The Register takes perpetually angry law professor Lawrence Lessig to task for bemoaning the imminent death of the Internet:
What’s dying here isn’t The Internet – it remains as open as ever to new software and new ideas. Remarkably, the consensus that upholds the technical infrastructure survives, in the form of the IETF, despite self-interested parties trying to overturn it. What’s dying is the idea that the Internet would be a tool of universal liberation, and the argument that “freedom” in itself is a justification for this information pollution. It’s probably reached a tipping point: the signal to noise ratio is now too low.
I have to go with the Register on this one, even though the Professor claims to be misunderstood, and mumbles something about an “End-to-end Internet”, which apparently affirms a belief that the Searls/Weinberger World of Ends paper was somehow credible. But it didn’t actually represent a proper understanding the Internet in the past, present, or future for reasons I’ve already beaten to death.