Why Is This Hill So Steep? Page 5

  The World Wide Web’s initial creator, Tim Berners-Lee, conceived of a modest but expandable service on the Internet, available to everyone who could get a modem connection, but he had no idea that it would develop as fast as it did. Maintaining the web as an “open-source” entity, which meant no one organization could control it, left it wide open for companies to market the values of the web, and the advantages to potential customers of reaching it through their servers. Much of this “value” came from content available on other web sites, and much of this was legitimate content, legally offered; however, there was also a great deal of less-than-legitimate content, offered without permission or right by independent website creators. There was also a great deal of more risqué material, text and photographs that ran the gamut from “good taste” to “call the FBI,” available to anyone who knew the link to reach it. The pornographic industry was an early adopter to the new market—early adoption of new media being one of their longest-running and most successful marketing tactics—and a great deal of the web’s initial popularity came from those who were more than willing to seek it out.

  The Internet spawned the World Wide Web in 1991, but the real success of the web had already been assured by the establishment of public access to electronic mail. E-mail, the first “E” in the now-massive web lexicon, was soon referred to as the “killer app,” the one thing that encouraged more people to go online than any other single service. E-mail users quickly gravitated to the web when it was introduced, and the ease of using HTML to write web “pages” encouraged professionals and amateurs alike to delve into creating their own websites, available for people around the world to see.

  E-mail helped to kick-start the phasing out of paper in everyday use, and the subsequent lessening use of the postal system, delivery services and couriers. This went for the mail itself, of course… though not for the attachments to those e-mails, the documents that businesses and individuals still wanted to print out and hold in their hands. Still, many e-mails became the documents themselves, standing alone without attachments, and despite the insistence of a few die-hards, most individuals and businesspeople stored e-mails electronically only.

  E-mail helped consumers wean themselves onto electronic documents slowly, even as the tools to turn any electronic document back into paper persisted. E-mail also helped consumers get used to the beginnings of the global economy, as they could suddenly communicate quickly and cheaply with people from all around the world, and the perceived boundaries between peoples and cultures began to fall. Web-based sales and support helped this along, and as the power of global communications grew, so did the realization that paper was not the most efficient method of passing information about.

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  National and regional governments were slow to join the web revolution, mostly due to concerns of a loss of control and sovereignty; and even today, a number of governments still resist the open nature of the web. Not so with Big Business, however: Where governments saw threats to control, businesses saw promises of profit from new markets, and many of them took to the web like ducks to water. Unfortunately, the open nature of the web left all of these entities wide open to approach things in their own way. The web was too new to have established conventional ways of doing things, and every business thought their way was the best, or at least, the most convenient for them. Commercial entities created multiple methods of transacting business, many of which were incompatible with everyone else’s methods.

  Not only was this behavior in some ways similar to the electronic document format wars, but in fact it dovetailed with the format wars to create added complexity to communication and trade, exacerbating an already-serious problem. And just as had happened in the format wars, the creators of the various commercial systems refused to accept the idea that they would be better served by consolidating their methods with others’, or adopting another, more popular system espoused by someone else. There was a “Wild West” mentality about the web, every man for himself, and no amount of reasoning seemed capable of breaking the stalemate.

  All of this served to slow progress of almost every commercial aspect of the web, which had the effect of furthering the goals of conservatives who insisted on maintaining a paper-filled, old-fashioned way of doing business. With governments so severely dragging their heels over entering the webscape, and therefore in no hurry to force other entities to modernize with the new paradigm, businesses found it easy to ignore public encouragements to join the paperless revolution and maintain their old-school business practices, if for no other reason because they were not being forced into such an initially expensive venture by the authorities.

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  At this stage, the first of the e-book adopters were trying to make themselves heard, but their pleas were largely falling on deaf ears. As Big Pubs were creating web identities for themselves, and incidentally setting themselves up with an effective system capable of delivering digital content like e-books… they were also declining to make that content available, very often not even responding to public request and inquiry on the matter, and leaving themselves open to the public scorn and ridicule that results in ignoring your customers. E-book desiring consumers created online groups designed to rally support and enact change, but this was a largely futile gesture as far as Big Pub was concerned; they were used to going their own way and giving the public what they felt the public really wanted; and they refused to believe they needed to give the public at-large e-books.

  But the e-book groups’ pleas were heard by others. Small publishers and web mavericks recognized early demand for e-books, and they set about satisfying that demand. Independent websites began to sprout, advertising themselves as the alternatives to unresponsive Big Pub and the best place to go for e-books. Some of these sites were able to attract the cooperation and support of established e-book format creators, and became de-facto sites to visit for certain types of content. Others found themselves in need of formats, and in response created their own, adding to the format wars and commercial complication.

  The proliferation of these sites was fuelled by the ease of creating an online sales and delivery presence for next to nothing, and taking advantage of the nature of the web creating a level playing field for amateurs and veteran companies alike. Though some of these e-book sites were created by established publishers with existing content, others were created by fly-by-night operations that often obtained content from other sites and repackaged it for their own sales. Still other sites encouraged the public to send material to be published, but much like the fanfic organizations of old, ended up collecting material of varied quality. They put it all up anyway, however, thereby branding themselves early-on as purveyors of low quality or illegitimate content, an image played up by Big Pub to keep potential customers coming to the bookstores. E-book publishers, right out of the gate, were off to a bad start.

  This bad start was later exacerbated by the eventual failure of some of those startups. As many of them had pioneered their own e-book formats (and customized reading software for them), the e-book retailers’ collapse often meant leaving the customers with e-books that could not be read on other e-book reading software. As computers and personal devices were replaced, either due to age, failure, or a desire for new programs or more power, consumers realized they could not obtain new versions of their reading software from dead-and-gone vendors. This meant the e-books they had obtained, some of them purchased online, were no longer available to them. Their money had gone down the drain.

  This left a bad taste in consumer’s mouths for small-time and start-up publishers, and for e-book formats that might be lost in the future. And since, unfortunately, it was impossible to tell which online stores would stay up, and which formats would remain viable, the move to e-books was further slowed by justifiable consumer distrust and paranoia.

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  As all this was happening, a new and unexpected movement was forming and growing throughout the web: For lack of a formal name, it is
generally referred to (depending on who’s speaking about them) as the Free For All, Anarchist, or “Pirate” movement.

  This movement was directly created by the open source promise of computers and the web, and partially due to the web’s Wild West nature of freedom and apparent lawlessness. In this atmosphere, early content providers had been making material available at little or no cost to the consumer. In many cases, this tactic was intended to lock-in customers, who would then be charged for access later on (a classic marketing ploy). In other cases, it was because the content was being offered without permission by someone who had purchased or downloaded it from some other source. In any event, there was a lot of both, and web users quickly got used to the idea of getting online content for free. And the online services did not make any effort to warn users that this was a trial period deal that would eventually end.

  When the websites switched to the expected pay-for-content models, many web-consumers screamed bloody murder over the idea of charging for content today that was free yesterday. Many of these consumers decided to get back at this seeming offense by re-posting purchased content online, essentially allowing other people to have the content for free. And thanks to the design of the web, one posting could be accessed by literally anyone on the web, meaning that content intended to be paid for could conceivably end up in the hands of millions of people who did not have to pay for it.

  Content creators latched firmly onto this “conceivable” scenario and, in purely paranoid fashion, considered it a direct loss of income. They used that as a reason to secure their online content, or to not provide it at all. Neither decision, of course, sat well with consumers, who increasingly demanded the content, and attacked any commercial entity that denied it to them. The ongoing battle over online content availability for free-versus-paid continues, colors every online transaction to some extent, and has been the direct cause of many companies avoiding the decision to make their content available online until the issue is decided—naturally, in their favor.

  5: AOL—We are the future

  Although the Internet was free to anyone who had a modem, Internet Service Providers (or ISPs) like America Online, Compuserve and Prodigy are largely credited with bringing the bulk of the public to the internet—and they did it through a subscription model.

  The secret was pre-packaging: Since most people didn’t know what was on the web, or where, the early online services created encapsulated “mini-webs” devoted to popular subjects, easy to find and fun to participate. The catch was, only a member could access that content; so, for a monthly fee, subscribers could visit the forums of interest, download content, view videos and listen to music, and use e-mail to an unlimited extent. The quick-and-easy web was very popular among newbies, and the online services signed up subscribers by the millions.

  Once you paid to be a member, a lot of the content you could access on the web services cost no more… and the services duly described them as “free,” giving the impression that you signed up just for the service and whatever was on it. The “free content” model was also very popular, and as described in Chapter 4, led to the perception amongst users that all web content should therefore be free. Soon it looked like the online services would be the greatest development of the age, the place everyone would be spending their time in the future.

  I was one of the early subscribers to the Washington Post ISP: Yes, before the Post became just another online newspaper, it was a full-blown ISP, among the second-generation ISPs that offered an e-mail account, subscriber-only access to content—in this case, some of the Washington Post newspaper articles put online—and access to the budding World Wide Web. In a fashion, it could be considered among the earliest publishing organizations to bring its digitized content to the web, for sale in a subscription model. I thought a news content-based ISP was much better than my previous CompuServe account, with its number-based e-mail addresses (being a fan of the TV series The Prisoner, whose main character proclaimed at the beginning of every episode: “I am not a number… I am a Free Man!”) and to-me-uninteresting subscriber content.

  But the online services found themselves fighting to satisfy the seemingly insatiable hunger of their customers. And as the web developed beyond the online services, consumers clamored for access to that, too. It took some time, but eventually, the online services gave it to them. This led to the discovery of even more free content on the web proper, and even more of a perception that this was the way it ought to be.

  Within a few years of opening up their services to the web, the online services began to be abandoned by their users, who were slowly but surely finding other ways to track down the content they wanted on the web. As they did, they increasingly asked what they were paying the online services for, especially as other services offered only e-mail and web access, which was adequate for most people’s needs, but for significantly less. Within just a few short years of being the hottest properties on the stock floor, the online services began to die off from lack of interest. One by one, the services scaled down or closed their doors. For them, the future was over after about a decade.

  I held out with my Post ISP for awhile, until the fateful day I received an e-mail notifying me that the Post would be converted to another free-for-use website, and their ISP services would be shut down. At the time, this was common enough as well: ISP’s suddenly going under, and their users being forced to scramble to set up new accounts (and e-mail addresses) with another ISP. In the Post’s case, they had not found enough subscribers to make their online publishing model viable, so they switched to an advertiser-based financial model and made their content free to web visitors… not the first, and certainly not the last, to do so.

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  But web visitors were discovering that more of the premium content on the web was now behind a subscription service too: The content providers had followed the examples of the ISPs, and had started charging for content. This sudden reversal fueled the aforementioned free-versus-paid movements, and once again new arguments arose over free and subscription content. The one thing lacking, now that the online services were closing down, was a place to discuss these matters.

  Which brings us to another result of the influence of the online services: The introduction of users to non-Newsgroup forums. These forums gave groups of a particular interest a place to talk about their interest, to share information, or to vent. They became one of the most popular features on the online services, and many customers chose their service based on the groups they could connect with on that site. With the subsequent collapse of the online services, the users’ forums were lost as well. Fortunately, many of the users were savvy and dedicated enough to make sure their favorite groups wouldn’t be lost, and they took advantage of the web to preserve them.

  So many of the users’ forums were transformed into independent websites, often populated by the same people from the online services, plus many more who were not subscribers to that service, but who were also interested in the group. This gave people a place to continue discussing their favorite subjects, and venting their frustrations about them. In the past, the world was filled with people who felt completely alone in their ideas and viewpoints. Today, many of those solitary people take comfort in knowing that there were others who share their views, and they feel more empowered as a result.

  I was one of many who searched through the web for groups that mirrored my interests and tastes, signed up to listen, and often ended up being a regular participant. It was a great way for people, especially those who seemed to have no local peers on a particular subject, to find new people to share their interests with, and to feel part of a larger community. The legitimacy of those online communities would soon come into question, as well as their psychological impact: Did they make people more outgoing, or did they isolate them from the “real world” outside their front door? But for individuals, it established a sense of “belonging” that many of them lacked in the real world, and had the potential, at
least, to boost their self-confidence and sense of identity.

  The web quickly helped to expand another phenomenon: Web activism. Like the newsgroup users before them, web users discovered there was an amount of psychological power born of anonymity, plus the ease of speaking up or taking a side from the comfort of your home, in using the web. As a result, they were becoming more vocal about their wants and desires, their gripes, their demands, and their criticisms of others, either corporate or individual. This web activism was especially focused in website forums, where visitors or registered site members could start discussions, debate topics, argue amongst themselves, and verbally attack entities with which they had no physical contact or real influence over.

  This empowerment helped to create a more forward and assured consumer, one who wasn’t afraid of making demands of its commercial interests (especially when there were a few dozen to a few hundred people backing them up). And the commercial interests themselves had discovered these groups dedicated to, and commenting on, their products; in order for them to know what the public was saying, all they had to do was spend time in those discussion groups, and take their cues from the conversations therein. Many companies received appropriate reinforcement from these groups, in the form of word spread to other potential customers and increased sales, or negative press spread from website to website, often being picked up by the legitimate news services if it went far enough—the groups began to influence commercial policy. It was a web version of the people’s revolution in the purest sense, with the smallest of little guys helping to steer the big fish either into the history books, or onto the rocks.