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READ Internet founder blasts ISPs for hurting national interests
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2008 14:40:25 -0700
________________________________________ From: Karl Auerbach [karl () cavebear com] Sent: Thursday, July 24, 2008 5:32 PM To: Dana Spiegel Cc: David Farber Subject: Re: [IP] READ Internet founder blasts ISPs for hurting national interests Dana Spiegel wrote:
We need to open the doors so that new players will provide alternatives to the existing telco and cable TV local copper.Rules and Regulations don't prevent new companies or even existing companies from making investments or making money. This is a completely bogus perception.
The fact that some may go ahead and invest and innovate does not mean that there has not been a diminishment from what could have been. Let's take one example with which I am quite familiar: ICANN. It has created a regulatory system that for a decade has denied the opportunity to those who wish to spend their own money, risk their own shirts, at building completely lawful new top level domain products. ICANN's regulatory system has been a tremendous boon to the incumbents, most particularly Verisign, which I compute is obtaining perhaps more than half a billion (yes billion with a 'b') dollars of yearly profit as a result of ICANN's regulatory protection. And we have the historical example of the way that AT&T, in partnership with its then regulatory partner the FCC, crushed innovation, even innovation as harmless as a plastic widget the Hush-a-Phone) that clamped onto the mouthpiece of a phone handset. It was the puncturing of that regulatory protection via the Carterphone and MCI cases that eventually lead to things like the internet and the huge innovations in communications that we have today. There are, of course, examples of where regulation might have been a good thing. For example, there are the rules that would have permitted CLECs to have equal access to the copper loops that we, the public who, through the accumulation of years, have paid for over and over and over again and have granted valuable concessions to cross public and private rights of way. Those rules, which could have perhaps allowed the growth of alternatives were not enforced and amplified rather than redressed the underlying problem. I'm not suggestion that abandonment of the regulatory system - lord knows that there have been, and still are, enough abuses that such systems are greatly needed. Rather, we need to recognize that regulatory systems are often captured by those being regulated, are often subject to being subverted so that they serve to protect abuse rather than redress it, and are often cast in terms that prohibit what is not desired behaviour rather than terms that open the door to what is desired. --karl-- ------------------------------------------- Archives: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/247/=now RSS Feed: https://www.listbox.com/member/archive/rss/247/ Powered by Listbox: http://www.listbox.com
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- READ Internet founder blasts ISPs for hurting national interests David Farber (Jul 24)
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- READ Internet founder blasts ISPs for hurting national interests David Farber (Jul 24)