Maybe you're right Oscar but I think that ISP's will start to provide extra services like online drives that they will include with their normal service. Maybe a regular internet service along with a premium service that costs more and includes more features. Then we'll start to see the kind of competition between ISP's that we see between the major news networks. I think AOL Time Warmer will start off by buying a bunch of small cable and dsl service providers. Then they'll buy Napster and i-drive clones and get a bunch of copyrights on their proprietary software. Then AOL will (suck even more and) tell everyone that they have special services that no other ISP can have (because if they do they'll sick their lawyers on them). After a while MSN, CompuServe, AT&T Worldnet, and Prodigy will follow suit and provide their own suite of services.
Eventually you won't be able to access certain news sites using the wrong ISP. For example MSNBC will only be freely accessible to MSN subscribers, everyone else will have to pay. Time Magazine's web site will only be accessible to AOL users. Then the big five ISP's will start buying all the web hosting companies and then they will control most of the web space. And even web sites will be blocked if they're hosted by an ISP's rival.
Soon the Internet will be like a pie with slices belonging to corporations. The the ISP's will stop being service providers and will become content providers. And since most of their business will come from other companies most of that content won't be very useful the the individual net surfer. There'll really be half a dozen internets and not a single unified network. The new ICP's will introduce newer services that will let you access the whole internet for a small (large) fee.
Eventually each ICP will limit user privileges. They'll not allow you to host FTP or OpenNap servers, they won't let you use competitors' p2p or media player software, and they'll shut down warez and hacker sites (but not the porn sites, go figure). They force forums like this one to be moderated by corporate blockheads whose job is to promote paid content rather than free speech.
The internet will become compartmentalized and sectioned off to the various corporations involved. Their lawyers will jump on every chance to sue somebody for copyright infringement. Probably the government will start to tax internet use since the ICP's will control it pretty strictly. Then you'll have to pay for every email you write, every web page you visit, every item you buy, every game you play... on top of your connection fee.
But it won't last.
Eventually an open source internet will be developed, like Linux was, that will be better than the original and will not be infested with "content" and corporate interests. Rather than trying to fix all the security holes and backwards, three-decade-old code, programmers will start fresh and write software that will allow people to operate independently of the old internet. It will thrive on p2p networking but will coexist with c/s networks, too. It'll be better than the old internet in every way, and the companies that monopolized the net and pushed out all the good programmers will suffer from their greed.
It's not a happy prediction for the future, but I think that's how it's going to happen. It happened to Napster, it'll eventually happen to the whole internet. But I hope it won't.
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