Archive of UserLand's first discussion group, started October 5, 1998.
Re: What Time/Warner owns
Author: Nick Sweeney Posted: 1/12/2000; 9:32:21 PM Topic: What Time/Warner owns Msg #: 14411 (In response to 14407) Prev/Next: 14410 / 14412
It'll be interesting, though, as broadband grows, to see the different rates of development of "top-down" and "bottom-up" content distribution. Broadband access in the US and Europe is relatively unrestricted in terms of usage: you can see that just by running Napster, which turns a home machine into a MP3 file server, or Winamp/Shoutcast, which turns the same machine into a miniature broadcaster (narrowcaster?).(In Britain, the rollout of ADSL and cable modem access this year is likely to be accompanied by a lot of heavy port-blocking and proxy services. The opportunities to upload anything are going to be pretty limited. Expect the US telcos to follow, if the RIAA starts suing them.)
The task for AOL/Time Warner, if they want to harness the opportunities of their content and distribution channels, is to make it secure and make it more popular than something like Napster. AOL has the advantage of its sandbox approach to security and access: they've got this advantage on most ISPs from the start, and will probably exploit it to the full.
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