Bit Chat: Michael Moore
The controversial filmmaker crusades to save the Internet from corporate control.
By Dave Roos for Tech TV.
(Thanks, Cory!)
One of Moore’s greatest fears is that the Internet will come under the same corporate onslaught as FM radio. It’s hard for many of us to imagine, but FM radio used to be a lot like the Web. It was open, inexpensive, and independent. The music was all that mattered.
“Then they sucked the life right out of it,” Moore growls, referring of course to the corporate interests that bought out the FM frequency in the 1970s. The result is mind-numbing musical homogeneity. “It doesn’t matter where you go today,” Moore laments. “The FM station in St. Louis sounds like the FM station in Tampa.”
The same fate could await the Web. “Sooner or later,” Moore warns, “the forces of capitalism are going to say, ‘Wait a minute, this should only be about making money. If it’s not making us money, it shouldn’t be on the Internet.’ We have to prevent that from happening.”