Telcos/Cable Firms Seek Net Takeover, as Predicted
July 07, 2006
I thought about writing a long post about the importance of winning the fight to keep the Internet “content neutral” but then came across this short video that lays out the issues better than I can.
On a related note, I well recall the widespread outrage generated by my February, 1994 piece for the New Democrat magazine which made the then-heretical, supposedly anti-market argument that the Clinton administration should not privatize public Internet nodes without an iron-clad promise that the new owners, mostly telcos, would not exploit their position in the future to control the flow of content.
“Turning the Information Superhighway over to a consortium of big companies,” I wrote, “would be like turning Route 66 over to the Teamsters, Amtrak and American Airlines.”
The publication was put out by the Democratic Leadership Council, which was often seen as a semi-official organ of the Clinton Administration. They never invited me back.
Well, here we are.
Not only could this Internet power grab have been predicted. It WAS predicted.
