The Internet and "The Tragedy of the Commons"

In my last post I talked about Adblock Plus a Firefox plugin that people are starting to use to block all adds on web sites.  They are doing to counter the annoyance of advertising on the Internet which is what ultimately "pays" for what we get from the Internet.  By blocking ads are we ultimately jeopardizing the future of the Internet?

The issue comes about when we have essentially free access to a resource.  The theory is that we all act in our self-interest even it is to the ultimate detriment of the resource.  This is known as the "Tragedy of the Commons" which takes its name from Garrett Hardin's 1968 essay although this has been discussed for quite a long time even back to Thucydides and Aristotle.  The classic example is the village commons (hence the name), a shared pasture where all may graze their animals.  With this free resource it is in everyone's best interest to add to their flock and graze as much as possible.  Ultimately this leads to overgrazing of the commons and the benefit is lost to all.

In a sense the Internet is the modern day commons.  It is for all intents and purposes "free" with the limitation being our ability to use it effectively.  The self interest actions we see include:

• Spammers bombarding us with unwanted emails
• Advertising every where and done in an annoying manner
• People using software to block advertising
• People using anti-spam software sometimes blocking the wanted with the unwanted

Mike Lee cites an recent example of his favorite cafe going out of business possibly due to the "overgrazing" of the free Internet access in his post "Don't Be a Cafe WiFi Moocher" (see also Free WiFi spawns cafe backlash ).

So what can be done to maintain the Internet as usable resource?

I'm no economist but the only 2 approaches I see (neither of which is very attractive) are regulation and privatization.  Regulation controls usage and access by mandate whereas privatization controls it via economic means - what you are willing to pay for.

Given the nature of the Internet, regulation would be very difficult.  Do we really want the "government" in whatever form it might be to decide what is acceptable advertising?  Given the ability of the Internet to cross borders could it really accomplish this?  The Chinese government is perhaps the government best known for regulating the Internet (see map for others).  And while China is doing it for their own political reasons and not to make it a more enjoyable experience by controlling spam and advertising it is a good example of how it can have unintended consequences.  Somehow I just don't see government regulation being able to get off the ground in most democracies.

Privatization is slowly making headway.  Many corporations and family pay for filtered access and install anti-spam software to filter out unwanted sites and emails.  Unfortunately these services are not always perfect and you lose access to valuable sites along with the objectionable material.  Privatization has been around in regard to access to proprietary databases and information.  But will it go further?  Will we some day pay for every Google search to avoid advertising or have a choice of CNN.com web sites to visit - free with ads or pay sites with no ads?  Wait, CNN does have a premium service, will this someday extend to the basic now "free" information?

I don't know where all of this will end up.  I personally don't see regulation as being the answer.  I suspect we will see more privatization but fear that we will lose a lot of benefit of the Internet along the way.

What do you think?  Where lies the future of the Internet?

"Sheep grazing in English field, UK" photo by William A. Bolton

"taxi meter" photo by Julep67

If this topic was of interest, you might also like these:

• Are Your Execution and Delivery Processes Ready for the Internet?
• IT is NOT Your Mother!
• Or the posts in the "Internet" category