Check out this article by Daniel at binaryorganic: socialized censorship: a web 2.0 revolution
I was floored by this realization. This guy is onto something. He makes the analogy that the transition from web 1.0 to 2.0 was like the transition from the sitcom to reality TV, and I think he’s absolutely right. With all the talk about user control, it isn’t the content that’s been decentralized at all; it’s the workload. If the content were really in the hands of the users, a web 2.0 site would “spin out of control” very rapidly. I have to take issue, though, with his idea of “out of control.” If a site is only out of control because other people insist on enforcing unenforceable intellectual property laws (ala Digg with the HD-DVD thing) then I’ve got no problem with it. I believe less and less in intellectual property solely because enforcing it brings us into the realm of thoughtcrime.
The free spread of an idea only ever helps humanity. Did the first generations of Mankind need to form regulatory committees to judge who had the right to fashion spears? Does the exact proportion of sulfur, charcoal and postassium nitrate needed to make gunpowder still belong to the estate of some uknown Chinaman? Who owns fire? Yes, the first one to discover a new idea will profit by being the first one to have it, and it’s right and natural for that to happen. Forging new ideas is a kind of intellectual homesteading. The first ones there do get the benefit of exclusive ownership for a time. But only for a time. Ideas have infinite reproducability — they are not stolen, only duplicated. And when someone duplicates them who is willing to give it away, then the party’s over. Time to go be productive and think of something new, or find a way to prosper in the new environment. To feel wronged when someone else discovers or reinvents your particular wheel only comes out of the wishful thinking that you could or should have your homestead forever. Why do you suppose patent law was originally written with a time limit? The genie can stay in the bottle only for so long. If someone took your professional photos off Flickr, maybe you should have watermarked them. It’s your own fault you gave them away. It’s no skin off your nose anyway; the pirates apparently found buyers you couldn’t find, and that’s a contribution they’ve made to the community, a contribution just as annoying but nevertheless valuable as those middlemen who sell you stocks.
As for the other ways a Web 2.0 apparatus could “spin out of control,” such as defamation, libel/slander, or subversive content, there’s room on the infinite capacity of the Web for setting the record straight, and people can choose to believe the truth or the bull in whatever proportions they please, just as they always have.
Web 2.0 forum providers, such as the purveyors of Digg, photobucket, and even evil Rupert Murdoch with his ownership of MySpace, do have the right to do with their property (the website and the bits thereon) as they see fit. Web 2.0 often does redistribute the workload under the guise of democratized control — just like communism or reality TV — but that doesn’t make it wrong. It just means we’re not free yet of the subtle means of crowd control the likes of which have already been perfected on TV.
But at least on the Internet, we can warn each other about it. For now, anyway.
