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Internet in Evolution: The Medianet

·7 mins

I wrote this essay in late August 2001 as the start of a book proposal. Any traction it was likely to get was obliterated by the events of 9/11. But it is still one of the most heavily linked things I’ve ever written, so I’m reposting it without comments or updates.

In the long run, we must find mechanisms that will separate the interests of Falun Gong members from those of pedophiles. In the absence of such mechanisms their interests (and our interests) are identical.

— Dana Blankenhorn, A-Clue.Com

Medianet #

I use the term Medianet to encompass all media content created by both professional and amateur content creators, the broadband network that transports that content, and the devices attached to the network to publish and consume that content.

I will outline a rough feature set of the ideal Medianet from the point of view of the three major entities with vested interests in its evolution: the consumer, the publisher, and the government.

While there is much commonality of interests between the three entities (fast, cheap, always available) there are also some fundamental conflicts that must be resolved. Scenarios based on potential resolution of these conflicts are both interesting and enlightening, and I believe, a rich ground for strategic planning.

The Ideal Consumer Medianet #

The ideal consumer Medianet must be able to:

  1. Allow real-time access to any media content instantaneously
  2. Automatically translate between different content formats (audio is audio, regardless of publisher and/or streaming technology)
  3. Allow user creation and translation of any content type (consumers must be able to translate content they own or create from DVD to VHS, to QuickTime and back)
  4. Have fixed cost (Americans just don’t like variable pricing)
  5. Allow an active used-content marketplace

Generally speaking, government concerns and corporate intellectual property concerns have been the only real impediments to the implementation of features that would make the ideal consumer Medianet. The technology hurdles are far from insurmountable.

The Ideal Publisher Medianet #

In addition to instantaneous content availability, the ideal publisher Medianet must be able to:

  1. Protect the rights of the original content publisher
  2. Track consumer usage
  3. Allow great flexibility on the part of the publisher to control pricing and usage of content by consumers — the publisher should be able to give content away, charge per usage, allow a fixed number of viewings, and allow or disallow content resale
  4. Allow the publisher to differentiate offerings based on technology as well as content, thus adding a new area of competition and locking in customers
  5. Allow the publisher to create geographic region-specific content and pricing

Unsurprisingly, media companies have had no real success in creating content platforms that cater to their needs instead of the needs of the consumer. I would argue that the failure of Divx vs. DVDs is directly attributable to favoring publishing companies’ interests over consumers’. SDMI will continue to flounder because the various content publishing companies have different agendas for business models and feature sets.

Any medium whose distribution system disallows equal access to content from both amateur and professional publishers won’t work in a broadband world. Defining a platform by aggregation of content type (audio, video, etc.) will work. Defining a platform through the aggregation of content by publisher will not. Though it seems obvious: content publishers must compete on content, not platform.

The Ideal Government Medianet #

From a government point of view the ideal Medianet must:

  1. Disallow anonymous content
  2. Track all content exchanges
  3. Allow monitoring at any point in the network
  4. Allow content decryption on demand in real-time
  5. Archive all content exchanges

I believe the government’s needs are the hardest to logically justify, as arguably there is no such thing as criminally illegal content — there is no pedophilic content without child abuse, conspiracy to commit terrorism has nothing to do with the channel of information exchange, and violation of intellectual property is a civil issue, not a criminal one. That doesn’t mean that government will stop trying, but it does mean that government needs must be couched in terms of enabling either business (copyright violations and the DMCA) or consumer needs (privacy), or couched in terms of a threat to the state (terrorism), to succeed in overriding either consumer or corporate needs.

Which Master Will Be Served? #

We could try to be crisper about the ideal features, but the point is already obvious: many of these “features” are fundamentally in conflict. In fact, all features differentiating the Medianet from raw broadband IP networks are areas of contention between government, content producers and consumers. However, if the Medianet is ever to reach fruition through the evolution of the Internet these conflicts must be resolved. It is my opinion that the consumer actually holds the most power, for a variety of reasons.

Fragmentation of government interests: Pressures against the consumer-focused Medianet are different internationally. Consumer privacy against corporate intrusion is better protected in the European Union, while consumer privacy against government intrusion is better protected in the United States.

Least common denominator content is not compelling: Countries that choose to insulate themselves from the Medianet through filtering or tightly tracked usage licensing and monitoring will be forced to create local implementations — allowing only local content creators and licensed companies to distribute content, decreasing choice for consumers and increasing cost for producers.

Any great deviation from the ideal consumer Medianet encourages widespread disregard for the law: The ease with which laws may be broken and the lack of sophistication on the part of law enforcement has made the risk of technology crimes very low, as the growth of website defacement and virus creation clearly shows.

Media content is not considered property: Civil disobedience and consumer disregard for corporate intellectual property may smack of triviality, but there is a real groundswell against the degree of corporate control of international politics in the first world. Consumers in developing nations cannot afford to pay licensing costs for Medianet content and applications from corporate sources, and their governments do not have sufficient funds to protect corporate interests.

Technology Influences #

Some thoughts about factors influencing the evolution towards the Medianet:

A general-purpose PC with a DSL connection comprises the client side of a fully functional Medianet platform, but is terribly lacking in ease of use, ease of integration, stability, and breadth of available content.

Closed platform vs. open platform: Computers are inherently general-purpose devices, able to be reconfigured without architectural changes — a Pentium with a network card can be a radio receiver or a radio station, an email client or an email server, a server, a router, or a packet encrypter and relay. Consumer devices are inherently single-purpose: slight changes of function require multiple generations of hardware and content updates (stereo AM radio, digital cellular).

General-purpose content applications and open source: Open-source development is most powerful in the creation of broad-use applications where many developers have overlapping interests, and least powerful in the creation of vertical applications — there will never be an open-source hospital billing system. All of the content publisher and consumer features listed above are broad-use application features. All of the government features listed are abhorrent to at least a sizable number of open-source developers. And if an immature, innovative company is destroyed while still privately held, it is increasingly likely that its source code will be released as open-source as part of its death.

Governmental reactions to internet openness: It is not inconceivable that the FTC and FCC could require all routers to be licensed and only pass through packets sent from other licensed routers. As it was then described and configured, the FBI’s Carnivore software was architecturally capable of “turning off the internet.” Meanwhile, the ease of use and low cost of 802.11 (WiFi) networks was allowing the rapid evolution of a peer-to-peer encrypted internet backchannel that is impervious to government intervention without draconian measures.