| Unworthy argument Of course everybody these days is blocking such services, including Speakeasy, Level 3, Viatalk, Magic Jack, Google and even at one point AT&T, but don't tell a well lobbied Congress that. And the FCC banned AT&T and the other POTS telcos from blocking those ripoff services, a practice that I think was a mistake. (As a side note, the only reason those ripoff services exist is because of Congressional-written subsidies for rural telcos; I oppose the subsidies too.) As far as I can tell, you're admitting that AT&T's particular brief is 100% accurate and justified, you just want to ignore it because you don't like them for other reasons.
Sure, there are lots of areas where branches and levels of government favors AT&T or other incumbents. I don't understand why that means that Karl Bode and others expect that I should cheer on unfairness in a particular case. "An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth," eh, Karl Bode? Such an attitude doesn't help these terrible laws and regulations get reformed, since everybody will always have an argument as to why they're being treated unfairly. Some else always started it if you go back farther, just like in international relations.
The same criticism applies to AT&T, of course; having lost and had an unfair ruling against them by the FCC, they're now pushing for the same ruling to cripple competitors so it will be a level playing field. |
