A friend of mine is doing some work for TV Allowance, a device you plug your TV or PC into that requires a PIN before it will turn the appliance on. Then it turns off the appliance after little Johnny or Debbie has used up his/her allotted hours.

I’m not going to buy one since in our family we still prefer the traditional method of half-expressed shame: it leaves no marks but it lasts forever. But I can imagine families that would want to use a device like TV Allowance.

So here’s my point. When it comes to controlling access to the Internet, TV Allowance is an “edge” device: if you want it, you can buy it and use it, and if you don’t, then you won’t. The opposite approach would be to build a monitoring system (logins, account monitoring) into the Internet itself. And that’s the approach — the wrong approach — being taken by the Big Content industry and their governmental lackeys when it comes to controlling not how long we’re online but what we’re able to access and use.

I mention this just in case you were looking for another “World of Ends“-ish analogy…

Categories: Uncategorized dw