Estratti di un interessante discussione su Nettime list
From: "geert" <geert@xs4all.nl>
To: "nettime-l" <nettime-l@bbs.thing.net>
Subject: <nettime> The Economist: The Internet sells its soul
Date: Wed, 17 Apr 2002 12:06:49 +1000
(Is the commercial doom right? Perhaps not. The tendency described in the
article below has always existed and could even be traced back to 1993.
Still, there are concrete measures of certain firms taken, such as Yahoo!,
which now seriously start to piss off users. I would like to call on
everyone here to start to withdraw from Yahoo!, especially those who have
lists running there. The adds underneath the each posting are becoming
really huge, much bigger then most of the postings. A few lists that I
know have recently take the courageous step to move their database to
indepedendent servers. That's great. The issue often is that list owners
often do not know reliable servers they can trust which could host their
list. But the point is: there are so many! Maybe we post a list of
servers, ready to receive former Yahoo! groups and make a wider public
announcement, showing that there are viable alternatives to Yahoo! All the
best, Geert)
---
The Internet sells its soul
Apr 16th 2002
>From The Economist Global Agenda
http://www.economist.com/agenda/displayStory.cfm?story_id=1085967
A new hard-nosed commercialism is spreading over the Internet. Users are
increasingly being asked to pay for information and services, while
advertising is becoming more intrusive. The backlash has already begun
WHEN times are tough, commercial realities bite hard. Internet users are
increasingly being asked to pay for information, music and other services.
Advertisers, too, have grown more demanding. As a result, the Internet is
being transformed from a vast repository of mostly free content into a
commercial cauldron where almost everything is for sale. Gone are the days
of static banner ads tucked quietly away in the corner of a website. Now
ads leap out from all over the place, obliterating the web page or lurking
below a browser window ready to pounce when it is closed. Even Internet
search terms are up for sale as advertisers bid to have their sites appear
at the top of search-engine listings. As if to confirm the trend, Yahoo!
has just told its millions of users that its revised privacy rules will
now allow it to exploit users' personal information to market its own and
business partners' products and services unless users take the trouble to
opt out by ticking a long list of "preferences".
In retrospect, more aggressive commercialisation of the Internet seemed
bound to happen. As the thousands of dotcoms that have already gone to the
wall discovered, making money on the Internet is not easy-especially from
advertising. Yahoo! might be one of the biggest Internet portals with more
than 230m users, but it is now desperately trying to reduce its reliance
on ad revenues by providing new paid-for services and content. Last week,
the firm posted its fifth consecutive quarterly loss. If users do not go
to a special site in the next 60 days to change their "preferences", they
are likely to be barraged by e-mails, telephone calls and other
direct-marketing material.
Yahoo! says that its sales pitches will be restrained: it plans to send
e-mails and make calls on target groups of users on behalf of advertisers.
But other portals have already gone further and are renting out their
customer lists directly to advertisers. As Internet companies try to wring
more revenue out of their operations, such business strategies are
becoming more attractive. This has handed advertisers a bigger bargaining
chip, which has resulted in ads becoming more intrusive. One of the most
popular new forms of Internet advertising are "pop-up" ads which appear on
the front of a web page whenever it is opened. To close them, users have
to click in the correct place. But that can be hard-the pop-up ad for one
major car producer dashes off across the screen as soon as a mouse-pointer
comes near it.
A more subtle version is "pop-under" advertising. Here the ads appear
behind the browser, waiting for the user to close their browser before
bursting forth. There are also many variations, such as "pop-over" ads
which can cover the entire screen; pop-ups which delay their appearance
until the user has spent a certain period of time looking at the site, and
all sorts of animated ads, some with audio and video files which play
without request. A more menacing variety are ads which attempt to "hijack"
a browser and repeatedly direct it to a specific site, or automatically
try to download a promotional file. Some of these techniques were
pioneered by pornographic sites. Now they are becoming mainstream.
This new flood of advertising is beginning to irritate many users. But the
managers of websites argue that, with advertising revenue so hard to come
by, they have little choice. And yet, enraged customers are not in
anyone's interest. So some companies are trying to strike a balance
between grabbing the attention of users, and infuriating them. For
instance, Orbitz, a Chicago-based travel site, tries to set a limit on its
pop-under ads so that users only see them once a day on the sites where
they appear.
A new business is also growing up to provide software that blocks Internet
ads. A program called "Smasher", for instance, claims to stop pop-up ads
and remove from PCs the "cookies" which advertisers and websites plant on
to a user's machine in order to monitor the use of their ads. The cookie
works like a small electronic name-tag. Each time a surfer visits a site
or clicks on an ad, the cookie identifies that person as having visited
the site before or as a newcomer. They can also be used to track what
pages a user visits and any data entered. Such information can be
aggregated into huge direct-marketing databases, creating a composite
profile of an individual web-surfer's habits, often without their
knowledge.
If the Internet has a soul, it is the vast pool of information which
people can explore, usually using one of the web's many free search
engines. Now even search engines have become vehicles for marketing
products and gathering information on individual surfers. Someone using
the search term "digital cameras" to search the Internet, for instance, is
probably interested in photography and may be on a shopping expedition.
Many search-engine sites are now auctioning such search terms. The more
money companies are prepared to pay, the higher their websites will appear
in the results.
The pioneer of paid listings is Overture, a Californian firm which has
built a profitable business from a string of partnerships in which its
search results appear on sites such as AltaVista, America Online and
Yahoo!. These paid-for results are sometimes identified as "sponsored
sites" or "featured sites". An advertiser bids an amount which they are
prepared to pay each time a customer clicks on their listing. Those that
bid the most appear closest to the top. Advertisers are presently paying
around 60 cents to get towards the top of the listing for "digital
cameras".
The idea behind paid listings is rapidly spreading. Overture, however, is
now suing Google, one of the Internet's most popular search engines,
alleging that Google's own recently-launched system for auctioning
keywords infringes an Overture patent. Google denies this.
While the Internet's growing commercialisation is unlikely to slow down
any time soon, the most effective strategies and business models are still
far from clear. Aggressive, in-your-face advertising seems to be working,
at least according to many advertisers. They say that their "click-through
rates"-the percentage of visitors to a website who click on an ad-is
greatly increased by the use of pop-ups. One music site claims 15% of
visitors click on its pop-up ads, compared with just 0.3% who click on
stationary banner ads. Other sites claim big increases too. And yet many
people may be clicking on these ads accidentally as they desperately try
to get rid of them. And some sites have become virtually unviewable
because of the barrage of advertising directed at anyone who visits. A
user backlash seems inevitable. But if users do not want to be hounded and
harrassed by advertising, they may have to consider something which most
have been loth to do-paying subscriptions for their favourite sites, just
as they do for newspapers, magazines or cable-TV stations. The Internet
may be a mould-breaking new medium but, like all the media that came
before it, someone has to pay for it, and that usually means, one way or
another, users.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Matthias Leisi <matthias@astrum.ch>
To: nettime-l@bbs.thing.net
Subject: Re: <nettime> The Economist: The Internet sells its soul
> list. But the point is: there are so many! Maybe we post a list of
> servers, ready to receive former Yahoo! groups and make a wider public
> announcement, showing that there are viable alternatives to Yahoo! All the
> best, Geert)
I offer lists at http://lists.astrum.ch/ as long as they meet
a few criteria:
* Non commercial
* No high-volume lists
* No guarantee on availability etc.
* I reserve the right to end the service with due notice
* Strict no-spam-policy
People wishing to set up a list should contact me by mail
(matthias@astrum.ch) - and I'll promise to provide an english text for the
website mentioned above ;)
The lists are running under Mailman with the standard Mailman web interface.
Matthias
----------------------------------------------------------------------
From: Francis Hwang <sera@fhwang.net>
Subject: Re: <nettime> The Economist: The Internet sells its soul
Sender: nettime-l-request@bbs.thing.net
I love all this "The internet sells out" talk. As if it were ever
about something besides profit? Once upon a time, companies believed
that they could give you stuff for free, but there was always a
profit motive behind that. Maybe they thought your demographic info
would be useful to other companies. Maybe they thought they could
sell you digital cameras. Whatever the case, the profit motive was
always there. It's not like the internet used to be this grand place
full of peace and free love and great LSD. Sure, we went to the
dotcom parties and we drank our free drinks, and it was fun while it
lasted, but who was sponsoring the whole thing?
Yes, web pages are getting more obtrusive with their ads. First of
all, there are tons of products that block this, including Mozilla,
which AOL will be using as their main browser in the near future.
But we would be sorely mistaken if we took "the internet" to be
synonymous with "the web". Think of all the interesting technologies
that gained prominence in the last few years -- instant-messenging
(not new, but newly discovered by non-geeks), Everquest, Napster and
all its p2p children. None of those are web sites. They are services
that do what people want them to do.
Just like email. Last year my mother started using email, with the
help of my youngest brother. Keep in mind: She's a 50-something
Korean immigrant who distrusts ATMs and prefers often to wash dishes
by hand. Now I get these cute missives from time to time, talking
about family trips or the painting she's doing from time-to-time.
Email's old news, I know, I know. Yet the fact that my mom has an AOL
account makes my life immeasurably better than the fact that anything
that Yahoo or Amazon has ever done. The fact of the matter is that
people want to talk to other people, not to corporations. And when
dot-coms can't figure out what to do about that, then they go
bankrupt.
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Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2002 02:07:16 -0400
From: t byfield <tbyfield@panix.com>
To: nettime-l@bbs.thing.net
Subject: Re: <nettime> The Economist: The Internet sells its soul
Sender: nettime-l-request@bbs.thing.net
Precedence: bulk
Reply-To: t byfield <tbyfield@panix.com>
Status: O
geert@xs4all.nl (Wed 04/17/02 at 12:06 PM +1000):
> <...> A few lists that I know have recently take the courageous step to move
> their database to indepedendent servers. <...>
it's a strange day when the word 'courageous' has become (at best) so
devoid of meaning or (at worst) so hypeside-down that it's used to de-
scribe moving a list from a corporate server provided 'for free' (i.e.,
to leverage content and/or subscribers in some way) to a service (*not*
'server': as i've told you for years, servers hence services are LABOR)
that's less or not at all interested in regarding specific social ex-
changes as generic 'content' assets to be mined and/or sold.
moving a list is a major pain in the ass, which involves a LOT of work.
i know: i helped move nettime twice. we still haven't sorted out all
the details of the various DB transitions from desk.nl/nettime.org to
material.net to thing.net/amsterdam.nettime.org: instead of redirected
links and queries we have a default nettime-* search/archive page. but
we did succeed in other ways: keeping the list running continuously,
diversifying archives, avoiding implicit or explicit indebtedness to
any single host, and so on.
in starting a list, the 'owner' has a choice: either take the lazily
uncritical path of alleged convenience and, in effect, treat the en-
terprise as the equivalent of buying big-name mayonnaise at the near-
est hypermarket; or take a more considered path which involves looking
into options where the goals--reliability, trust, low cost, etc--often
require practical support instead of alienated presumptions that could
be (and are) equally accurately described as 'brand loyalty.' but, as
we saw with the nano-outcries about 'privacy' and 'intellectual prop-
erty rights' following the M&As of various commercial list maintainers
(topica, egroups, onelist, etc--blast from the past, eh?), that 'con-
venience'--very predictably--was really only a way of deferring *some*
kind of payment.
your heroic discourse misses the point in a way that can only be de-
scribed as precise. for those who assumed that the dotcom explosion
would go on forever it must have made sense to assume that it didn't
matter which host would run a list: it was a postpolititical choice in
which the ultimate fate of a collective effort could only ever be de-
termined by 'the market.' certainly, some people explicitly thought
that; but many more merely made the same choices without ever thinking
about it. in a way, i'm inclined to give more credit to the ideologues
than to those who merely drifted along: at least the ideologues acted
on their convictions.
it's tempting to contrast those examples with our own decision to move
nettime to The Thing, a choice that was driven partly by a lack of vi-
able alternatives and partly by an active desire to support TT. as it
turns out, it was an excellent choice because TT's support for nettime
(as for others: etoy and rtmark are notable examples) has been uncondi-
tional: very old-skewl, you could say. but the problem with drawing a
contrast like this is that doing so inverts the issue at hand: moving
nettime to TT was just a *normal*, sensible, utterly banal, and obvious
choice because it affirmed some of the basic values that have animated
this list. the people who set up lists on 'free' commercial services
are the ones behaved in a very exotic way: if anything, *they* were the
'courageous' pioneers of fucked-up 90s 'cyberspace' discourse and fut-
uristic utopianism. i guess it's unfortunate that these people are now
beginning to confront the rupture that separates their traditional as-
sumptions about sociability, OT1H, and their bleeding-edge experiment-
alism, OT0H. oh well.
as i said, to describe their actions under the circumstances as 'cour-
ageous' *precisely* misses the point: their lazy and uncritical faith
when they set up their lists on topica, egroups, onelist, and yahoo--
*that* was 'courageous' in the finest sense, i.e., they had no fucking
clue that what they were doing was in fact courageous. but now that
they need to explore traditional forms of social relations--friends,
businesses, etc--to find out how to save their efforts, what they are
doing is the *precise* opposite of courage; instead, it's the conser-
vative fear borne of 'investments' of care and effort will be wasted.
they're coming home from their way and becoming home-owners who are
worried about their property.
> <...> The issue often is that list owners often do not know reliable servers
> they can trust which could host their list. But the point is: there are so
> many! Maybe we post a list of servers, ready to receive former
Yahoo! groups
> and make a wider public announcement, showing that there are viable
> alternatives to Yahoo! <...>
some might think that there are 'so many' that they're too numerous
for you to list, but i don't believe that at all. if you consider
multiplier and network effects, there is no greater service that you
could provide right now than to list those allegedly numerous servers.
but, again, you miss the point very precisely: they may be legion, as
you suggest, but you could never find them. they're not just a cheap
negation/inversion of yahoo etc; instead, they are favors exchanged
and relationships established between cronies, constituencies, and cli-
ents. the people who need them have to find them.
there are some services--hosts as well as software--that could fulfill
this role, but it's not for me (or you) to name them and thereby volun-
teer their labor 'for free.' if they want to promote themselves as al-
ternatives, that's their business--or the the business of those who need
them to find them. TANSTAAFL.
cheers,
t
-
"The more thoroughly they bore themselves, the more potent the medium of
diversion they offer others, also when the boredom reaches its maximum,
since they either die of boredom (the passive category) or shoot them-
selves out of curiosity (the active category)." --Kierkegaard
----------------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2002 06:47:03 -0400
To: nettime-l@bbs.thing.net
From: Bram Dov Abramson <bda@bazu.org>
Subject: <nettime> Re: The Economist: The Internet sells its soul
sera@fhwang.net:
>I love all this "The internet sells out" talk. As if it were ever
>about something besides profit?
Yes, it was certainly ever about something besides profit. In fact,
it was once heavily subsidised, highly unprofitable, highly
undesigned for profitability, and generally not part of the
commercial sphere.
Nor was the Internet very widely used at all.
The transformation of what was then into what is now, and the
investment which has fuelled that process, is kind of the point, and
kind of what makes the Internet so full of possibilities,
contradictions, etc.
Is history really disappearing this fast?
cheers
Bram
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Date: Fri, 19 Apr 2002 11:50:13 -0500
To: nettime-l@bbs.thing.net
From: Phil Duncan <PDuncan@AggregateStudio.com>
Subject: Fwd: Re: <nettime> The Economist: The Internet sells its soul
<snip>
TANSTAAFL.
</snip>
This sums up quite well what the naive missed
about the bust of the internet boom, and the subsequent
cyber-mega-mall into which it has been morphed by those
who view it as a business opportunity rather than an open
venue for the free exchange of ideas.
Thank You.
Cheers!
-Phil
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "geert" <geert@xs4all.nl>
To: "nettime-l" <nettime-l@bbs.thing.net>
Subject: Re: <nettime> The Economist: The Internet sells its soul
Date: Sun, 21 Apr 2002 14:50:16 +1000
Sender: nettime-l-request@bbs.thing.net
Precedence: bulk
Reply-To: "geert" <geert@xs4all.nl>
Status: O
Anyone else? Please, if you want to assist lists now hosted
on Yahoo!, let me know. The best would be if list owners
are 'matched' with the server which is close to their activities,
either thematically or geographically, or affinitywise. In case
you wonder, this call is not for 'free' services. Some
independent servers ask a small fee, but I never heard that
such fees were a big problem. In case people do not like
financial administration, such fees can also be paid once
a year or even every two years. Ted is right that moving
a list is delicated and complicated affair, but that should
not stop anyone from making the move. The agressive adds
underneath each Yahoo! posting have really become
huge lately. Reason enough to go and look for an
interesting sparing partner--or start a mail server yourself.
Geert
From: "Architexturez." <interface.az@ab-a.net>
To: "'geert'" <geert@xs4all.nl>
Subject: your Yahoo! suggestion on Nettime
Hi, Geert, I just read your post on <nettime> The Economist: The
Internet sells its soul
You say:
" Maybe we post a list of servers, ready to receive former Yahoo! groups
and make a wider public announcement, showing that there are viable
alternatives to Yahoo!"
yes! Certainly, www.architexturez.net will host every architecture and
spatiality related list that needs to defect from Yahoo! Or any of the
commercial services.
Architexturez is a free, "open" (inasmuch as one can be) community of
architecture and related studies.
Be sure to include us in case you ever publish a list. We'd do the rest.
Bests!
Anand Bhatt. www.ab-a.net For Architexturez.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "Lachlan Brown" <lachlan@london.com>
To: "nettime-l" <nettime-l@bbs.thing.net>
Date: Sun, 21 Apr 2002 21:04:16 -0500
Subject: Re: <nettime> The Economist: The Internet sells its soul
Sender: nettime-l-request@bbs.thing.net
Precedence: bulk
Reply-To: "Lachlan Brown" <lachlan@london.com>
Status:
There are a number of technical utility (ISP)
providers who take a long term view over
the security of digital properties as well
as compliance over existing and expected
laws and regulatory frameworks, with well
advised policies on social inclusion, the
refusal of content that denigrates rights.
There are also a number of legal firms
advanced in their understanding of ethical
and legal problems likely to arise, and
knowledgeable about digital compyright law,
and its enforcement.
There are also a number of promotion and marketing companies
skilled in the methods of cynical reason
and knowledgeable about the new networks.
There are quite a few people and collectives making brilliant work and content.
There are tens of millions of people with network access internationally.
There's just an appalling culture of scholarship and of curation. (timid,
pliant
and compromised people).
New people needed in both areas.
I'll shortly be completing my 'Unmarked
Graveof History - Unmade Bed of Culture'
work and will get back to Internet stuff.
If anyone would like to know more about the first two items above, get in
touch.
Best,
Lachlan Brown
(416) 826 6937
(416) 822 1123
>Anyone else? Please, if you want to assist lists now hosted
on Yahoo!, let me know. The best would be if list owners
<...>
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------
From: "geert" <geert@xs4all.nl>
To: "nettime-l" <nettime-l@bbs.thing.net>
Subject: re: <nettime> The Economist: The Internet sells its soul
Date: Mon, 22 Apr 2002 17:37:19 +1000
Sender: nettime-l-request@bbs.thing.net
Precedence: bulk
Reply-To: "geert" <geert@xs4all.nl>
Status:
Dear all,
here are three more offers of server admins to host a list. As I
said in a previous mail, ideally lists and servers should be
'matched'. Hosting a list is not an abstract service--or even a
free one. It is more like a mutual collaboration based on
trust and friendship. But then... if you don't know people who
run servers, where to start? In that case you could approach
one of the addresses below, or those who posted earlier.
Thanks to those who responded.
Ciao, Geert
From: "scotartt" <scot@systemx.autonomous.org>
To: "geert" <geert@xs4all.nl>
Sent: Monday, April 22, 2002 2:40 PM
Subject: Re: <nettime> The Economist: The Internet sells its soul
geert
while i'm -not- interested in being any public list, autonomous.org can
host mail services for 'free' under the following conditions;
- personal referral to me from someone i know.
- prepared to understand majordomo & list administration without me having
to intervene all the time.
regs
scot.
---
From: "Adrian Miles" <adrian.miles@uib.no>
To: "geert" <geert@xs4all.nl>
Sent: Monday, April 22, 2002 10:11 AM
Subject: Re: <nettime> The Economist: The Internet sells its soul
hi geert
i'm happy and able to host lists on:
new media
hypermedia
interactive video/cinema
as long as they're not for commercial uses. i can do this via mailman
in bergen or a simpler non web based listserve here in melbourne (we
already host afi-announce, experimenta, wift, newmedia announce, adn
a few others)
cheers
adrian m
--
+ lecturer in new media and cinema studies
[http://hypertext.rmit.edu.au/vog/vlog]
+ interactive desktop video developer [http://hypertext.rmit.edu.au/vog/]
+ media studies. rmit [http://hypertext.rmit.edu.au]
+ InterMedia:UiB. university of bergen [http://www.intermedia.uib.no]
---
From: "martin dodge" <ucfnmad@ucl.ac.uk>
To: "geert" <geert@xs4all.nl>
Sent: Monday, April 22, 2002 2:42 AM
Subject: Re: <nettime> The Economist: The Internet sells its soul
Hi, some lists might be able to the the JISCMAIL service, run mainly for
UK academia but with other potential,
http://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/docs/new-list.htm
cheers
martin
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