correction, "the only professions that pay an upper middle class wage to douchebags with a liberal arts degree and an entitlement mentality"

Besides, 'Propaganda' was covered in his previous list of professions which are supposedly decimated, "journalists, photographers, musicians, cartoonists or artists...movie and film producers;" so apparently he is unable to make up his mind.


An alternative way to look at this is that as the 20th century progressed, an increasingly disproportionate amount of money was directed towards the entertainment industry, and the internet has helped to break their oligopoly and bring society back to a better balance. Also, without the oligopoly, they have to take more care to produce things which people actually like, instead of just churn out a bunch of crap which people consume because they are bored and nothing better is available.