IP: utterly misses the point more onThey don't need broadband -- let them eat ----

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

------ Forwarded Message
From: Jock Gill <jock () jockgill com>
Date: Sat, 02 Mar 2002 10:52:57 -0500
To: farber () cis upenn edu
Subject: Re: IP: They don't need broadband -- let them eat ----

Dave,

I think H. Bray utterly misses the point. It is more relevant to remember
what the power trusts in the 20s and 30s had to say about rural
electrification and telephony services.  If they had had their ways, there
would still be large pockets of America with neither power or telephones.
In fact this is the case on many native American reservations even today!
Too many ideologues worship at the alter of the almighty market, and
completely lose sight of the fact that the market destroys the very commons
it requires to flourish.  A monolithic embrace of the market over everything
else is simplostic and fatal to a vibrant civil society.

As a friend writes:

".In fact, in the new world of intellectual property driven colonialism  ...
The better model to think about America's behavior is to think of it as a
colonial power for the information driven century."

In an information driven society, equitable access information, power, is
part of the level playing field that our Democracy is supposed to be about.
Those who have less perfect knowledge have less freedom.  For more on this,
IPers might want to look at the Price Waterhouse Coopers work on "The
Opacity Index" at

 < www.opacityindex.com <http://www.opacityindex.com/> >

Lastly, or Founding Fathers understood that democracy requires the
"Intelligence" [newspapers in the late 18th cnetury] to be deliver with out
market place or political distortions to even the most remote locations in
these United States.

Unfettered communications promote transparency, and more rapid evolution in
the face of a constant state of imperfect knowledge.

Regards,

Jock