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READ Internet founder blasts ISPs for hurting national interests
From: David Farber <dave () farber net>
Date: Thu, 24 Jul 2008 13:17:39 -0700
________________________________________ From: Karl Auerbach [karl () cavebear com] Sent: Thursday, July 24, 2008 2:05 PM To: David Farber Cc: ip Subject: Re: [IP] Internet founder blasts ISPs for hurting national interests David Farber wrote:
Subject: Internet founder blasts ISPs for hurting national interests
"Basically, it's like little kids in a tantrum: 'I'm not going to build this system unless you give me three scoops of ice cream and a pony,'"
Let's see if I get this right... Let's consider an extremely large and market dominating search engine company that wants to build a new data center. So it shops around to find the community that will give it the biggest incentive package and tax breaks. I would imagine that this is considered OK. But for an ISP to try to even suggest that it might want to be selective when lawfully investing its money into capital expansions, well, that is somehow to be condemned? It might be unsavory to some, but the business of business is to make money, with the limits of law, over a short or long term. To condemn an entity for wanting to maximize the value of its investment dollar is about as meaningful as condemning a wolf for wanting to eat meat. (By the way there is actually a pretty good musical about what happens when you try to make wolfs into vegans.) Over the last 120 years (using the ICC and Sherman Anti Trust Act to mark the epoch) we have learned that sometimes it takes a change of laws or a regulatory body to curb abuses. But sometimes the legal framework that is created serves to foster and protect what can become an abusive system - consider how AT&T overcame its rival telephone companies by becoming a regulated monopoly and, within that regulatory framework, became The Phone Company - TPC (from the movie The President's Analyst.) We have often learned that a better answer is to build a regulatory and legal framework that encourages competition - so that the wolves fight one another rather than chase the bridal party's sled and devour the bride (how's that for an oddly placed literary reference?) The internet is suffering from too much concentration of ownership, I think we can all agree on that. We have too many Telcos, Verisigns, and Googles and too few Brett Glass' and Lariat. What we need are not so many rules that say "no" but more rules that say "yes" to new investment by new competitors. We need to open the doors so that new players will provide alternatives to the existing telco and cable TV local copper. --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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