I always enjoy defining different generations based on the technologies they develop. Most recently, most of that definition has been about what computer technology we develop. My grandparents built ENIAC. My parents’ generation all were about IBM computers. Apple appeared as the definitive desktop between my parents’ and my generations. In this time, the internet was born and started taking shape. The key tool of HTML was created shortly afterwards, because nerds like making stuff look cool/like Star Wars. For my older brother’s generation, Windows became the dominate force, and that is what they developed from. My generation started on Macintoshes and moved to various Windows platforms. While on those systems, we started cracking the source codes behind those systems. We started going back to the roots of personal computers like the Apple 2 and started building our own computers. We also started developing our own software. We thought, ‘Hey. Wouldn’t it be cool to share this software with other programmers and see what they do with it? Oh look! There is pr0n on the internet!’ Taking our love of programming and the internet hand-in-hand (only with one hand though), they started sharing their programs with each other. We started shaping the computer world around us. That is just my personal opinion on the origins of the open source world.
This was the original starting point of this article. I was rocking out on Jonathan Coulton to pick up my mood while Dissidia was not doing actions I was inputting. I eventually got to the song Flickr. Check it out (Note: This song should be viewed and not heard or you are less from the experience):
I had read the notes on Flickr and found the reasons beautiful since they were inline with what Coulton was doing. All of the images used were under the Creative Commons license. Similarly, Coulton’s music is licensed under other CC licenses. Similar licenses are behind popular sites and services like Wikipedia, xkcd, DeviantART, Al Jazeera, and the White House. Such licenses determine the level of copyright protection on images and works shared via these services. The bare minimum requires attribution with various levels up to non-commecrial uses and stricter citation rules. Coulton’s music is licensed under non-commercial licenses, so people like myself who have legal copies can use the music for YouTube videos and the like as long as profit is not a motive, like if it were used in a commercial or movie or by another artist at a concert. This allows for easy and free distribution of images, videos, and other files with the general public.
As mentioned above, the White House has items licensed under CC. That is a pretty damn important thing. Obama is the first open source president. As many might recall, he had a scrap with his handlers about his Flickr accounts. From my understanding, that was resolved in his favor, as was his Blackberry issues. It has been one of Obama’s technology goals to make the US Government open source, from the White House down. As of a couple months ago, the only department in the executive branch that was not open source was State. Hilary was even pissed at the people running State for not even running Firefox. While I am not certain that Obama has made everyone switch to Linux, he did make the move to the more user-friendly and secure open source software for running the nation’s day-to-day business as well as updating computers that weren’t even Window 98 compliant.
One of the biggest achievements of Obama’s technology policies has been the implementation of Net Neutrality in the FCC. This had been a long time coming, and that what happened with our one-handed programmers that didn’t go to the Dark Side, aka ATT, Verizon, Time/Warner etc. Net Neutrality is like Jesus to true netizens. (Analogy being that it comes upon us and preaches goodness, then 7 years later, when Obama is gone, it will be sacrificed to corporate greed and then worshiped as a cult with an eventual holy city forming in the shape of the word Google in Mountain View, California. There is also the persecution in its time, but I’ll get to that soon.) Net Neutrality means that anyone with a legal internet connection should be allowed to access the internet, whole internet and nothing but the internet so help them God. (Imagine a stack of Bible when reading that last sentence.) In other words, ISPs cannot fuck you over: no caps on data transfer (Time/Warner, Comcast, ATT), no blocking access to sites unless user and site pay for the privilege to be carried on your lines (Time/Warner, ATT), no ‘pay-as-you-go’ internet (ATT, Comcast), or, all encapsulating, NO FUCKING THE CONSUMER! Okay. So Net Neutrality really means that ISPs can’t screw you in the rear, but the companies on the other side of the policy get their chance to take your money instead. The pro-Net Neutrality side is commonly championed by Google with many other major internet-based businesses on their side. The anti-Net Neutrality side is commonly championed by ATT and other ISPs known for raping their customers in the butt with sticks the size of an aircraft carrier. Good ISPs and VoIP services were also on the pro-Net Neutrality side since they would benefit from the policy. The first moves toward the current policy were when the FCC told Comcast that they could no longer have data transfer caps on their internet services. Imagine a cap of 500 MB of data transfer a month and when you go over the cap, the ISP charges you hundreds more for basic internet services. Oh. And that 500 MB in and out. This pic represents exactly that. That was what Comcast was doing. And ATT. And Time/Warner. And others. Thankfully, the courts and FCC said that those companies had to play fair. Shortly afterwards, Comcast started floating ideas for other ways to limit their users’ access to the internet. The FCC then came into Obama’s hands. Next ATT (or/and Apple, but more likely just ATT) denied Google Voice (more on why (most/all) Android phones >> Palm Pre >>>>>>>>>> iPhone later). That caused a shit storm of Biblical proportions. ATT is going to lose that one especially since Google is being the grown-up and keeping everything they do, good and bad, more in the public spotlight than ATT’s (and maybe Apple’s) bullshit and siding with the FCC in everything. Even their most damning admission of ‘yes, we blocked some numbers’ has a very logical and acceptable reason that comes out worse for ATT and other carriers than Google if you read it correctly (or the way I did). [Before we get much farther, I am writing this on a MacBook Pro, but I am a Google Borg, not a Mac Cultist.] The FCC then announced plans to implement Net Neutrality. Shortly before Net Neutrality took effect (which was only recently!), one of the evil ISPs, either Comcast or ATT or Time/Warner or all/some of them, said that pay-as-you-go internet was the future. You don’t have to be a heavily active netizen like myself to know that this would have caused the entire internet to switch to an ISP that didn’t force that pay-as-you-go shit down then up then back down again your throats. Unlimited monthly access is how it is going to be or there will be hell. The FCC then implemented Net Neutrality. We have not yet seen the full consequences of their action. DSL providers will raise rates since they also make money from phone service and VoIP is killing landlines. I’d say DSL user would be screwed, but they were dumb enough to get DSL in the first place. They knew they were getting an inferior product. Cable and FIOS users may also see a price increase since sites like Hulu and others that offer television and movies on demand are cutting into television’s profitability, but I wouldn’t think they would be as threatened since they are getting converts to VoIP and bundling services to better serve the consumer. We’ll just have to wait and see what comes from Net Neutrality. Senator John ‘Major League Fucktard’ McCain from Arizona has already shown his colors and moved to try to make Net Neutrality illegal, but he is going against Google. And Google is win while we all know from November 9th that McCain is pure fail.
The core of Net Neutrality comes from the ideas of open source and open internet. We want to share what we have created. Limiting access to product is the worst business practice and downright evil. The evil ISPs mentioned suffer from a form of ‘Let them eat cake’-ism that makes corporations evil and hated. They broke the system and refuse to fix it. Products like Windows and OS X, while not open source, still recognize when there is a problem with their product and try to fix it. That is the difference between 20th/21st century companies like Microsoft and Google and 19th century companies like ATT. The spreading of freely modifiable content is not really new. Back when the Apple 2 was the premier computing platform, 8″ floppies were the way that programs were spread from computer to computer and almost everything was user modded content. The first computer games really spread like this because gaming companies weren’t really in existence back then. Hell, there is not port for the original Pong game since it was a purely hardware-based game. When companies started getting in the computer gaming business, open source gaming was still at the core. Doom has countless mods that still exist on the internet. Even the internet was a pure open source product. The builders at CERN intended HTML to be universally distributed so that users could create their own sites. [Another discrepancy: phone companies - founded by business men, costs money to access and until recently they held a monopoly on communications with limited options; computer companies - founded by engineers and programmers, costs money for the hardware, optionally not for the software and many options designed to fit the user; the internet - created by scientists and given to the world for free until ISPs run via the phone companies screwed the user.] Open source products have spread to almost all corners of everyday life. Linux is the most talked about open source OS. Firefox and Chrome are the best browsers on the market and free to download. They also feature countless free apps to modify their services to your whim. GIMP is the poor man’s Adobe suite. Open Office is the open source Microsoft Office. I run Adium which is like the Firefox of IM programs. Almost all of the good Twitter apps are open source. GMod allows many popular games from Valve to be manipulated. You can play TF2 on modded levels on certain servers. Wikipedia is all user-generated content. This article was written in WordPress which is an open source blogging software. Up until iTunes (and WMP got its shit together) put them out of business, all of the best MP3 software was open source. VLC is my preferred video program, while other open source programs round out the mix. Best of all is a word known as Google.
Google is the god of open source. Google is trying to offer everything to everyone for free. Gmail, Wave, YouTube, Analytics, Chrome, Blogger, Picasa, Google Maps, Google Earth, Google Moon, Google Mars, Knol, Google Talk, Translate, 411, Books, and everything in Google Labs are all free for public use! Their phone OS Android is also open source. Seriously, when a company starts putting books free on the internet and actually get books donated to them for the project, that is some serious shit when it comes to sharing information with the world. They just launched a new update for Google Maps on Android that allows our Android 2.0 phone to act at a navigation system. I think it is called Google Navigation. Except for their search engine, it took time, but all of their projects gained a following. Even though some of their products aren’t #1, Flickr > Picasa for example, they still offer open access to everything they build. It is because Android is open source that the iPhone will one day become #2. Or more appropriately since there are many different Android phones and the Palm Pre, the iPhone will be lucky to be the #3 mobile device.
Before we get to the hero, let’s meet the villains.
The Zune is Microsoft’s answer to the iPod. Both are music and video players fighting in the long battle between Microsoft and Apple. But no one care about Zune, except my friend Pedro’s friend David. The iPod has the greater marketshare since it has been around longer and offers a wide array of products from the Nano to the iTouch. Other companies offer similar players with different features than you would receive, but they are not as big competitors given the ubiquity of the iPod. The iPhone was Apple’s answer to the Blackberry, the popular mobile device that can handle business as well as phone use. Blackberry is still number one, but the iPhone has put a dent in it’s domination. What helped the iPhone stand out was the array of apps, programs that would be run only on the iPhone. Since the apps include games, social networking tools, and useful gadgets from levels to calorie counters, the iPhone has taken up a place of extreme popularity. Sadly, it is also the biggest piece of bro technology, making most iPhone users come off as douches, to use the proper terminology. The iPhone was originally open only on ATT, until hacked, but that goes without saying, and they have horrible rate plans. Since everyone wanted an iPhone, they were stuck getting horrible plans just to have their fancy phone. It has been a long battle to get a mobile device to challenge the iPhone. Blackberry is still going strong. The Palm Pre is another great device. It has better hardware, but the software needs some catching up to properly challenge the iPhone. Then came the G1. That was the first big Android powered phone. It and Android had a few kinks to work out, but they were smoothed well enough for the myTouch to be released. That is a more iTouch version of the G1, meaning smaller and not as powerful. When compared to an iTouch, the myTouch is a better machine in the long run. Google, being such a magnanimous company, still developed apps for the iPhone, Palm Pre, and Blackberry while working on their own products for Android. This brings us to the saga of Google Voice.
Google Voice is an iPhone app that allows web-based phone calls to be made, similar to how Skype works. Note: Skype has an app for the iPhone, as does Vonage, a VoIP company. For some reason, Apple and/or ATT (more than likely it was just ATT) denied Google Voice. The most likely reason was because it would have crippled the iPhone’s market by letting users make the web-based calls without having to go through ATT. As mentioned above, this unleashed a Category 5 shit storm. The FCC stepped in and basically told Apple: WTF?! Apple said it was ATT. So the FCC went to them an said WTF?!? ATT blamed it back on Apple. Then they dropped their cards and said it was Google’s fault. Google, complying with the FCC, admitted that they do have some numbers blocked out of their system, but they would be the ones most impacting the use of Google Voice. Those numbers are the ones the phone companies love since they are out of their coverage zones and/or heavy users so that is where they would be making a ton of money. The number users Google blocks is still less than the number of users ATT is screwing with those high rates. It is seeming like ATT is constantly losing face to Google and the FCC. I guess it is hard to win when the government was initially on the side of the people you were screwing.
Now, the Droid is poised to become a major mobile device.
The Droid is the latest in a soon to be very long line of phones that will be powered by Android, the open source mobile phone OS. Their competitors are the iPhone, Palm Pre and Blackberry and since T-Mobile has the G1 and myTouch and Verizon is getting the Droid and HTC Hero, there will be other Android phones fighting each other. The key to the optimism about the Droid and other Android-based mobile devices is because Android is open source and therefore open for developers to modify the source (which actually lead to Google getting pissed as one developer) and to make apps. The other mobile devises are more closed about their code, which is why Apple and ATT can regulate their apps like they do.
Now, while I have been extolling the virtues of the open internet, I have been dodging the issue of hacks, torrents and P2P. I have been trying to stay on the legal side of Net Neutrality. In fact, Net Neutrality specifically states legal access to legal sites and legal file transfers. The reason I have been trying to avoid torrents and P2P is because they are commonly seen as an illegal activity. Sadly, that is not entirely true. There are just as many legal torrent sites as there are illegal sites. File sharing, P2P and torrents relate back to Net Neutrality because the evil ISPs are commonly viewed that way from the eyes of P2P and file sharers. The reason Comcast, Time/Warner, and ATT limited data transfer and want to enact pay-as-you-go internet is because of the massive data transfer that has to go on for P2P, torrents, and even gaming. They tend to be the highest users of the internet and use their unlimited access and freedom to access legal sites to the maximum. In the pic above, that 500 MB limit is not even 25% of a single anime series. Most of the heavy users can go though 500 MB of data transfer in a day. There have been countless evidence produced that proved that ‘pirated’ music actually leads to more music sells and more profits for the music industry. Best part is when they catch you. They will sue for thousands of dollars and spend millions to get that. What protects some sites is their location. File transfer sites in other countries may not have the same copyright laws as in the prosecuting countries. It is sort of like the phenomenon of going to Hong Kong or Korea and spend a couple bucks to buy enough DVDs to rival Netflix. This is a sort of battle that has been going on for a long time and across technologies. Were people arrested for making a mix tape? Were people fined for recording an episode of The Simpsons? Do record companies make people erase their iPods? There have been means of acquiring copyrighted material without purchase and spreading the material to others. VCRs, DVD (and now BRD) burners, tape decks, and now DVRs all are used for making copies of copyrighted material. Yes, current digital material has copy protection… until you buy or download any of many legal ripping and mounting technologies. File sharers don’t see what they are doing as a crime. The reasoning is usually such: thieves – they take the original; pirates – they make copies and sell it for profit; your average file sharer – one person buys the original and distributes free copies. While not quite the same as open source distribution, it is still the trade of free items. Most file sharers even delete their copies after acquiring a hardcopy. When thinking of this argument, I am reminded of the television and movie industry attacking the VCR for making recordings off the television. There was a House Panel convened on the subject. One of the winning arguments came from Mr Fred Rogers. Mr Rogers made it legal to record TV shows, once more proving that Mr Rogers >>> Chuck Norris. Napster got what what was coming to it. Pirate Bay was screwed. And my sources will remain anonymous. Eventually, the file sharers will win, but we will have to do it on our own. If we had a Mr Rogers, we could win. Hell. If Mr Rogers was still alive, we’d at least have someone safe to go to still.
I also briefly mentioned hacks. While I am not entirely pro-hacks, I do agree that they are illegal but sometimes needed. Most hacks I am referring to are ways of getting around DRM or open up blocked content. I don’t like how games like Spore had only a limited number of installs before it would lock up, and you would need another copy of the game. Fortunately, many companies learned form the massive backlash from Spore to make their games DRM free. Even iTune moved that direction, allowing your downloads in the iTunes Store to be transferred more easily. Devices like Homebrew Channel for the Wii or the R4 for the DS or Action Replays for most systems are purchasable items that allow customization and cheats to added to your games. The R4 allow allows for ports of games to saved on a memory card, thus not requiring you to buy games. My only interest in an R4 is for games I would not normally buy but since I don’t have one yet, I never will. While I am not really against cheating devises and the like (especially now that Miyamoto has them built into the games. Waiting for New Super Mario Bros Wii to try that out.), I believe you have to have some element of legality if you ever want service. Sure, it may blow to spend US$2k on a legal copy of the Adobe Suite, but it is easier to type ‘The GIMP’ into Google than having to find a good cracked version and not get busted.
Back from our digression, I want to talk about another important part of the modern internet: Universal Broadband. This is surprisingly liked by both big business supporters and freedom-loving netizens alike. Universal Broadband is exactly what it sounds like: access to unlimited broadband internet. Businesses love it since ISPs gain more customers, websites gain more customers, and maintenance crews gain infrastructure to get payed to build and repair. Netizens love it since it means there is high-speed internet access no matter where you go. Universal Broadband may also be linked to universal wifi. As of now, Universal Broadband should be the more important goal. (Wifi access is easy to get since good routers are cheap and most of the non-tech oriented (read: anyone over 50) might not have password protection on their routers.) Currently, the infrastructure in most industrial countries is slowly moving towards Universal Broadband. Sadly, the task tends to fall to ISPs and the process is slow. Government intervention does cause the process to move forward, and most recent presidents had a goal of moving towards Universal Broadband. Countries like Japan, Korea and Taiwan already provide such services, allowing their netizens to have cheap, high-quality, high-speed internet access.
Universal Broadband, Net Neutrality and Open Source software are all attempts at creating a more open and free society than we have now. While all of the ideas can be used by certain companies to increase their profits, that is not anything new or unexpected. Free to download programs that are open to modification gives users the freedom to build their computers as they see fit. The ability to freely access the majority of the internet grants users access to almost all of the available knowledge of the world. The transposing of printed media to digital allows the information to flow more freely and readily. Digital galleries share more art than an entire nation’s worth of museums. For those who live in a digital age, the freedom to use and shape the medium is a freedom worth fighting for. Many of those in the fight are part of the first gamer generations. We have been immersed in interactive entertainment, interactive art, all our lives. We are most adapted for this growing digital freedom. While we are not the ones in power yet, our influence has been heard and is growing. The efforts for Universal Broadband have helped spread high-speed internet to many areas in a nation as large as America. With ongoing work in this effort, the whole nation would have access to high-speed internet, like in Japan or Korea. Net Neutrality has lead to more consumer protections while widening consumer bases. The full scope of Net Neutrality’s effects have yet to be seen, but the hope for it’s benefits outweigh the risks. I really cannot recap why Open Source is better than Closed Source other than once again pointing out the battle between Google and Apple in the mobile device market, or the battle between Google and whichever company is doing the closed door developments that Google Labs are competing against openly, or the battle with Firefox being the better of the major browsers currently and with Chrome and Opera still being better choices than Internet Explorer and Safari, or the fact that there are companies out there that are producing programs and distributing them for little or no money that developers and users alike are free to modify as they see fit. These are three issues that all people should know and support. They are better than the alternative where companies are allowed to rape their customers with bogus ToS and DRM agreements or service contracts that raise prices without warning in the health insurance companies are allowed to do. If Americans and others in the world truly value freedom, these are three of the causes for and of freedom that are created by and will be faced in the 21st century, and they will succeed.
This work by Elliot James Hayter is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.
Permissions beyond the scope of this license may be available at Legal.
Tags: Al Jazeera, Android, Chrome, Creative Commons, DeviantArt, Firefox, Flickr, Google, Linux, Net Neutrality, Open Source, Wikipedia, xkcd
And while I can’t exactly get IE to work (*uses 
