It's strange. I've come to think of the Internet as this great open access resource. You can blog, facebook, post music on myspace, post videos on youtube, get access to information - the possibilities are endless and it's all for free (well except for the Broadband payment and line rental of course). They used to call it the 'Information Superhighway', I've always liked that phrase.
However, when you really start to dig deeper, it's not quite as free and as all encompassing as you might think. For example, despite the academic world championing open access to research, most is published by a few massive organisations like Elsevier, responsible for about a third of all science, technology and medical publications worldwide. Yes, you can access it online, but not without paying a hefty license fee.
Can it be healthy for one company to have such a hold on this crucial research literature? It's like the STM publisher equivalent of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation.
Having started to delve into the online world of podcasting, I've come across another bone of contention - file storage online costs money.
I guess I'm naive, but I never realised that to post a 40mb audio file online you might actually need to pay. Searching around for potential podcast hosts, I noticed that most of them require between $2-$50 per month dependent on the amount of space needed and even the size of individual files uploaded.
I can't quite wrap my head around the idea that something which I perceive as infinite, i.e. space on the Internet, would ever be costed in that way. Isn't there something inherently wrong about that?
The rise of social networking sites and youtube etc. is a wonderful thing which has opened up a wealth of possibilities to web users wanting to express themselves or inform themselves at the click of a button. Wikipedia and other open source sites are shining beacons of what can be achieved by mass collaboration and contribution.
I suppose we still have to remember though, that fundamentally, there are still hard drives and wires and physical infrastructures beneath it all and that all these elements will ultimately belong to a commercial business just like everything else.
However, when you really start to dig deeper, it's not quite as free and as all encompassing as you might think. For example, despite the academic world championing open access to research, most is published by a few massive organisations like Elsevier, responsible for about a third of all science, technology and medical publications worldwide. Yes, you can access it online, but not without paying a hefty license fee.
Can it be healthy for one company to have such a hold on this crucial research literature? It's like the STM publisher equivalent of Rupert Murdoch's News Corporation.
Having started to delve into the online world of podcasting, I've come across another bone of contention - file storage online costs money.
I guess I'm naive, but I never realised that to post a 40mb audio file online you might actually need to pay. Searching around for potential podcast hosts, I noticed that most of them require between $2-$50 per month dependent on the amount of space needed and even the size of individual files uploaded.
I can't quite wrap my head around the idea that something which I perceive as infinite, i.e. space on the Internet, would ever be costed in that way. Isn't there something inherently wrong about that?
The rise of social networking sites and youtube etc. is a wonderful thing which has opened up a wealth of possibilities to web users wanting to express themselves or inform themselves at the click of a button. Wikipedia and other open source sites are shining beacons of what can be achieved by mass collaboration and contribution.
I suppose we still have to remember though, that fundamentally, there are still hard drives and wires and physical infrastructures beneath it all and that all these elements will ultimately belong to a commercial business just like everything else.
No comments:
Post a Comment