JC Helary:
But corporations have gone from merely vigilant to hyper vigilant _because_ the web is what it is today.
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Sean Johnson Andrews:
...even this sort of reverses the causality. Most of these things are a response to the way that people have taken to the web--and to the host of other technologies that make it possible to produce content cheaply.
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Excellent points.
In fact, re-reading my post, it occurs to me that I was caught, as regards the question of the web, its uses and the capitalist response, in a bit of a which came first, chicken or egg fallacy.
I think it's possible to sharpen the argument further: large scale capitalism in general, and the neo liberal variant in particular, are opposed to the idea of a commons, preferring private, fee-based spaces and systems.
To the extent the Internet is a commons it's seen as a threat to the never ending project to privatize and fee encapsulate everything.
When Bill Gates accuses (as he's done on a few occasions) Open Source advocates of being in favor of "communism" he means they're trying to create a technology commons that competes with the closed system, concentric circle of toll booths model (enforced via copyright law) that's proven to be so profitable for Microsoft et. al.
Entertainment industry execs make nearly identical, hyperventilating statements for precisely the same reason.
This surely isn't new (Sean Andrews' example of radio in the 1920s is very instructive) but appears to have acquired greater organizational ferocity in recent decades.
.d.