Top Threats to the Internet

In recognizing "You" as the 2006 Person of the Year, Time said:

It's about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.

The key words are "power" and "change".

What led to the power shift? Time knows:

The tool that makes this possible is the World Wide Web. Not the Web that Tim Berners-Lee hacked together (15 years ago, according to Wikipedia) as a way for scientists to share research. It's not even the overhyped dotcom Web of the late 1990s. The new Web is a very different thing. It's a tool for bringing together the small contributions of millions of people and making them matter. Silicon Valley consultants call it Web 2.0, as if it were a new version of some old software. But it's really a revolution.

"It's really a revolution."

Right.

In a revolution, the entrenched few do not surrender control to the barricade-storming many without a fight, and the battlefield is crisply catalogued in Wired's "Top Internet Threats": 

• Warrantless Government Monitoring


• Private Censorship


• Government Censorship


• Deep Packet Inspection


• ISP Tiered Pricing


• Recording Industry Association of America Proposes "Three-Strikes" Policy


• Digital Millennium Copyright Act Abuses

Each of these (see the Wired article for details) captures a distinct power struggle between a vested interest -- government, network owners, the content community -- and the public.

That is, a power struggle between the vested interests and you.

Now, the reason they're vested interests is because they've always won these battles in the past, and Wired lists seven opportunities for them to do it again. Will it be different today? It's really up to you.

Maybe it's Time.

Steve

This message reflects the opinions of the author, and not necessarily those of EDUCAUSE or its members.