There was once a time in the United States where people, or small organizations, could purchase time-slots on specialty cable-tv channels. In these time slots, people could, generally, produce any kind of content they wanted, provided the content wasn't of a pornographic or illegal nature. The content could be political -- featuring political discussion, debate, and analysis -- artistic -- featuring live artistic creation, design, and tutorials -- or entertainment -- featuring music, comedy, and low-budget action sequences. It could even be all three, if the producer was rather creative. It could be anything the producer wanted, so long as it wasn't pornographic or marginally indecent.
These channels lived so long as the producer could keep paying the rent, and the rent was cheap. This meant that the producers had far more creative freedom since they weren't entirely obligated to produce the most cash-grabbing, mainstream, content. If they could pay the rent, month by month, then they could produce whatever they wanted. Again, if it wasn't porn.
Eventually, public-access television went the way of the horse-drawn cart. Not because it wasn't popular, well that may have been partly the reason, but due to the legal challenges and competition it faced. Perhaps the primary legal challenge was that producers often aired copyrighted content. This didn't go over well with the copyright holders, who often sued the stations who hosted the content. This led stations to ban and discriminate against certain producers known for including copyrighted content into their own content.
Given that time is finite, and even more finite on the limited number of television channels and time slots, public-access television was occupying valuable real estate. In the 80s, 90s, and early 2000s, cable TV operators and phone companies began to expand into the cable TV market. They saw public-access television as nothing more than a nuisance occupying valuable viewing times. Therefore, they began to lobby congress to pass laws that led to the closing of various stations that hosted this content. Essentially, they legislated the competition out of the market. And this looks like the end of public-access television on the...television. But what about the Internet? It isn't limited by time slots, viewing schedules, or channels, for that matter. Is the Internet the next public-access information distribution network? Yes, and no but in a good way.
Youtube was the closest we got to public-access television on the web. But that didn't last forever. There was once a time, say seven years ago, when Youtube didn't have any major stars. Sure, it had viral videos that were as random as a man punching a cow on a Monday morning while wearing an egg-salad sandwich as a hat. But there weren't any famous Youtubers, at least no Youtuber who had complete domination of their respective niche. Today, there are the A-list stars, who account for most of the views on the site and there are the B-list stars who aspire to be A-list stars. The rest of the content creators on Youtube kind of of just get pushed to the side, so whatever content they produce is only discovered by accident. The content still exists, but it isn't as searchable as the A-list content, so it mostly falls through the cracks.
As is the case with public-access television, the shows get buried beneath layer after layer of heavily-produced corporate product. However, those shows, while marginalized, still existed. If an analogy may be drawn between that fact and the Internet, the Internet should be the same way. Little islands of spontaneity and obscurity should exist along with the megaliths of the Internet like Youtube and Facebook. If you’ve got a signal, then it should be permitted to be broadcasted. People will either take part or move on to something more their fancy.
Youtube allows for little islands of spontaneity, however, as mentioned above, those islands kind of get pushed to the side in favor of the established Youtube personalities. But the content still exists. Same goes for the Internet in general. Huge sites overshadow the small sites, but those small sites still exist. In this respect, the Internet is like public-access television. However, the Internet is better! Those little obscure islands of creativity and content won't be legislated out of existence by companies hungry for the real-estate. There are far fewer physical restrictions in the realm of the Internet, which means a safe voyage for many websites. The Internet is even friendlier to pornographic content and controversy than public-access television ever was.
Companies still present a threat to many websites on the Internet by issuing copyright violation claims against certain websites. But that is more the fault of the website in violation than it is the copyright holders. Websites may even face threats from companies that desire a certain domain name, but I have never heard of a business attempting to steal a domain name out from under its owner. If it has happened, it is rare and, evidently, didn't make too many waves. And still, the Internet is far more resilient to these threats. Even SOPA, a huge bill that threatened both illegitimate and legitimate hosts of web content, was kicked to the side after massive public uproar. That is the power of the Internet.
And so it is, I want the Internet to remain much the same as it is today: an enormous mixed-bag of anything and everything where anything and everything has a right to exist as it is. Like public-access television, only better!
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