|
|
[description], Story, any other text you want to use.
Territorial Web
by: Sam Vaknin, Ph.D.
The Net was supposed to dissolve anachronistic national borders and cultural boundaries. It was expected to vitiate distance - both physical and mental. It was hailed as the invention that will unify Mankind and harmonize (though not homogenize) civilizations, east and west.
Yet, this was not to be. As dot.coms bombed, their more veteran and more experienced brick and mortar rivals took over the Net, transforming it in the process into a giant content delivery, marketing, supply chain management, and customer relationship management platform. This evolution all but demolished the non-local nature of the early Internet. It has also brought it into the remit of existing national laws.
Moreover, governments throughout the world have become more assertive in exercising territorial jurisdiction over the hitherto ostensibly extraterritorial Net. A French court has prohibited Yahoo! from making certain content on its Web sites available to French citizens. An American court advised Yahoo! to ignore this decision. A Russian programmer was arrested by the FBI for offering a decryption software for sale in Russia (where it is perfectly legal). Governments from China to Saudi Arabia filter Web content regularly. Following the September 11 attacks, restrictive anti-terrorist legislation the world over targeted cyberspace.
But the real territorialization of the Internet - the redrawing of its internal contours and the withdrawal of its libertarian foundations - is more pernicious, all-pervasive, quotidian, and surreptitiously gradual. This is not the outcome of legal revolutions and court-driven evolution. It is piecemeal, quiet, unnoticed, often inadvertent and unintended. It is an "afterthought" rather than a premeditated "plot". It happens e-tailer by e-tailer, one Web site after the other, like the spread of a virus.
Consider these two - by no means exhaustive - examples.
Amazon and Geocities (now, Yahoo!Geocities) are two Internet establishments, two gigantic communities of users that, between them, represent a sizable chunk of all the activity on the Internet.
It has long been impossible for a non-US publisher to sell its wares (books, for instance) through Amazon or to Amazon directly. Amazon works exclusively with US publishers and distributors. To collaborate with Amazon - one of the members of a duopoly as far as B2C e-commerce goes - a non-US publisher (no matter how substantial) has to work with a US distributor and thus forgo a large portion of its revenues (payable to the distributor as commissions). Moreover, said publisher cannot even open a ZShop (Amazon's version of mom and pop store). One has to be a US resident to do so. Amazon is closed to the outside world, despite its (false) global image. It sells all over the world - but it only buys American.
This discriminatory behaviour is partly profit-motivated. It is logistically easier and cheaper to deal only with US businesses. But Barnes and Noble works directly with foreign publishers and they preceded Amazon in the book business by decades.
Yahoo!Geocities has lately instituted a new policy. It limits the size of downloads from the free home pages of members of its community. If the downloaded content from a given home page exceeds 3 Gb (extrapolated based on hourly usage) - the "offending" member's page is shut down for an hour. The member is then prompted to pay a monthly subscription fee for a Premium Service in order avoid a recurrence of this unfortunate event. This "marketing drive" is intended to compensate Yahoo!Geocities for a precipitous drop in online advertising revenues.
The "Premium" package includes "Premium Mail". But only US citizens or residents can subscribe to it. And, you guessed it right, without the Premium Mail component, one cannot complete the subscription process. Though not stated explicitly anywhere, the Premium services are closed to the outside world and are the exclusive reserve of Americans. One can get around this virtual ethnic cleansing by providing false data while registering, but this is besides the point.
The Internet is a reflection of the outside world. As economies contract, unemployment soars, personal safety vanishes, the social fabric disintegrates, and consumption slumps - countries tend to isolate themselves politically, react aggressively, and protect their national economies. Protectionism, unilateralism, and isolationism are scourges the Internet was supposed to be immune to. Little did we know.
About The Author
Sam Vaknin is the author of "Malignant Self Love - Narcissism Revisited" and "After the Rain - How the West Lost the East". He is a columnist in "Central Europe Review", United Press International (UPI) and ebookweb.org and the editor of mental health and Central East Europe categories in The Open Directory, Suite101 and searcheurope.com. Until recently, he served as the Economic Advisor to the Government of Macedonia.
His web site: http://samvak.tripod.com
|
cable tv descrambler
Real Time Media On The Net
This is one of the best resources for information on Real Time Media On The Net you can possibly find.
Follow our links to find more information on Real Time Media On The Net.
We hope that we have all of the Real Time Media On The Net details that you could need.
Real Time Media On The Net
|
Netscape Corporation has created the best known secure server technologies. It uses a security protocol called Secure Sockets Layer (SSL) that provides data encryption, server authentication, message integrity and optional client authentication for a TCP/IP connection. When a client seeking to purchase cable tv descrambler connects with a secure server, they exchange a *handshake* which initiates a secure session. With this protocol, the same server system can run both secure and unsecured web servers simultaneously. This means an cable tv descrambler organization or company can provide some information to all users using no security, and other information that is secured. For example, a business that sells cable tv descrambler online can have its storefront (merchandise catalog) unsecured, but ordering and payment forms can be secure.
Why are these developments important? As the Internet becomes a way to buy and sell cable tv descrambler products and services, financial transactions become essential. Right now, most cable tv descrambler transactions involve the exchange of credit card information, either directly over the network, or by phone, to complete a transaction initiated online. Eventually, you will be able to use cash as well as credit, directly over the network.
There are two basic kinds of digital cash, anonymous cash and identified cash. Anonymous cash is just like paying for cable tv descrambler with paper cash but it also carries no information about the person making the transaction, and leaves no transaction trail. You create it by using numbered bank accounts and blind signatures. Identified cash, on the other hand, contains information revealing the identity of the person who withdrew it from the bank. Like credit card transactions, identified cash can be tracked as it moves through the system and involves fully identified accounts and non-blind signatures. Whether you use digital cash when purchasing cable tv descrambler is entirely up to you. We suggest you employ the purchasing avenues available from the cable tv descrambler supplier we recommend.
Real Time Media On The Net Index
|
Main Menu
Real Time Media On The Net
Site Map
Affiliate Ads, Links, news, etc.
News for 08-Jan-26 Source: BBC News - Home Obama's snowman phobia Source: BBC News - Home Your pictures Source: BBC News - Home Kim Ghattas: Trump's Syria conundrum Source: BBC News - Home The technology of touch Source: BBC News - Home Sri Lankan court acquits five men in Tamil MP murder trial Source: BBC News - Home All heart Source: BBC News - Home British astronaut Piers Sellers dies Source: BBC News - Home Chile anger as jailed Pinochet reign abusers ask forgiveness Source: BBC News - Home Wedding gift alpaca has 'surprise' baby Source: BBC News - Home Crash survivor: 'I put my seatbelt on'
Links
Links
Links
|