Topic 'Re: Its going to take an activist judge to do the trick' in forum '' - dslreports.com

Re: Its going to take an activist judge to do the trick

Fri, 01 Feb 2013 13:33:00 EDT

anon posted : It was Bill McGowan of MCI and William Baxter of the DoJ who brought the case to Judge Greene and paved the way for horizontal disintermediation. All 3 deserve credit. You would need a similar cast of characters to accomplish vertical disintermediation. Horizontal disintermediation was possible, doable and acceptable because of the highly inefficient subsidies built into the phone system. Vertical distintermediation is a lot more difficult to pull off and requires a horizontal framework of exchanges and intranets (companies) broadly in the lower, middle and upper layers.

Re: Its going to take an activist judge to do the trick

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 14:48:53 EDT

IowaCowboy posted :

said by Androidian:

I like what you have to say, but unfortunately have little faith in such a thing happening.

Judges, just as politicians, can be bought and bribed. I wouldn't be surprised to discover that it happens every day in our court system. It's just a matter of NBC/Comcast/Dark Side of the Force or some other unholy conglomeration of ISP and content provider throwing a few million bucks into an account in the Cayman Islands to make any semblance of fairness of impartiality disappear in a verdict.

I'd consider putting more faith in a jury trial, except that I'm well aware of how woefully inept some juries can be at discerning truth or even deciphering a logical argument. They're not made up of people who exactly technical geniuses - and I can easily see some people on them thinking that coupling content providers with delivery services would actually be beneficial to consumers. (We all know that Comcast et al has a number of puppet lawyers who will spout that drivel.)

For such a thing to happen, the plaintiff (the consumers) would have to go venue shopping to file a lawsuit for such a thing to happen. Several states (such as Massachusetts and California) have plenty of activist judges at both the state and federal level. I am not going to go into detail on some of their work (as I do not intend on this being a political discussion) but I am basically saying is I know there are judges in these states that are capable of taking on big corporations.
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I've experienced ImOn (when they were McLeod USA), Mediacom, Comcast, and Time Warner. They are much better than broadcast TV.

I have not and will not cut the cord.

Re: Its going to take an activist judge to do the trick

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 14:38:24 EDT

Androidian posted : I like what you have to say, but unfortunately have little faith in such a thing happening.

Judges, just as politicians, can be bought and bribed. I wouldn't be surprised to discover that it happens every day in our court system. It's just a matter of NBC/Comcast/Dark Side of the Force or some other unholy conglomeration of ISP and content provider throwing a few million bucks into an account in the Cayman Islands to make any semblance of fairness of impartiality disappear in a verdict.

I'd consider putting more faith in a jury trial, except that I'm well aware of how woefully inept some juries can be at discerning truth or even deciphering a logical argument. They're not made up of people who exactly technical geniuses - and I can easily see some people on them thinking that coupling content providers with delivery services would actually be beneficial to consumers. (We all know that Comcast et al has a number of puppet lawyers who will spout that drivel.)

Re: Its going to take an activist judge to do the trick

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 13:35:20 EDT

MaynardKrebs posted :

said by IowaCowboy:

Maybe another federal judge will get fed up with his ISP and order Comcast and Time Warner to split their content from distribution..... where in such a setup, Comcast and Time Warner would maintain the lines/infrastructure and customer premises equipment (last mile portion) but the content and ISP business would be a third party company (like local and long distance after the Bell divestiture).

Previous case law supports the separation of content providers from distribution (like a 1948 US Supreme Court ruling that separated the movie studios from the theater business).

United States v. Paramount Pictures, Inc., et. al
�supreme.justia.com/us/334/131/

Re: Its going to take an activist judge to do the trick

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 13:25:58 EDT

Skippy25 posted : I would agree with that split 100%.

You want to be a content company, be a content company.
You want to provide a network, be an ISP company.

And the 2 shall never meet.

Its going to take an activist judge to do the trick

Thu, 31 Jan 2013 13:20:45 EDT

IowaCowboy posted : AT&T used to have a monopoly on the telephone until US District Court judge Harold Greene ordered the Bell divestiture.

Maybe another federal judge will get fed up with his ISP and order Comcast and Time Warner to split their content from distribution where in such a setup, Comcast and Time Warner would maintain the lines/infrastructure and customer premises equipment (last mile portion) but the content and ISP business would be a third party company (like local and long distance after the Bell divestiture).

Previous case law supports the separation of content providers from distribution (like a 1948 US Supreme Court ruling that separated the movie studios from the theater business).

In my opinion, the Bell divestiture led to the dirt cheap prices that we pay for phone service. If Bell System remained intact, we'd be paying an arm and a leg for local and long distance today even though it costs them next to nothing to provide, similar to the way broadband providers are behaving today.
--
I've experienced ImOn (when they were McLeod USA), Mediacom, Comcast, and Time Warner. They are much better than broadcast TV.

I have not and will not cut the cord.