Totalitarianism. Urban pathology. The death of creativity. These are the fears that keep John Perry Barlow awake at night. The co-founder of the 12-year-old Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) tries not to be bleak. But he sincerely worries that Microsoft will usurp e-commerce and AOL Time Warner will seize media, and the two forces will extinguish dissenting voices in a “diabolical” plot to own the economy and the human mind. “I worry that the Net is closing. I would say that (Microsoft e-commerce initiatives) .Net and HailStorm are huge threats and really diabolical. The problem is that hardly anybody recognizes it because they don’t know what .Net is or how it works. They don’t know that Microsoft is trying to own all of your transactions, literally.”C|Net asks: “To play devil’s advocate, isn’t Microsoft simply selling a product that millions of people are willing to purchase at their own will?“.
Barlow replies: “Oh, come on. People aren’t willing. Microsoft is giving people what Microsoft wants because it has a monopoly, which isn’t based on the value of the product but rather a positive feedback loop in the information economy: Everything is compatible with Windows, ergo, Windows prevails and continues to prevail regardless of its liabilities. It’s No. 1 because it’s No. 1, period, not because it’s valuable. In fact, it’s become totally diabolical.”
Read the rest of the interview at C|Net.
Next topic, please…
Lovely interview, thanks Eugenia.
It’s a pity that EFF guy didn’t explain specfically how Microsoft are going to own e-commerce aside from pointing in the general direction of .NET/Hailstorm
…but way too short.
Do any of us need further proof never to trust big companies like MS? Do any of us need further convincing about the lack of alternative viewpoints and lack of diversity in mass media? Didn’t think so.
Microsoft’s most recent issue; your privacy (again):
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020220/ap_on_hi…
Recurring theme, that one.
out of the privacy article (from YahooNews) that part marked me as a real joke:
“This is essentially a case where it (the ID) doesn’t serve any purpose and it isn’t used,” Caulton said
Riiiiiiiiiiight.. Microsoft receives the ID and the cd you are listening, but the id is simply discarded and never serve a purpose… am I the only one not trusting him here?
Yeh, I had exactly the same thoughts. MS is still trying to get away with all it can and 99.9% of ppl won’t ever know about it. They keep creeping in one step at a time…
I thought the most pertinant observation was that of the “positive feedback loop” in information technology. Windows has such a dominant position that anything incompatible with it is pretty much doomed, irrespective of technical merits. I’ll say one thing, I am never going to install XP on any machine I own. From here on out, I will build every computer that goes into my house, and MS won’t get a cent. I am admittedly writing this from IE5 and Win98, because they came pre-bundled with my current box and there isn’t a BeOS driver for the NIC, but I long to rid myself of MS because they make me sick.
(I’m not a 20-something Linux fanatic. I am a 40-year-old husband, father, and homeowner who is really sick of the bullsh*t being fed to the public under the guise of “freedom to innovate”. MS really deserves to be slammed).
which NIC are you using?
By the way, The Inquirer’s view on MS’ latest Media Player privacy issue:
http://www.theinquirer.net/22020207.htm
I don’t think .net will be a run away success. Microsoft can not legally repeat what they have done illegally in the past with winblows.
The remedy hearings next month may introduce radical changes in the PC computing industry.
ciao
yc
The law is too far-behind and too technologically stupid to solve any of these problems. But why is microsoft so successful? It cannot be entirely or even mainly due to the fact that they have done illegal things -as a matter of fact, if you take any of their competitors and scrutinise them as closely as MS has been scrutinised, you will pretty much find that they are all guilty of the same or similar offences. Ask yourself the following:
1. How did they get to acquire 95% of the desktop? They were not the first to write a desktop OS, and they were neither the wealthiest nor strongest when this happened.
2. How did they get to dominate the Office application space? Word perfect used to be the king, and again, they came from an underdog position on that one.
3. How come they now have 45% of the server market? Again, they initially came from an underdog position.
4. How come their share of the database market is on the increase? I won’t be surprised if they dominate that one in 5 years or less, and again, they would have come from an underdog position.
Much as I dislike MS, we must admit that they are also a well-managed, very-hardworking company. Competing in the courts will not work. The competition must stand up and fight like they need to. If like me you don’t like MS passport, don’t freaking use it. Nobody needs to use passport, and if people could use dos and windows 3.1, they can certainly use Linux, or Be, or whatever turns them on
Please, I beg you not to ever refer to the word .NET alone, it is Microsoft .NET, or MS .NET, or MS NET
I agree Microsoft is `Diabolic`, and they just can’t stop trying to get trademark possesion of generic terms for their goods. They partially succeeded doing that with MS Windows, don’t let them succeed with MS .NET
`Microsoft .NET`. NOT `.NET`
It is not a naive manouver from MS (absolutely NOTHING is naive from them). Quotes containing NET in the article (capitals are mine):
>>>There are a lot of things connected to totalitarianism, such as the ability to affect the technical architecture of the NET and the increasing number of standards and protocols that are being passed down by the likes of Microsoft. I worry that the NET is closing. I would say that (Microsoft e-commerce initiatives) .NET and HailStorm are huge threats and really diabolical. The problem is that hardly anybody recognizes it because they don’t know what .NET is or how it works. They don’t know that Microsoft is trying to own all of your transactions, literally.
>>> I lost probably 95 percent of my NET worth.
>>>I want to be remembered as someone who did everything he could to keep the NET open and build an architecture for the future that has as its foundation principles of openness and free flow.
The behaviour pattern is exactly the same tha happened with *Windows*. We had WindowsMenusIconsPointers, X Window, Lexidata’s Windows, DecWindows, OpenWindows, …etc, and naturally everyone referring openly to windows enviroments and windowing software.
GENERIC TERMS ARE NOT REGISTRABLE.
Now we have Cnet, Zdnet, and so on, all the pile of NETs or NET-something. With such a monopoly and predatory habits, you can see Microsft tactics coming again all the way with Microsoft .Net. They want people to simply say .NET alone, you already know why. EMBRACE, EXTEND, EXTINGUISH.
Microsoft .NET, there has to be other way.
Okay should I break them into 3 or 56 chunks?
Don’t be naive, microsoft wins every battle because they don’t play by the rules. Their competition has been stupid as well but in a rigged market you can’t win.
Ms won the desktop market by providing a really cheap alternetive to apple macs.
At the time macs cost way more than pcs. macs were better but business thinks bottom line.
Also the pc came from IBM and people at the time did not get fired for buying IBM.
MS won the office battle by being the first to provide a complete suite of office tools all in one big package. Before “ms office” you had to buy seperate programs from different companys.
MS also integrated windows and office together in a way that the competition could not do.
MS got a big share of the server market buy providing a cheap os(NT) compared to Unix that any one who had read “servers for dummies” could set up and admin. Again a technically lousy product wins because business thinks bottom line; Unix admins>expensive Unix/hardware>expensive, NT msces>dime a dozen>cheap, white boxes>cheap commodity.
MS data base success the same as server.
Over all MS won the battle by being ruthless in business, being damn lucky by having the right product at the right time, and understanding that business dorks will put up with crap if they think they are saving money and making the bottom line look good to their boss. MS also plays on the fear of computers that was around and still is. People don’t like having to employ and be dependent on an expensive guru. They are very attracted to the idea of “hey I can admin this NT server with these point and click wizards”, I can fire all those arrogant/expensive Unix admins.
On top of all that MS would do what ever it takes to win ever if that action was/is illegal thus they lost their anti-trust trial.
…the desktop market:
– By ilegally distributing in IBM PC clones the CP/M hack called QDOS and renamed MSDOS.
– And afterwards by ilegally copying the MAC GUI and turning it into a windowing system for DOS.
– And by convictedly hacking again essential applications like the most used compression program at the end of the eighties, the STACKER. Just like The Godfather, Microsoft wanted the Stacker for free. People don’t usually give away their property for free so Microsoft had no choice but to steal it: they called it `DoubleSpace`(MS-DOS 6.0). http://www.vaxxine.com/lawyers/articles/stac.html“>A NOW, THAT IS HOW MICROSOFT UNDERSTANDS INNOVATION!!!
– And by codeveloping with IBM what was to become WindowsNT after the known history betweem those partners. That is how Microsoft makes “cheap alternatives”.
Microsoft won the Office battle:
– By being the first to provide its MS-Office Professional (including Access) bundled for “***FREE***” with MS-Windows through OEM PC sellers, only to later have that same MS-Office for $599, upgrade $349. Did I hear anyone saying DUMPING???!!!
– By being a convicted illegal monopolist, primarily for OEMs abusive licenses that prevented them from selling PCs without MS-Windows or with a double booting scheme.
– By all the other well known predatory tactics, like those concerning Java and Netscape.
Microsoft is from its very beginning a Computing Mafia, some people pretend as it’s all an exageration, or that it doesn’t really matter, some people get tired of all this Microsoft “ranting”. I’ll get tired when Microsoft dissapears.
After reading John Perry Barlow response I found him to be scary as hell. He sounds like some one who could become the next uni-bomber. Does he live in some shack in the woods wearing a tinfoil hat? Yes he may have some good ideas but in many ways he is extreme 180 degrees to what he is against which is just as bad. He appears to be the “all corporations are evil big companies should be destroyed” type person. Yes some are evil, but many/most arn’t. Even though you might not like some company there are many things in the world that would probly never happen if there wasn’t a company behind it that could get it moving. If your talking about a technology yes its nice to have things be a open standard and such, but I think most would live with a closed one if it meant the other option was the technolgy was never created. Not many things get created without the intent of some sort of gain,(money normaly) by the creator. Wanting to make money is not evil. Yes there are somethings you can do in trying to make money that are evil.
Since he’s mostly right. Read carefully the article and what does he say about corporations ? That the root of their powers lies in the protection they get from the states by copyright laws, DMCA, and such.
I think MSFT did a wonderfull job with “commoditizing” the PC, but if they lose their protection from the law, like windowsXP using a closed network encryption protocol that samba devs cant reverse engineer since it would break DMCA for instance, then MSFT will be in great jeopardy.
Same goes for the media companies: Disney was entitled 70 more years of IP over the mickey mouse character in Y2K. Is Disney over the law ? Why is that a company can have “uber right” ?
In the USA you already have the infamous patents on code. In Europe it’s still in talks, but we’ll have it soon. We already have a ‘hate speech’ law in France btw. Imagine how big corps will not have a word for the dissidents being shut down due to ‘hate speech against gov officials’. Why wouldnt they talk about it ? Cause they are protected by the very laws of the gov.
Now you understand why John Barlow is damn right.
By the way, i am a libertarian, and I see evil in the ‘capitalism’ of Davos summit cause it’s just what Barlow opposes: collusion between big corps and gov.
Corps used to serve people through the market, now they use the laws to do just what govs do already: racket and mind control.