Slashdot: Competing (Commercial) Visions For The Internet Fu

Cyberm4n

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Jun 6, 2002
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Posted by timothy on Monday August 26, @06:18PM
from the there's-not-even-a-free-snack dept.

Stirland writes: "This article in today's NYTimes says that AOL's new plan focussed on creating content for broadband could have cable companies over a barrel. It tries to compare programming on cable to 'programming' on the Internet. It's an important article to read because it gives us an idea of what cable companies' potential plans are for the broadband Internet. Given that they're not regulated like DSL, and they're the fastest growing providers of broadband Internet access, this has profound implications for the next generation of the Internet. This article omits the fact that Excite@Home tried this 'programming' approach on broadband. It failed. Another reason this article is important: Contrast AOL's approach described here with Amazon.com and Microsoft's .Net strategy. These are two polar opposite visions of the way the Internet will develop. The media vision vs. computing vision. The interesting story here is that it isn't that one is 'open' and the other 'closed.' They're just open and closed in different places -- places, obviously, that suit the companies' strategies. Why should you care, and what's in it for you? These competing visions are currently duking it out at the FCC under open-access proceedings. So the future of the Internet is hanging in the balance."


I didnt get the article from ny times because you must register, anyways, heres the url to the original story:
http://slashdot.org/article.pl?sid=02/08/26/226235&mode=thread&tid=95

Here's the URL to the NYTimes article:
http://www.nytimes.com/2002/08/26/technology/26NECO.html
 

Cyberm4n

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BTW. I have no clue what their plans could be, seeing as broadband providers across the continent are capping or planning on capping users` use of the internet!
 

JidoSpod

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Aug 26, 2002
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maybe thats their deal, make huge elaborate sites that transfer wads of data to broadband users, then with an agreement with the broadband providers get paid some of that back to them from the users over-use fees! lol