The culture of the Internet is being drastically altered everyday. The Internet used to have a free culture, one where anyone could express themselves through many different mediums (video, pictures, text, etc…). Lawrence Lessig is a fan of the free culture phenomenon, however, he maintains that corporate interests are destroying free culture. Free culture is slowly changing to a permission culture. Lessig also maintains that “permission culture” is the extreme opposite of free culture. The worst consequence of the emergence of permission culture is the way it affects creativity, particularly in the context of cyberspace. Recent legislation coupled with commercial interests are essentially putting a surveillance system on the internet.
Corporate interests having an affect on creativity in cyberspace is nothing new, particularly when Google comes into question. In winter of 2010, Google announced it was going to build fiber optic broadband Internet connections offering one gigabyte of service a second. Google was going to test the technology in a select few communities at first to see potential ways for users to have a fast broadband connection heading forward. This immediately led Internet Service Providers (ISP) to speculate on Google’s future in the service sector. Google obviously has an interest in increasing the number of users on the web but may attempt to enter the Internet service sector to truly place a monopoly on Google users. The article can be found by Click Here
This move by Google supports Lawrence’s claim. Google already charges business’ to be listed by the search engine and charge advertisers massive amounts to have Google users be exposed to ads at all times. However, if Google could decide who can and cant use the web (and equally as important, Google’s search engine) they could drastically curve creativity on the Internet. Anyone who publishes anti-Google articles could be cut out of the Internet (if they are a google user, which millions are). This act by Google is one of millions that limit creativity on the web and reinforce Lessig’s claims.
I agree with basically everything you stated in your article. No mi gusta permission culture. I think that permission culture totally stomps all over creativity. Like on youtube, if you use a song in a video your video can get taken down or muted because you didn't ask for permission or own the music. Also a lot of art would be taken down as well because there is mass amounts of fan art on the internet (so clearly the people who are creating this fan art most likely do not own the characters they are drawing). Basically if the internet becomes a permission culture we may become kind of like China's internet censorship.
ReplyDeleteYour insight regarding our transition from a free culture to a permission culture shows how companies like Google are adapting to the change. You found a good example about Google adapting to a permission culture in that if they eventually have the ability to decide who is allowed or forbidden to use their online tools, the internet as we know it will come to an end.
ReplyDeleteAs good as free culture is for the public, the permission culture is bad. It truly is disappointing on how that is making a transition. The companies themselves are taking more charge as to what the public does and/or posts on their website. This only goes to show that the Internet is forever adapting and changing. What used to be a free pass for users to generate what they wanted, is now becoming a cyber world with more say and power concerned with what the people are able to do on it.
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