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I just need to jump in here and harp on the thing that I'm sure regular readers of HN are sick of seeing me harp in on all the time. :P The network effects of

I just need to jump in here and harp on the thing that I'm sure regular readers of HN are sick of seeing me harp in on all the time. :P The network effects of Facebook et al are entirely artificial! The beauty of the internet is that there are no real barriers to keep everyone in the same box. Instantaneous, exact communication is possible across the whole world now. "Other people can't hear me when I'm not using Facebook, so I have to use Facebook" is NOT an inherent problem in a digital system! The problem is, simply, that the law in the United States, Europe, and most of the rest of the world explicitly makes it illegal to provide third-party federation systems that would bring that permeability to the "walled gardens" of the modern web. The walls aren't really there. We don't need to install millions of miles of compatible cable to hook up diaspora and Facebook. We don't need the government to step in and do anything to stop the behemoths, we just need them to get out of the way. The web's natural mechanisms can solve this on their own if the USG stops putting developers and entrepreneurs in jail/financial ruin for trying to innovate. Users need to be allowed to access sites with a browsing device of their own choice instead of allowing vendors to cut off access based on the use of browsing devices that preserve content, and then we need to update our copyright and contract law so that normal use of these browsing devices doesn't constitute infringement or breach. Repeal the CFAA, fix the Copyright Act, retake the web from phony monopolies. Let's get these guys competing on merit again and make room for the revolutionary iterative improvements of the little guy.

cyberpunk 10y ago
I'm not sure that's the whole problem. The walled garden is a financial incentive for tech companies mainly, isn't it? It seems like it's going to a hard thing to shift; so far it's been a 'who cares' for most of us, but it's really going to start hitting once VR gets big, at least -- as far as I daydream about such things.. Lets' get in a time machine, what I'd really like to see is an open protocol for VR ala 'snow crash' governed in the same sort of way HTTP is, while we're early days now I think we can probably assume that VR, somewhere down the line potentially 'browser replacement' in reach but I'm not really sure that can ever really happen though when we're building lots of isolated gardens which speak different languages -- as the way things currently are? Do you think the motivations of e.g sony or htc not to go down the same path http did are because of the CFAA and over-regulation instead of money reasons? It seems to me short sighted quick returns, lock in and incompat are going to play bigger roles than govt reg in the next decades in stifling progress -- I'd like to hear your take..
- cookiecaper 10y ago
  The thing is that the government is co-conspiring with the large companies to allow them to enforce their walled gardens through the wholly-artificial means of the CFAA, copyright, etc. If the government stopped allowing large companies to haul innovators to court for accessing the data that that company willfully shared with the innovator's browser, the wall, at least on SaaS-style services, would be broken as third-party federators would be free to come in and tranform that data into something compatible with competing solutions. The data would be able to flow freely and the user would be free to access the data through Facebook directly or through a competitor service, and products would need to compete for users on merit instead of taking one's social graph hostage. The web enables this portability, but the government has set up rules (in some cases, inadvertently and through negligence) that stop people from competing on an even playing field. We need to fix those rules. CFAA, EULAs, and copyright for RAM copies is a start.

cyberpunk 10y ago

I'm not sure that's the whole problem. The walled garden is a financial incentive for tech companies mainly, isn't it? It seems like it's going to a hard thing to shift; so far it's been a 'who cares' for most of us, but it's really going to start hitting once VR gets big, at least -- as far as I daydream about such things.. Lets' get in a time machine, what I'd really like to see is an open protocol for VR ala 'snow crash' governed in the same sort of way HTTP is, while we're early days now I think we can probably assume that VR, somewhere down the line potentially 'browser replacement' in reach but I'm not really sure that can ever really happen though when we're building lots of isolated gardens which speak different languages -- as the way things currently are? Do you think the motivations of e.g sony or htc not to go down the same path http did are because of the CFAA and over-regulation instead of money reasons? It seems to me short sighted quick returns, lock in and incompat are going to play bigger roles than govt reg in the next decades in stifling progress -- I'd like to hear your take..

cookiecaper 10y ago
The thing is that the government is co-conspiring with the large companies to allow them to enforce their walled gardens through the wholly-artificial means of the CFAA, copyright, etc. If the government stopped allowing large companies to haul innovators to court for accessing the data that that company willfully shared with the innovator's browser, the wall, at least on SaaS-style services, would be broken as third-party federators would be free to come in and tranform that data into something compatible with competing solutions. The data would be able to flow freely and the user would be free to access the data through Facebook directly or through a competitor service, and products would need to compete for users on merit instead of taking one's social graph hostage. The web enables this portability, but the government has set up rules (in some cases, inadvertently and through negligence) that stop people from competing on an even playing field. We need to fix those rules. CFAA, EULAs, and copyright for RAM copies is a start.