Cyberculture:The Monopoly of Information Debate.
It is self evident that conventional socio-economic debates common in other media have a somewhat limited application in attempting to provide a critical analysis of the Net and the Web. The Internet is just too complex and too dispersed globally to be dominated by a limited portion of the corporate sector in the same way as the press and television increasingly appear to be. The physical infrastructure has then no single owner and if this is the case corporate domination of the content of the Web is impossible.
Whilst it would seem that the assertions above are incontrovertible, the reality for the involvement of transnationals in the Net may in the long run be much closer to their domination of other media than would appear.
At the moment the Web is open to all (who can afford it!) built as it is of an uncontrolled, unbelievably complex electronic infrastructure dispersed across the globe, Web content is therefore far more diverse that other media. However as you already know media content is also diverse. Subversive content is possible in conventional media. In the UK however there is a myriad of bodies that monitor and constrain the content of press and broadcasting, so numerous that they are generally known by acronym- ASA, BCC, BSC, & PCC. (Hutcinson p385). These institutions represent only part of the content control that British broadcasting is subject to, and generally concern themselves with issues of "taste and decency". Informal content control and self censorship- more insidious and pernicious than formal control does characterise a large part of the UK media's output. This is perhaps most obvious in the media representations of conflict, and the parameters that are set on the "political".
Recent expansion in the technology of television especially has seen much more diverse representations than had been possible. What makes the Web more diverse is of course the lack economic constraints. This is the key to the current chaotic state of the Web. Resources not available to the majority are needed to make a film, published written work, or television programme, and even if it is still possible to produce such artifacts with creativity and even sometimes a subversive viewpoint, the means required to disseminate such material is control either by Governments or Trans National corporations.
What is disturbing most recently in relation to the Web- the only truly open global communications -is attempts by these same organisations to control the content of the Web.
Control has so far evaded the best efforts of most governments and other organisation, but there are exceptions. In Singapore for example - one the most heavily "wired" places in the World compulsory filtering takes place to prevent "unsuitable" material being accessed by end users. The US Government is currently renewing its efforts to control content by legislation at both the National and State levels.
Just as disturbing is the persistence with which government and other institutions can monitor and do communications via the Internet. In built into Microsoft's Internet Explorer and to the newer chips from Intel are software and Hardware devices which communicate in the background -that is without the users knowledge- to and from both organisations. The rationale for this system is to provide the customer with better service overall from the organisations by for example, upgrades and debug components being added to the users system without any action being taken by them.
However it seems to be taken for granted that individuals have no objection to knowledge of their systems being passed back and forth, without their explicit consent . It has also been recently been admitted that the security services in Britain, and other Western Nations both monitor and share information gleaned from the infrastructure by the use of very sophisticated techniques. To verify this assertion I suggest you look up the "ECHELON" project on a good search engine. Try "Google" here.
By using high speed searches based on listed keywords millions of words of text and images are examined rapidly and where matches occur the communication is examined more detail. The US and the UK have the heaviest involvement in this area of hidden surveillance of their respective populations. Indeed the insecurity of the Web makes a major contribution to organisations ability to monitor the private communications of individual.
Domination of content continues apace with major media corporations expanding onto the Web, for commercial as well as public relations reasons. Corporate domination is also becoming more likely with the near monopoly position of the companies above of the global business and home PC hardware and software markets. Control of browser software could, at least in theory, bring about control of content with access to some sites and addresses automatically blocked by the browser or search engine.
Conversely as the Irish Government found to it's cost because the Net is global control is difficult without international co-operation and legislation. By "shadowing" site content to different servers in different legal jurisdictions political activisists, investigative journalists, liars and pornographers can avoid both prosecution in their own counry and continue to have their material freely available on the Web.
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