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Reverse Angle

Troubling Trends

The Internet's population is surging, yet fewer channels of content flow. Smaller net firms are closing and carriers now are restricting broadcasting capabilities. Limited content is because net users are more savvy about finding what they need and surf fewer sites.

Companies that own both the infrastructure and content can keep smaller upstarts from publishing on the web.

Stanford professor Lawrence Lessig warns of corporations such as AOL that will leverage their ownership of cable lines to favor their own content. He gives the example of some cable Internet providers that prevent users from running Web servers and broadcasting large numbers of video streams. (International Herald Tribune, 31 December 2001)

Not long ago, free press was a defining characteristic of America.

ABC, CBS and NBC all refused to sell time to air Buy Nothing Day ads. A spokesperson for General Electric's NBC network brazenly told The Wall Street Journal that the ads were "inimical to our legitimate business interests." Westinghouse's CBS network explained that they censored the ads because they were "in opposition to the current economic policy in the United States."