Today’s news all seems to be about control over the Internet, first we have the UN ITU, who think that they should have more control over tasks normally handled by ICANN, IETF and the WWWC. To me this seems to be the usual anti-US thing, take something that isn’t broken, and shake it up by handing it to an untested and untried body that is outside the current US control.
Next we have the usual Microsoft verses open standards for Web services. The short of this article, is that you either tie yourself entirely to Microsoft and pay them lots of money, or you walk the slightly harder but significantly cheaper (at least in terms of license costs) course of open standards and interoperability.
Lastly, is the ongoing battle between Movie and Music heavyweights and the technologists. The movie and music big wigs were convinced the VCR was the end of their cash cow, in the end it turned out to be a massive money earner for them. They were also wrong about broadcast music and tape recorders killing record sales. In fact it is probably safe to say they have been convincingly wrong about every prediction of their doom at the hands of new technology since the phono player first came out. And these guys now want us to believe them in their current rantings (and litigation) that P2P and other file sharing methods are going to seriously hurt Hollywood and the music industry? I’m guessing that certain types of people just can’t handle and grow with change.
