http://www.nowheremedia.com/mpn/article.php?sid=61&mode=&mode=0
hey there
don't mean to sound too paranoid and all, but .....
if you look at the industry, and the internet, and the media corporations and telecoms, and industry in general.. add a few facts like MSN in one form or another controlling half the most visited sites, along with Yahoo and AOL...
look at the pattern of consolidation in the industry into fewer and fewer big players, and the general pattern of "if you can't beat 'em, buy 'em"
then are the background providers like UUnet going belly up because of not charging enough for services or from "other reasons" .. frm massive debtload, or stock crashes, or paying ceos millions, ie.. from things that have little to do with the cost/return of the basic services. After all, like the phonelines, even if the companies go bankrupt, service won't stop.. I believe that is mandated by congress in the USA, at least for phone services. After all, the service is both integral to the economy and in use, a product with a stong and solid markey, whatever troubles the company opersting this gets itself into.
but as for the paranoia.. what better way to finish the job of getting rid og the original independent sites and turning the internet into another mediamedium dominated by a few major corporations than by simply pricing the indies out of the market. The big players can afford it, and if they own the provider company as well, they are simply paying themselves more, right? Like charging high royalties for internet radio, well, that doesn't bother the big media companies that own the bulk of the copyrights, eh? They pay royalties to themselves.
it worked for TV and movies, working for radio too, worked for record companies for a good while.. still does really... why not the internet.. after all, they can't call it "censorship", they can call it "market forces", and if we indies just can't afford to pay the price to be heard, like major corporations, that's just too bad that we are shut out.
hey its just anthought, but look at the direction they have been going since they "noticed" the internet. a basic transformation from a medium dominated by individuals and indies to one dominated by a few network/ISP/media/general corporate conglomerates funnelling all the traffic into their own stable, like the AOL model, and the MSN plans for a new pledge, right, "one world, under Microsoft".....
just my 2 bits..