THERE'S A NEW BATTLE brewing that promises to be at least as important as the recent regulatory battles being waged in federal courtrooms, and it's one you probably haven't even heard of. This battle could end up vastly affecting you as a consumer and the way you transact your hobby commerce, which is a startling revelation after a lifetime of hearing that 'competition is a good thing.' As it's turning out, some parties in our industry believe competition is good, but only if you are among a select group.

Before we run to the EEOC or other federal discrimination watchdogs, here's the inside scoop. The issue at hand is a battle between traditional hobby shops and their Internet red-headed step-bretheren. It appears the difference in the two mentalities is based on differences of opinion about what the Internet is supposed to provide to the business world -- on one end you have the traditional hobby shops who view the Internet as a necessary evil and think the Web should be limited to brochureware for their companies, while on the other end you have virtual entrepreneurs who think the Web should be leveraged for all the potential it has to eliminate the high cost of entry for creating viable businesses in today's marketplace. Where a business owner's viewpoint falls on that scale is directly proportionate to the amount of money they have invested into creating a physical business presence. And, you could almost corollate that to the age of their businesses vs. the age of the Internet.

Even today, as you read this, the war is starting to brew. Recent articles, letters to the editor, and even advertisements run in hobby retailing magazines have sounded the battle cry — if you are a virtual dot-com, you are their adversary. Once static and staid competitors are ganging up to fight this perceived enemy, even though competition has always existed between the members of the brick and mortar crowd — this new evil has an unfair advantage in that its overhead isn't the same as their's. Read that again: The issue at hand is that dot-com's don't have the overhead normally affiliated with a traditional store front, therefore the demand is for manufacturers to discriminate against the dot-com's because they are 'bad for the industry.' The reality may be that they are bad for the brick and mortar's pocketbook, but that does not equate bad for the industry. Likewise, I'm not saying they don't have a point — I'm saying they don't have the right strategy on dealing with it.

I can bring you personal experience into this war zone, since as a dot-com of sorts myself, I am too trying to leverage the Internet for the betterment of the hobby. In my profession as an Internet Architect, I am keenly tuned into what is happening online today. I have been involved with large strategic partnerships that include Forbes, Women.com, Hoover's, Earthlink, Yahoo, Amazon.com and others. Part of those discussions involved how our company was going to help leverage the Internet for their users, who in their mind, was what this was all about in the first place. As a result of this experience, I see daily what philosophies are at work in the online world: what works, what doesn't work and what to just plain avoid. One of the items to avoid is that the Internet is your enemy and that it will go away — nothing could be further from the truth on either point. The Internet is quickly becoming a permanent part of our lives of connected information. It's how we choose to deal with it that ultimately determines the mind set we take over it.

In my pursuit of happiness, that being the integration of the Internet with my passion for hobby rocketry, I have sought to bring these technologies to the public for their benefit. If, during my pursuit of this, I manage to make my efforts profitable, I personally don't see a problem with that as long as it's not done to the detriment of the hobby user. To date, I don't think anyone has been hurt, but the jury is still out.

Recently I considered using the Internet as a commerce medium, and solicited input from industry contacts about whether or not they would work with me on a rocketry mall concept. Manufacturer's would put their products there for showcasing, readers get to browse and if they were inclined to purchase, they could click and buy. Dealers weren't hurt, because they would still discount the same product deeper to compete with their normal competitors and a well informed consumer could spend less by digging a little, yet the impulsive shopper could be done and home in time for dinner. The net result in my mind was additional income to fund the behemoth that the site has become.

Sounded like a good idea to me — but little did I know I had just died my hair red and my mother had remarried. Manufacturer's responses were all across the board, from the small ones claiming that a) I would become their worst competitor, b) how dare I try to do anything that wasn't free, and c) couldn't I just keep forwarding customers to them; to the larger ones who simply sat back and wanted to see how it all panned out. Only one company enthusiastically wanted to proceed — yep, you guessed it, they were ... an ... Internet-based company. During therapy for my new hair color and my remarried mom, I found others who had experienced the same treatment, only to more extreme — they had been flat out blackballed for wanting to create an online business.

This mentality isn't new, it's been around at least since the 19th century. People who hate technology are called "Luddites" after Ned Ludd, an English laborer who lived in the early 1800's. Fearing that new labor-saving equipment would make his job unnecessary, he destroyed it. Today's Luddites use other means, not their fists, to destroy technology.

For example, gasoline dispensers in some service stations accept cash or credit cards directly. When the state of New Jersey realized that this would reduce the number of station attendants and cashiers needed, it moved to ban the new dispensers, in order to "save" jobs. While gasoline dispenser technology probably won't revolutionize the world, this example shows the belief that government should protect the obsolete at the expense of the new. Will our industry ask the government to help fight these evil dot-com's?

Imagine if, at the beginning of the century, Henry Ford and the car industry had to deal with a powerful buggy-whip-producing lobby. Since the car would make the horse-and-carriage industry obsolete, buggy-whip producers would demand legislation from Congress which would protect them from the technological developments that were leaving them behind. A pro-labor group would most likely request government restrictions, claiming the sanctity of the jobs of buggy-whip makers. These restrictions would probably consist of government-financed retraining of all buggy-whip workers.

Holding back progress to "protect" an industry from becoming obsolete can damage the economy, and it would give government more control over what succeeds and what fails. More importantly to all of us, innovators will be discouraged from developing new processes whose benefits we won't enjoy. Stagnation results.

Remember, at one time the wheel was a new technology. Our history would be much, much different, and much darker, if a wheel-smashing Luddite had been frightened of that development.

Darrell Mobley is the editor of Rocketry Planet. You may reach him by email at This email address is being protected from spam bots, you need Javascript enabled to view it .