We DO have choices
2pnet.net News:- Every so often, it’s not a bad idea to remind ourselves that we truly have choices. Maybe we live in an area that requires we choose between a cable monopoly and a telco monopoly to provide us with Internet access. Not much of a choice, in America. I live in north-central Iowa, and must either sign up with my regional telco monopoly, or sign up with my regional cable monopoly, or search out the satellite monopoly connection. As for ISPs, I have a choice of my regional telco monopoly’s approved ISPs.
Once signed up, my choices for music and tv and film begin to broaden. I can join the iPod generation, and listen and view whatever they choose for me, or I can move out into the world of Independent Artists, those who are not signed or owned by corporations. And there are many ways to discover these artists. For example, I can discard my Windows operating system, and install the new Fedora Core distribution with just a couple clicks of the mouse. Once installed, I click on my music player, and load any of a number of selected playlists provided by jamendo.com. For those playlists that I like, I can move to the jamendo.com site and look around for similar music.
Independent Artists provide their works through jamendo.com for my listening pleasure, sharing, remixing, mashing, moving around the music to whatever device I want, permit me to upload to my favorite P2P network, whatever. I’m able to move around the world, choosing from literally, tens of thousands of choices, from classical to jazz to rock.
I can visit Archive.org, a world-recognized repository for audio and video works. Of course, as expected, the Grateful Dead are represented in all their glory. If you like the idea of browsing a digital music store with tens of thousands of live concerts, this is one stop you need to make, today.
For classical music lovers, there’s a new phenomenon taking place around the United States. We’re beginning to see the new business models that embrace the concept of using the Internet as a global radio station. For example, visit the gardnermuseum.org site, and download their first five concerts in a series that is planned to extend from one season to another for the foreseeable future. Several hours of Schubert, Beethoven, all available free right now. Like what they’re doing? Why not become a member, and join a worldwide membership, even though you live far away, or in another country?
Is it difficult to find the time to browse, artist by artist, song by song, to find what you like? No problem. By visiting Webjay.org, you’re well on your way to having a desktop application that allows you to simply click when you find a site that might be interesting, and creating a playlist of your own, or automatically downloading the playlists of selected songs others have compiled and uploaded for your listening pleasure.
At some point, in the not-too-distant future, we’ll be advancing, with or without the telco/cable monopoly’s permission, to being able to gain free Internet access without restriction.
This will occur in several layers.
The lowest common denominator will look like a community-based wireless network. Each house will have a cheap tin can antenna ($3 to $7), which will participate in mesh networking of every neighbor’s computer, and giving everyone broadband access that is 10 times as fast as the telco/cable monopolies’ offerings.
VoIP, videoconferencing, telemedicine, and all the other services anyone wants, will be freely available.
P2P networking will thrive and become as ubiquitous as email. Independent Artists are now uploading and making their live concerts, gigs, and songs in video formats. They’ve found that using unencumbered (by patents) file formats such as .ogg, they can guarantee their creative works will live on, in spite of any corporate threats to make them illegal.
Lifestyle is a choice. Vegetarians make such a choice. Step folks make a choice. If you’re step, it means you choose to boycott the corporate thugs. You choose to reach out and discover Independent Artists, and reward the ones you like by visiting their websites, joining their fan club, and purchasing their deluxe albums.
I’ll probably never visit the Isabella Gardner Museum, but I can become a member, and support their series of concerts for the Internet. When I need to buy a gift for someone, I can visit their online shop, and purchase products, which in turn, continues my support for their work.
It’s time the world realizes we do have choices, and no amount of corporate racketeering and intimidation is going to take those choices away. Or, unless we fail to create choices by ignoring the empowerment our computers offer us.
Tom Poe
[Tom Poe is a VA pensioner, living in Iowa, USA. He says he likes the idea of replenishing our public domain, and at the same time, buying directly from Independent Artists.]
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