This really interesting post over at O’Rielly Radar a few days ago got me thinking.

I’ve been saying so for years. Long before I was calling it Web 2.0, in my talks about the future “internet operating system,” I always have had a slide called “A Platform Beats an Application Every Time”, in which I predict that the first wave of web applications will be replaced by a second wave of consolidation, which weaves it all together into a new platform. And I provide a view of two alternative futures, one symbolized by Tolkien’s “one ring to rule them all,” and the other by David Weinberger’s “Small Pieces Loosely Joined.”

I point out that while many companies have sought to be the new Microsoft, discovering their equivalent to Win32 as the one ring, there is another model, exemplified by Linux, open source software, and the open standards of the internet. “Small pieces loosely joined” is a great name for this architecture. It’s the current architecture of the web, but will it remain that way?

I’m definitely rooting for camp “Small pieces loosely joined” that’s for sure. That school lets me use my data in ways other than that dictated by the platform and that’s great. Open standards and the “Small pieces loosely joined” way of thinking are great for innovation but before we get too far ahead of ourselves, what about the data? It’s my data after all isn’t it? Tim continues:

“people really need to pay more attention to this area. Harnessing collective intelligence is the principle that has opened the web 2.0 era, but data as the Intel inside is the one that will close it down.”

The battle lines have been drawn and the fight for ownership of your data has begun. The P2P Foundation and the Publishing 2.0 blog outline the problem:

“The tension between Web 2.0 “openness” and the need to control corporate profits is likely to accelerate and, sooner than many players expect, will start to separate winners from losers.”

And you only need to look at the current web 2.0 chart toppers to see this happening. They point out a few examples; here’s an excerpt from the YouTube license agreement,

“…by submitting the User Submissions to YouTube, you hereby grant YouTube a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sublicenseable and transferable license to use, reproduce, distribute, prepare derivative works of, display, and perform the User Submissions in connection with the YouTube Website and YouTube’s (and its successor’s) business… in any media formats and through any media channels.”

MySpace have a ’similar’ policy, MySpace to songwriters: sell more shirts

…when MySpace’s European veep Jamie Kantrowitz agreed to enter the lion’s den - MusicAlly’s digital music seminar held last night in London - it took some courage.

But Kantrowitz made it clear that MySpace wasn’t going to yield anything to the publishers and songwriters - or at least not without a fight.

Asked by moderator Jim Griffin why MySpace shouldn’t make some kind of contribution - she replied that bands could get on their bikes and look for other revenue sources.”People love to go to your show and buy your T-shirt,” she said.

What if the band doesn’t want to, or can’t afford to perform, came back the response. The question was sidestepped.

It wasn’t fair to say that MySpace merely exploits, and doesn’t give back anything in return, Kantrowitz argued.

So much for it being my data!? I’m not a big fan of the Register but they’re really hit the nail on the head this time:

It’s all very much in keeping with the new feudal economics of “Web 2.0″: the serfs must be grateful for the hospitality of the proprietor. As PlayLouder’s Paul Sanders noted last week, plenty of people appear to be profiting from digital music - except the people who create it.

This looming conflict has a historical precident though, one that dates as far back the 15th Century. Could this just be another instance of history repeating itself

The Enclosures… In a more specific historical definition, it refers to the process of the enclosure of common agricultural land in England between the 15th and 19th centuries. They were fundamentally about bringing realms that had hitherto been exempted into the new and expanding commercial relationships that marked the growth of capitalism. Former ways of providing food and sustenance - strip farming, labour relationships based on obligation and deference, widespread access to, and availability of, common land for grazing, hunting and collection of fuel - were denuded and done away with in the name of efficiency, progress and private property rights.

That’s exactly what we’re seeing now. Content generated in and for the commons is being high-jacked by the distribution / service platforms. The P2P foundation is calling this the Third Enclosure Movement.

Maybe MySpace and YouTube could be considered special cases since they’re media sites and they’re just jumping into an already fiece battle for the media channels of the future. So what about the rest of our web 2.0 data? Well that debate hasn’t really come up yet, but it’s about too soon I’m sure

Publishing 2.0 quotes a Yahoo exec chatting about Flickr:

“With less than 10 people on the payroll, they had millions of users generating content, millions of users organizing that content for them, tens of thousands of users distributing that across the Internet, and thousands of people not on the payroll actually building the thing,” says Yahoo exec Bradley Horowitz. “That’s a neat trick. If we could do that same thing with Yahoo, and take our half-billion user base and achieve the same kind of effect, we knew we were on to something.”

So until that debate starts, the platforms will be cashing on my data. Hmmm… Welcome to Exploitation 2.0 :)

Tim again sums it up really well:

Open Data. One day soon, tomorrow’s Richard Stallman will wake up and realize that all the software distributed in the world is free and open source, but that he still has no control to improve or change the computer tools that he relies on every day. They are services backed by collective databases too large (and controlled by their service providers) to be easily modified.

So will this be another case of history repeating itself and have to surrender our data to the corporations? Lets hope not

• MySpace to songwriters: sell more shirts | The Register
  (tags: economics myspace media business)
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