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The internet dream is almost here! Patents and IP have lost their bite compared to the 80's (continuing to do so) and piracy is easier than ever. More countrie

by pspace 11y ago

The internet dream is almost here! Patents and IP have lost their bite compared to the 80's (continuing to do so) and piracy is easier than ever. More countries are participating in the global conversation than ever before. Enhancements in security and privacy are evident and improving (albeit slowly). The internet is becoming a lot less like TV and will continue to do so. People care more about commenting and creating content. They care about participating more than they ever did and this is increasing. In fact, this is a problem because the quality of participation is diminishing as EVERYONE jumps in. Existing power structures are not being retained. As the internet enters the equation new laws are being put into place. Look at Uber, Lyft, and Airbnb. The only difference in how they are regulated is basically because they are internet oriented. Yes we still have work. Infrastructure is still a big issue. If we want to reduce centralization, we need better infrastructure and equal access to it. That one is very political. We got this ;) Stay vigilant friends.

eggie 11y ago
> Yes we still have work. Infrastructure is still a big issue. If we want to reduce centralization, we need better infrastructure and equal access to it. That one is very political. If you want to work for an open internet, this is the key thing. For open to be the default, it should be dramatically easier to implement a new thing using p2p or on a blockchain than with centralized services.
- mtgx 11y ago
  Not just easier, but preferable. When big companies (or rather new companies that can get big, as the old ones probably won't change anyway) start preferring P2P infrastructure to conduct their business and offer their services, we'll know there's no going back from a decentralized Internet.
k__ 11y ago
If you look into our biggest open platform today, the web, you see that we have almost won. We got the whole power of our PCs sand-boxed and mostly standardized at our fingertips with ECMAScript, HTTP and company. Most of the old proprietary demons are defeated with so many companies switching from native to "the web". But with the rise of iOS and Android, new problems are rising. And if you look at the better performance and usability of apps, they also got real substance behind them.
- anon1385 11y ago
  The web has done more to centralise computing and take it out of the hands of ordinary people than any other technology. People don't even control their own data anymore, never mind having control over the software they run. It's hard to see that as a win.
  - parasubvert 11y ago
    The web has done more to decentralize networked computing than any other technology, because the web is basically decentralized. Only the agreements (IETF and W3C) are somewhat centralized, but even then we are seeing a proliferation of REST APIs to encourage decentralized data management. These usually aren't exactly "RESTful" of course because we are so busy with our own startups we aren't really working towards interop as a priority. The only inherent reason we have popular centralized services is that there is limited economic incentives of funding or adhering to a decentralized social (or business, or health, ...) network standard - the Web would support it, but we've got to WANT to build the agreements to make it work. Tl;dr the Read side of the web is decentralized; the Write Side of the Web is currently an oligarchy but not permanently so.
    - gue5t 11y ago
      The web separates endpoints into two classes: the "land-owning" pays-for-a-domain-name server class, and the disenfranchised client class where users live. Interactions between users are necessarily mediated by a server, which is why the economics encourage centralization. You don't need "major parties" to "adhere to agreements" if users just use the software they like to interact with each other. The problem with the Web is everyone using software on third-party servers to write rows in third-party databases because everything else is technically infeasible given the architecture of Web protocols. You need a DHT or some other kind of decentralized matchmaking service in order to actually connect users to each other. At that point using HTTP makes no sense either, and users don't have the time or resources to write complicated HTML or hire web devs to write it. Web technologies are not really useful for users-talking-to-users without server-based mediation.
mtgx 11y ago
> Patents and IP have lost their bite compared to the 80's (continuing to do so) and piracy is easier than ever. How do you figure? There are probably more money lost from patent lawsuits or extortion than even before now. Also, didn't software patents only become a thing in the 90's? And soon we're going to have to deal with gene patents and all sort of things like that, as the gene editing revolution begins.
robotkilla 11y ago
> Patents and IP have lost their bite compared to the 80's isn't that what the tpp is supposed to fix?
- maxerickson 11y ago
  No. Patents have lost their bite by expiring. TPP is not going to revivify any expired patents.
  - robotkilla 11y ago
    right but isn't it going to give the existing ones bigger teeth?
Mimu 11y ago
The TV analogy is more about people are not using internet but only Facebook and Google. I think it's more that way than the consuming / creating angle.
LordKano 11y ago
The way I see it, piracy was easier 12 or so years ago. The rise of P2P, in the days before regulatory sanctions and when user tracking was less sophisticated, you could get nearly anything on P2P.
RogtamBar 11y ago
>People care more about commenting and creating content. They care about participating more than they ever did and this is increasing. I'm not sure if that is a good thing. Have you ever been to reddit? The entire place is practically overran with memes and inanity.
- matt_kantor 11y ago
  The trick with reddit is to carefully curate your subreddit list and continually clean house as the communities evolve (usually in a negative direction) over time. It's a lot of work, and the same goes for most other community-driven sites. My Facebook feed is garbage because I don't use it often enough to train the algorithm (or maybe the algorithm just sucks). My YouTube front page is only passable because I've taken the time to subscribe to a handful of channels and had made heavy use of the old (non-Spotify-only) Last.fm to listen to music I like on there. My Google+ home page consists of two people's posts plus spam because I haven't spent time managing my network. And so on. Now that the web has more content creators than ever we also need better recommendation, search, and filtering tools. Hell, even though it's heavily moderated I still wish I could teach Hacker News not to show me the 50% of articles on here that I have zero interest in. It's not the content that's the problem, it's the systems we use to find and consume it. Somebody wants to look at all those memes, it's just not you or I.
stahlkopf 11y ago
A nice refreshing dose of optimism. Thanks

by pspace 11y ago

eggie 11y ago

> Yes we still have work. Infrastructure is still a big issue. If we want to reduce centralization, we need better infrastructure and equal access to it. That one is very political. If you want to work for an open internet, this is the key thing. For open to be the default, it should be dramatically easier to implement a new thing using p2p or on a blockchain than with centralized services.

mtgx 11y ago
Not just easier, but preferable. When big companies (or rather new companies that can get big, as the old ones probably won't change anyway) start preferring P2P infrastructure to conduct their business and offer their services, we'll know there's no going back from a decentralized Internet.

k__ 11y ago

If you look into our biggest open platform today, the web, you see that we have almost won. We got the whole power of our PCs sand-boxed and mostly standardized at our fingertips with ECMAScript, HTTP and company. Most of the old proprietary demons are defeated with so many companies switching from native to "the web". But with the rise of iOS and Android, new problems are rising. And if you look at the better performance and usability of apps, they also got real substance behind them.

anon1385 11y ago
The web has done more to centralise computing and take it out of the hands of ordinary people than any other technology. People don't even control their own data anymore, never mind having control over the software they run. It's hard to see that as a win.
- parasubvert 11y ago
  The web has done more to decentralize networked computing than any other technology, because the web is basically decentralized. Only the agreements (IETF and W3C) are somewhat centralized, but even then we are seeing a proliferation of REST APIs to encourage decentralized data management. These usually aren't exactly "RESTful" of course because we are so busy with our own startups we aren't really working towards interop as a priority. The only inherent reason we have popular centralized services is that there is limited economic incentives of funding or adhering to a decentralized social (or business, or health, ...) network standard - the Web would support it, but we've got to WANT to build the agreements to make it work. Tl;dr the Read side of the web is decentralized; the Write Side of the Web is currently an oligarchy but not permanently so.
  - gue5t 11y ago
    The web separates endpoints into two classes: the "land-owning" pays-for-a-domain-name server class, and the disenfranchised client class where users live. Interactions between users are necessarily mediated by a server, which is why the economics encourage centralization. You don't need "major parties" to "adhere to agreements" if users just use the software they like to interact with each other. The problem with the Web is everyone using software on third-party servers to write rows in third-party databases because everything else is technically infeasible given the architecture of Web protocols. You need a DHT or some other kind of decentralized matchmaking service in order to actually connect users to each other. At that point using HTTP makes no sense either, and users don't have the time or resources to write complicated HTML or hire web devs to write it. Web technologies are not really useful for users-talking-to-users without server-based mediation.

mtgx 11y ago

> Patents and IP have lost their bite compared to the 80's (continuing to do so) and piracy is easier than ever. How do you figure? There are probably more money lost from patent lawsuits or extortion than even before now. Also, didn't software patents only become a thing in the 90's? And soon we're going to have to deal with gene patents and all sort of things like that, as the gene editing revolution begins.

robotkilla 11y ago

> Patents and IP have lost their bite compared to the 80's isn't that what the tpp is supposed to fix?

maxerickson 11y ago
No. Patents have lost their bite by expiring. TPP is not going to revivify any expired patents.
- robotkilla 11y ago
  right but isn't it going to give the existing ones bigger teeth?

Mimu 11y ago

The TV analogy is more about people are not using internet but only Facebook and Google. I think it's more that way than the consuming / creating angle.

LordKano 11y ago

The way I see it, piracy was easier 12 or so years ago. The rise of P2P, in the days before regulatory sanctions and when user tracking was less sophisticated, you could get nearly anything on P2P.

RogtamBar 11y ago

>People care more about commenting and creating content. They care about participating more than they ever did and this is increasing. I'm not sure if that is a good thing. Have you ever been to reddit? The entire place is practically overran with memes and inanity.

matt_kantor 11y ago
The trick with reddit is to carefully curate your subreddit list and continually clean house as the communities evolve (usually in a negative direction) over time. It's a lot of work, and the same goes for most other community-driven sites. My Facebook feed is garbage because I don't use it often enough to train the algorithm (or maybe the algorithm just sucks). My YouTube front page is only passable because I've taken the time to subscribe to a handful of channels and had made heavy use of the old (non-Spotify-only) Last.fm to listen to music I like on there. My Google+ home page consists of two people's posts plus spam because I haven't spent time managing my network. And so on. Now that the web has more content creators than ever we also need better recommendation, search, and filtering tools. Hell, even though it's heavily moderated I still wish I could teach Hacker News not to show me the 50% of articles on here that I have zero interest in. It's not the content that's the problem, it's the systems we use to find and consume it. Somebody wants to look at all those memes, it's just not you or I.

stahlkopf 11y ago

A nice refreshing dose of optimism. Thanks