The Anarchy of Information on the Internet
The rise of the Internet during the past ten years has driven a rennisance of techinal development, as well as reshaping the landscape concerning the ownership and distribution of information. The copyleft methodology, or open source movement, has as a result of reduced distribution costs, grown into a viable threat to estabilished publishers.
Inner Technological Anarchy of the Internet
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Not point to point networking
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Can connect to computers who you are not directly networked to your computer.
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The networks that make up the internet though do not always share the characteristics of the internet.
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Standards are adopted “voluntarilrly” - committees from multiple different organizations/companies discuss what is needed from the standard and how it works - but you get “fief-doms” (i.e. NS and IE browser differences)
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Alternate roots debate/problem
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US Govt Beginnings --- ability to withstand nuclear attack.
Information Exchange Beginnings
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People willingly shared their information
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Placed material intended for internal organizational use on publically accessable websites - Its common
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General early desire to put as much content on the web as possible -- content laden homepages
Commerce moves in
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Most initial commercial ventures were extentions of the information exchange beginnings, essentially adding advertising onto the information giving
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Stores moved online, but in a break with general mail order business, they put lots and lots of information about their
Napster: The anarchy takes another step
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Napster, directs computers to connect to one and other to exchange files to one and other.
Morpheous completes the anarchy
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Finally cut the centrality out, fully anarchaic
Software
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Brief review of the models of software
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Slow start of copyleft software compared to commercial software but parallel level of functionality.
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Discussions in security, compatability, stability, speed.