| reply to fAcEtIOUs
Re: BellSouth won't win fight with web providers "Bell South won't win this particular fight. ... And if they expect Congress to back them over these others, they made an error in judgement."
I wish I could share your optimism.
The comments here and by sbc make it clear where they intend to take us.
Congress doesn't have to back them. The government has already given them most of the trump cards. Congress only has to be unwilling to do the major work needed to stop them and we have put ourselves in a situation where there is little way to stop them without significantly shifting policy course. They control the line and we have created conditions which allowed them to concentrate power, while we have simultaneously deregulated them. The competition that we allowed to whither and die is the only real counterweight.
There are no indications, in the present climate, that the government is willing to make a profound conceptual change in policy direction and begin pushing back with things like threats of divestiture. The government doesn't exhibit the will to strengthen competition in the market. Simply leaving the present situation alone(the falsely named "let the market handle it" approach) isn't going to do it.
I believe there will be another round of anti-trust action, but it will take decades to build and play out.
In the meantime we need some assertion of the legitimacy of municipal broadband and some way to end the incumbent use of the courts to try to perpetually trap municipal operations.
We also need serious wireless spectrum reform(i.e. something beyond propertizing and selling off spectrum to the big players).
For example see Yochai Benkler
»www.benkler.org/Pub.html#IP |
