The death of the Open Web has been somewhat exaggerated

I’ve just been reading through a short and interesting piece by Virginia Heffernan referring to ‘The Death of the Open Web‘.

She compares the move from open websites to the walled garden of apps to the move from cities to suburbs, and with some justification. After all 55 million+ people with an iPhone or iPad are app users, alongside the Murdoch-led impetus for content paywalls to once again attempt to block off certain areas of the web for certain companies.

But I think there are arguments against her two points – and a more pressing threat to the continued life of the open web.

Noone denies the success of the application approach for the iPhone and iPod Touch – the small screen means that applications have proved hugely successful at utilising a smaller space and handheld processing power to achieve great results. And many people are actively downloading enough applications for it to be an income stream which many individuals and businesses have, and will continue, to invest in.

But the iPad? There have been initial sucesses with some applications, but at the same time, many people are reporting that they’re increasing using the fast browser to surf the web just as effectively – if not moreso than many of the lacklustre apps rushed out for launch. A lot of websites are now utilising HTML5 (Including my employers, Absolute Radio), and the built-in connectivity of the open web (I’m thinking hyperlinks as much as social bookmarking) carries a lot of advantages over the application approach.

By the same token, the rise of the paywalls doesn’t mean that everyone will follow, or that they’ll be a sustainable success. Certainly the like of The Guardian will stand to benefit in traffic by remaining open, and for many pieces of content, a free, open alternative will always exist – if not by an existing rival, then from one of the myriad of new people seeing a paywall-created opportunity.

As an example, check out the investments being made by Demand Media, Yahoo and AOL to invest in trafic acquisition by content at the same point as major mainstream news organisations are retreating into their shells.

But the real threat?

That comes from the infrastructure of the internet – one which is not inherently open or closed. And that infrastructure could be increasingly dictated not by evolution or the needs of users, but by the attempts to inforce legality and particularly copyright.

I’m not suggesting that artists and industries don’t have the right to profit from their endeavours, but that the way in which those efforts are currently being enacted could result in effects far beyond the intention to protect content-creators.

For a more comprehensive explanation, I highly recommend Code: Version 2.0 by Lawrence Lessig

That’s the real threat to the Open Web and all the benefits that it brings to the world as a whole.