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> Just because something is well liked, does not mean it is beneficial to society overall. Granted, but who gets to decide what is beneficial?
It is decided by a slow and deliberate process with many voices.
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Didn't Osama bin Laden write a declaration about culture invasion from the West?
Invasion implies use of force and against the will of someone. Nobody forces you to use Google services, eat hamburgers or listen to US music.
I personally think that many who use the "cultural invasion" angle fail to realize that it often ends up being a two way street. In the US, not many people make a big deal when, say, a French film wins a US Academy Award (example: The Artist) or a French artist tops the US pop charts (example: Daft Punk). It's a global world, after all.
Perhaps there is some scope for protecting the uniqueness of individual cultures that might get lost in the global shuffle. But a lot of people happily stand up for this cause on their own, without any sort of political angle.
Now, the NSA snooping angle with American tech emphasized in the article, that's another story -- I see this as a legitimate concern for any foreign firm. America's spy agencies probably underestimate how much they've hurt American companies in this global world.
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The article starts by asking you to view things from another perspective. It's not asking you to "knock" Netflix, it's inviting you to consider the point of view of people who do. American media is subtly hegemonising. All media carries with it the culture of those who produce it, but US media also carries a very strong assumption of "defaultness": that everyone is a (mostly white) American at heart. What effect does…
The irony is that for there to be diversity there must be protectionist policies and xenophobia to preserve it.
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They didn't win because they are the best, unless you mean they are the best at winning for arbitrary reasons, like random market forces.
It doesn't look random to me when the biggest IT companies all originate from a small area in or near San Francisco. The US government spent a massive amount of money over decades in infrastructure and in government contracts which in combination with the right legal framework (and capitalism) created this dominance.
I could start a company in a small European country for €X but tackling the US market would cost me 10 times that, which I haven't got and can't raise. However, the comparable US company can invade my market not by raising 10x more money but by raising 10% more.
Even if you're successful, like Spotify, a big American company can start up years later with an inferior product, like Apple, and probably put you out of business. Spotify money is, by Apple's standards, chump change.
And if the American company can't knock you out, then it can just buy you.
America's home market size and the availability of capital make it very hard to compete, even if you have the talent. And the fact that SV imports almost all the best overseas talent as well as having its own tremendous talents makes things even harder.
It's easier with virtual goods than with physical goods, but look at social networking websites for an illustration of the same problem. Sure, you can be the biggest in France or Germany or Italy or whatever, but Facebook just knocked out all the local successes except Russia and China.
The only way to play it is to open a small US office and pretend to be American, so you can get US capital and US media promotion. But if you succeeded that way, just how French (or German, or Italian) would you be in the end?
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>These services are so useful and well-liked around the world that they should be considered a threat? Just because something is well liked, does not mean it is beneficial to society overall. Junk food and facebook come too mind. I love Netflix but part of me feels my life would be better without it too.
> Just because something is well liked, does not mean it is beneficial to society overall. Granted, but who gets to decide what is beneficial?
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Of course not being able to access a website you want (and censorship in general) is not good, but comparing that to slavery is absolutely ridiculous.
Not being able to make choices for yourself is slavery. Slavery is not about hard work or poor conditions. There were plenty free men who had it harder and some slaves that led cushy life. Slavery is about not being a master for yourself.
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Shouldn't it be up to individual French people to decide what they watch on TV or the internet? Why should the coercive authority of the state have any say?
Probably because without these regulations, there would be no visibility for niche productions, no way for them to reach the few people who want to watch them. That may run contradictory to capitalist beliefs, but the system intends to allow existence of films/music/cultural products which (regardless of quality) have too few customers to survive in a non-regulated market. If you wish to keep having diversity in your…
If only there were some sort of global system for distributing niche productions to those subscribers who want to see them. Perhaps some sort of system using minicomputers to transmit the information - we could call it "Minitel".
But seriously, are you really trying to claim that the internet is making it harder for niche producers and consumers to connect?
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Have you considered the "non-facebook users" coordinate offline, in-person and can use other technologies like SMS, email, phone calls, IM, chat apps, running into friends at the store, visiting a friend's workplace and "passing the word along" telling friend A who tells friend B?
Your examples aside from chat apps are quite unrealistic. I don't even know when was the last time I invited someone to an event using any of the listed methods, it must have been years. But even if running into friends at the store was a thing, it doesn't mean that Facebook is not used by a billion people for organising social events and is therefore beneficial to them.
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The article starts by asking you to view things from another perspective. It's not asking you to "knock" Netflix, it's inviting you to consider the point of view of people who do. American media is subtly hegemonising. All media carries with it the culture of those who produce it, but US media also carries a very strong assumption of "defaultness": that everyone is a (mostly white) American at heart. What effect does…
The irony is that for there to be diversity there must be protectionist policies and xenophobia to preserve it.
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How is it not problematic when American tech form an oligopoly on internet services? Especially when these services need to bend to the whims of American government.
> "Especially when these services need to bend to the whims of American government." In what way are they doing that today? How is Netflix bending to the whim of the US government?
National security letters.