Think Tanks Mock Net Neutrality With Fake Amendment
from the missing-the-point dept
While most of the press attention today on net neutrality is about how the House rejected net neutrality language, there's one side story that's a bit disappointing, in that it shows how low some think tanks and politicians have stooped in this debate. Declan McCullough, over at News.com, plays along with a silly and misleading attempt by some think tanks and a Congressman to mock network neutrality support, by introducing an obviously stupid amendment to apply "neutrality" to all companies that do business on the internet -- such as Google or Amazon. So, for example, the backers of the bill claim, Amazon couldn't do an exclusive deal with Toys R Us, because that would be "discriminatory." They put forth this bill and support it with idiotic quotes from the same think tanks that have been against network neutrality, by saying this proves the bad logic of supporting network neutrality. Except, it doesn't. All it shows is that these think tanks either don't actually understand what network neutrality means (doubtful) or are being purposely misleading in describing what it means. Obviously, some may say that it's no surprise these think tanks would be purposely misleading, but you would hope that they would at least take the debate seriously.Through out this debate, we've tried to stay pretty neutral, while pointing out problems with the arguments on both sides, but the statements in this article are really bad. It's yet another case of think tanks (including our friends over at the Progress & Freedom Foundation) setting up a totally bogus strawman, and then destroying it to support their argument. The point of network neutrality isn't some Utopian "everyone must be equal" concept -- but a real concern for a lack of competition in the broadband space. The telcos were given a ton of money in subsidies and incentives to build out a wired, natural monopoly network. The government gave them rights of way which no one else can get. In exchange, they had to open their networks up to others to provide services. In other countries, this has resulted in robust competition and better services -- which was the point.
With companies like Google and Amazon, that doesn't apply. There was no government granted natural monopoly. There are no rights of way issues. There were no subsidies and incentives in exchange for promises that weren't met. There is no stifling of competition. The purpose of network neutrality isn't a Utopian vision, but a simple response to a natural monopoly where competition is going to lead to better results. To pretend otherwise for the sake of a cheap publicity stunt is really a sad move by a group of people who clearly have no desire to actually discuss the root of the issue.
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The funny part of this, is that the House of Representatives has historically been known as "The People's House" because its structure and rules historically has made it a more "populist" body. Miscreants like Tom DeLay, who created the "K Street Project" to create a way for corporations to funnel money to Republican House members more efficiently. Thanks to men (mostly) like DeLay, we now have a House of Reps that laughs in derision at the notion that infrastructure such as the Internet should be available equally to all users. To them, the notion of equal access is high comedy.
Next time, I'll explain why these conservative so-called "think-tanks" suck so bad. For now, remember for a moment why this country was founded, what the founders believed. Think for a moment about the wording of the Declaration of Independence. Read Madison or Jefferson. Then walk down to the office of your local Republican rep and throw a brick through his window. Be an American.
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Why Is It Always the Rich?
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Re: Why Is It Always the Rich?
"I said 'Yeah, we'll just order that up right now,' " Mr. Snow recalled in an interview this morning.
Minutes after that exchange, at 3:45 p.m., the national security adviser, Stephen J. Hadley, left the room in response to note passed to him asking that he call the American ambassador to Iraq in Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad.
"We think we have Zarqawi," Mr. Khalilzad told him.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/06/08/world/middleeast/08cnd-bush.html?ex=1307419200&en=000c 058ded7db464&ei=5088&partner=rssnyt&emc=rss
I'll have some fries with that.
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Don't try that on your home pc.
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Re: Why Is It Always the Rich?
If anything, Google giving all its money to Democratic causes shows a belief in a set of values (do no evil?) whereas telco companies have to hedge their bets between Democrats and Republicans so they can ensure that no matter who has a majority they can ram their stinker ideas down our throats. Which of these two approaches ought we be more critical of?
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Re:
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Re:
Thanks for the history lesson. I'll take our system AND our congress over any other group out there. Go and live in another country for a year. It's a great experience, but it also gave me an appreciation of how good we have it.
By the way, the amendment this article referred to was proposed by Rep. Charles Gonzalez a Texas Democrat.
If you think the Democrats don't have rich, powerful corporations backing them up you're just a tad on the ignorant side. What about the unions backing the democrats with their interests? Have you seen the statistics on how much each party raises each year?
Like the Democrats don't have ways to funnel money to their causes. How many 527 plans are there? How many of those give money to their preferred party or cause? Democrats in Congress are just as rich as Republicans, they just have to work harder at hiding it from their poor, down-trodden, working-class constituency. Give me a break. While you're raising your blood pressure about DeLay, how's that guy from Louisiana doing? William Jefferson, I believe? And just how much money did he have in his freezer?
When you tell us how bad conservative 'think-tanks' suck, please include a dissertation how liberal 'think-tanks' are so beneficial for Americans. (By the way, I've been impressed with your vocabulary on this and other posts - do you subscribe to Evelyn Wood's Vocabulary Dynamics?)
I've read Madison, I've read Jefferson (reading a biography right now) and I actually carry a pocket sized version of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence with me in my coat pocket. (I'm a nerd, but a well read nerd.) Since you are condescending, er excuse me, stooping, to tell us to read the above authors, perhaps you'll enlighten us as to just what in the hell you are talking about?
I thought the above article was speaking to a poorly thought out amendment (proposed by a democrat) regarding net neutrality?
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Vote your Wallet
As for net nuetrality how can anyone expect a politician, republican or democrap, to legislate something they know nothing about. That's what lobbyist are for.
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Flawed argument
So isnt this argument really about who should make the money and not if money should be made?
It is also noteworthy how the main points keep changing. At first it was neterok providers should not be allowed to block any traffic and now it has morphed to not enabling preferential traffic. There are plenty of real world business models that highlight the stupidity of this argument. Semi private country clubs enable members who PAY for preferential treatment to play earlier and reserve better tee times. Heck even some public golf course enable those that sign up for an annual card preference over those that dont and these are all own and run by local and state governements. At some level these are nothing more than SLA's. Can you imagine banning SLA's so that core business network services could not recieve priority over consumer traffic? Why doesnt this violate net neutrality. I mean after all why should that giant comapny paying 300X what I do for services slow down my download when my tax dollars helped pay for the network. Again all of these areguments are silly and baseless in the real world.
As I have said many times before, netowrk capacity is not unlimited and the companies and their investors that poured BILLIONSof dollars into improving their networks should have every right to engage in viable bus models that repay these loans and bring value to shareholders. If you want to object than dont by the service and let the free market work.
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Re: Flawed argument
As to rights-of-way, these aren't exclusive to incumbent Bells; anyone willing to pay the local authority (not the "government" writ large as TechDirt implies) a ROW fee can did trenches to their heart's content. Anyone who lives in an urban area has seen that.
It's not absurd to think that, if net neutrality is really about combating anti-competitive behavior, it can't be extended to other layers. You think YouTube was happy when Google Video landed exclusive distribution rights to Colbert's speech at the WH Correspondents' Dinner and YouTube had to take their clip down? Was that anticompetitive on Google's part?
What if TechDirt wanted to launch a competing search engine. Google, Yahoo and MS have all bought up unused server farms from the dot-com bust, and are now constructing new ones in low-tax places like central Washington state. Why are they spending so much on servers? It increases their caching capacity and speeds their search engines, giving them a competitive advantage over the TechDirt search engine. Wouldn't it be better for competition if Google couldn't speed up its search through billions in investments but had to offer end-users the same functionality that TechDirt's search engine provides? Don't we all want to live in that world?
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Re: Re: Flawed argument
If Verizon deprioritized a PAC's traffic for the few days before an election to disrupt their voter turnout drives I don't think we'd be wondering if its a problem or not. Of course they'd deprioritize a couple other sites too, just to cover their tracks, but they'd have the right to and no one could question it. No one could question it.
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Re: Flawed argument
Oh, i'm sorry, are they giving away the internet?
can you please point me to the company that gives away their banwidth for free?
Last i checked, i had to pay for my internet access, so maybe you can explain to me how this is anything else but a way of controlling consumers content to their benefit.
Look, we happen to live on a planet called "earth". In this planet, technology advances a lot in very short periods of time, bandwidth could be a LOT higher than it is right now for the SAME price, but why would the telcos bother with new technology, when they can charge you whatever the hell they want with little oposition from competition?
case in point:
Telmex. I live in Mexico, there's extremley limited competition to this telco, and they are the number one internet provider in the country, this company is owned by one of the richest man on earth, the third one to be exact. (this is on a third world country mind you...)
Telmex charges 800 pesos for 1 megabit of bandwidth, that's about 75 dollars for 1 megabit, they got no competition.. so whats preventing them from one day adopting a model like one that the telcos want in the US? they control the bandwidth allready, next up.. the content.
So you belive we have a shortage of bandwidth, care to share your facts please? can you please show us, how it's not possible for telcos to increase banwdidth with out transforming the internet into a private network?
Or maybe you can explain to me how countries like Japan, Korea... and even China are able to offer internet acecss for about 40 bucks a month, with a bandwdith of 100 mbit/sec?
care to explain that for me?
Obviously those countries don't have monopolies as huge as the ones in Canada, the US, Mexico and pretty much all of latin america.
The fact is the US telcos were given HUGE tax breaks to build a fiber optic network that they never actually got around building, and they actually have a broadband fee that they charge you on your phone bill that was supposed to be destined for building this promised network that never became a reality.
And i just LOVE your analogy of comparing a fitness club to an internet service... they are nothing alike.
The internet has pretty much become a nessesity for todays world, golf... well, let's just say your analogy ends here.
This is nothing more than an attempt to roll back things back to the way they were before this inconvinience for them called the internet, so they can keep charging you for phone service (obsolete service, it uses extremley low bandwidth for the capabilities of todays technology.) and so they can keep charging you obscene prices for TV programming like cable.
(Again.. the technology is here so we could have multiple HDTV streams open at the same time, from companies that are not the usual suspects...)
If they were to advance with technology, they would be destroying themselves, this is obviously why they are doing this.
Can you just imagine if we had a fiber optic network like in Japan? there would be a TON of video providers, not just the usual monopolies. The telephone is eventually gonna be erased of the phase of the earth, but if the telcos have their way, not for a long time on US soil.
so to recap... the Telcos old way of doing bussines is OBSOLETE, the technology has been here for years, just who the hell do you think you're fooling when you're saying that this is a bandwdith issue?
that's like saying the fastest computer you can get is a 486 in todays world.
I think the telcos are going to eventually lose this battle, because technology always prevails, but i gotta ask, at what cost?
Just how many countries need to pass the US and the rest of the Americas before we get rid of these guys?
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YouTube, BrightCove, and Skype should be worried
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"The point of network neutrality isn't some Utopian "everyone must be equal" concept -- but a real concern for a lack of competition in the broadband space." It seems to me that most of the people who support network neutrality *are* pushing the "everyone must be equal" concept. Network neutrality is simply anti-capitalism. A business which owns assets (in this case, network infrastructure) should be able to ask for payment when someone else wants to use that asset (by sending data over it). It really is that simple. Now people get all up in arms about this because they think telcos are going to block Google or something like that, but obviously any company that does something stupid like that is going to lose customers left and right until they change their mind or go out of business.
Your main argument, about lack of competition, simply isn't true anymore. I can get DSL service from over a dozen different providers. I can get cable internet from two different providers. I can get FIOS. I can even get broadband over my cell phone. I can go to Starbucks and hook up to their wi-fi network. There is *lots* of competition for broadband. The argument that the telcos originally were given subsidies to build out their network so they should submit to more regulation now is bogus too. The solution to monopolies isn't to protect those monopolies with more regulation, the solution is to remove the regulations that make the monopoly possible in the first place. That will encourage competition by lowering the barriers to entry.
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Competition? What Competition?
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Re: Competition? What Competition?
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That DSL from a dozen carriers, is leased from the Telco's. FIOS, telco, broadband over cell, still telco. If you are like me I can get cable from 3 companies, all 3 use 1 carriers backbone. And driving to use wi-fi is hardly competition, because they use the telco or cable backbone.
If I put 300 doors on the outside of my house, but lock the doors to every room unless you pay me, you don't have competition. Your door may be close to my living room, but only the guy paying from the farther away door gets access.
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What the H*ll?
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Silly rabbit
Thank you for explaining that lobbyists' purpose in Washington is to explain all that complicated legislation stuff to lawmakers. I had no idea they provided such an important public service. I better apologize to Tom DeLay right now (I better hurry in case he doesn't read his email before going to prison).
Seriously, would you mind terribly if I showed your comment to some friends as an example of astonishing ignorance and dishonesty?
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Silly Rabbit
Nuff said.
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Missing the Point Again.
The truth is that the internet access is at best a government subsidized utility provided by private corporations in a monopoly or duopoly marketplace. The costs involved necessitate this situation. I think it's enough that telecommunications is a private industry at all. I don't think anyone is arguing this is a good thing. The rest of the world has followed our lead on this to great effect, but there need to be limits, and it has to be regulated to the common good. The internet is a still developing marketplace with an almost unlimited potential for profit gains. We need to consider more carefully the potential damage handing stewardship of such a marketplace to corporate interests will have on our economy as a whole.
As far as I see it Republicans are shooting themselves in the foot for their shortsightedness by pushing a tiered internet so hard. It goes to show how far the lobbyist culture as penetrated the hill that Republicans aren't even legislating to their own benefit or platform anymore. A lobbyist is not an expert; they are a corporate interest-monger. Unfortunately our representatives seem to have a hard time distinguishing the difference.
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People seem to have missed this point completely, judging by the comments that have followed. Telco's are not "subsidized" anymore.
Commenters who said "they got money from our government", "and who are paid monthly by the public" and (here's a doozy) "The truth is that the internet access is at best a government subsidized utility" are all WRONG. The internet is successful largely because it is relatively free of government regulation, and it needs to stay that way. Government-mandated "neutrality" will only stifle innovation.
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The conclusion I have reached is simple. There is a glaring conflict of interests. Network carriers must be banned from all business outside shifting packets from one place to another unless the market is wide open to all to create new networks with no reguation whatsoever. By allowing a finite number of carriers to also provide services that utilise the infrastructure there can never be an impartial, balanced and stable operational framework, regardless of whether regulation or market forces are employed to moderate pricing.
The only solution is either to introduce a cast iron partition demarkating which businesses may provide network infrastructure and those which may provide services on that system, whereupon existing anti-trust, competition laws and natural market forces will maintain a stable environment. If necessary companies with a conflict of interests should be broken up and forced to sell off their service or network assets. The alternative is to remove all regulation to the creation of new networks. Unlike roads in physical reality, there is no theoretical limit to the expansion of network bandwidth. It is only partial regulation unfavorable to individuals and small startups buying up public airspace and cable that keeps the equation finite and thus keeps a lid on an artificially scarce market. In short, the problem is neither the market, nor regulation, it is bad, partial regulation that serves those who are both owners and service providers.
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overlords, and wish them the best in their world domination.
GDog
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The Right to Write
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Off shore
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If this country wants me to try and to earn here, I am going to need an incentive, when more people see this we will be able to let other countries worry about immigration and security. It won't be long at this rate until people flee this country like rats from a sinking ship
But the up side is they just blew the coffer dam at three rivers in China, a country where at least when they feed you a pile of crap they offer you salt for your crap, instead of trying to tell you its sherbert. If we do something to bring everyone in and motivate all our citizens, we might only be able to barely keep up with China after five years. If we continue to let our government be sold to corporate america, and fractilize our society, China will economically bury us by 2015.
The moral of the story, have neutrality.... I won't swim against a flushing toilet, I am going to learn Mandarin and go get a government job. I'll come back and visit all the non government/corporate employees in their staw huts in a few years. Ahhhhh how I will laugh and point when americans are the ones in breadlnes, and the Chinese are saying,"but labor is so much cheaper over there..."
See also comment 16 this poster seems to be a touch better spoken and a lot less disienfranchised than myself. At any rate it is still time for a tea party....
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Re:
I've already acquired some land overseas and I'm currently having a house built there. Even if I don't leave America anytime soon, there's no way I'm retiring here. Not only will my money not go as far, by the time I hit retirement age, America will likely be a full on fascist state by then.
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government subsidy
if you and i want to compete, and your service was subsidized 30 years ago, and mine wasn't, you esentailly entered the market with a significant advantage over me. the advandtage came courtesy of the subsidies paid to you by the government.
the government may no longer be paying those telco subsidies, but it doesn't change the fact that the industry was builit on and the players in the industry still exist to this day thanks to subsidies paid by the government.
no one can compete with the telcos because they entered the market with a significant advantage. that makes the telco industry a government susidized oligopoly.
the telecoms deregulated in 1996 and what did they do? roll out fiber across the country? no, they spent billions buying up their competitors while the bottom fell out of the long distance market.
and just how is there going to be competition between a handful of providers with local monopolies?
there won't be becuse whatever thing you come up with to compete with the telcos will eventually plug into the internet backbone which is made up of... say it with me... telcos!
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Why 'net neutrality' was a bad idea
All well and good.
Now someone starts tinkering with flight. They build a 'wright flier' and launch it off a cliff and it flies. Now more and more people are building 'fliers' and they are getting heaver but also faster. Soon you see fliers using the streets paid for by your monthly fee. So far the accidents have been minimal. When a 'flier' ( now called an airplane ) crashes into a car no big pile ups have happened.
Now a major change happens. Big businesses are now constructing big 747 like jet airplanes. But they don't want to pay for airports with big runways to let them fly faster. No, they want to use the existing set of streets and highways that your monthly fees have paid for.
Soon there will be huge traffic tie-ups on the highway you want to use because some 747 has decided to land on it. You have to re-plan your route and hope some other huge 747 hasn't used your alternate.
Wouldn't it make more sense to build airports for jet aircraft and limit use of those runways to jet aircraft (keep the cars off) while still allowing cars to use the streets and highways that their money has already paid for?
OK, lets say we agree that jet runways should be constructed. Now, who should pay for those big and expensive runways? Should it be the little guy who only drives his car on the streets and highways? Or should it be the big companies with the jet airplanes?
Net Neutrality would allow capacity-hogging traffic (streaming HD VoD and VoIP) along the same 'pipes' that your little blog would want to travel.
I think it makes much more sense to have the providers of streaming HD VoD and VoIP pay extra for a build-out of high-bandwidth, low-latency set of connections to carry that capacity-consuming traffic and allow the existing connections to continue to carry the traffic that exists, today.
But wait, you say! Your local asphalt company now wants to get into the business of constructing and flying jet airplanes! What about that? OK, so what? The asphalt-now-jet plane company will know that it would harm their car customers if they tried to land jet airplanes on the local asphalt road. So it is not in their best interest to harm their customers in that way.
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Consumers don't care.. yet anyway
If I do a search for "Early Roman Empire" and come across an educational site thats free and as not a single ad on it, I want the site and its pictures to load fast -- because I'm paying $50 instead of the $10 or less for dial-up. Why in gods name should it be slow? WTF would I have to do it get lightening-fast accesss to pure information for research, etc, go to my university to get in their intranet and then be SOL with more 56k-like speeds (or slower?!) if the information isn't available at the library or their intranet?
This is a return to the stone age. Consumers I don't think will care how the language is, but they'll care when they can't get to what they want.
I think it seems clear this won't go the way it should, Verizon and co will carry the battle. I think we can only really hope that our ISPs somehow offer a plan where we possibly pay more but get access to priority traffic, ie, like I said, everywhere we try to go is fast. Thats pathetic to have to pay more though when most people understood their internet connection to be unlimited high-speed.
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Out of curiousity ...
Just out of curiousity, how much would streaming HD, VoD and VoIP impact on the Fiber Optic backbone here in the U.S.?
It's been a few years, but I thought there was something like 60% dark fiber (fiber optic cable which is laid but unused at the moment) plus add the technology to push through more data (like 100 times the current load) on current lines using different colored light. Will the "capacity hogging" traffic really have that much of an impact?
I'm all for Net Neutrality, but I also understand that if I want "screaming internet" I'm going to have to pay a premium for it. As little as 5 or 6 years ago, 55% of Americans did not have access to high-speed internet. What percentage of Americans have it today?
I currently use Roadrunner light at home, and frankly I don't really notice the difference. I have something like 80 channels of crap via Time Warner and I hardly watch it television anymore. I'm considering limiting my cable to the basic 30 or so channels as we speak. The shows I like I buy on DVD. Video on demand? Don't use it because I don't want to pay for it. I'd rather buy or rent the DVD. My cell bill has steadily been falling, so I can't see myself using VOIP.
As a business owner, I have a high-speed connection but hardly ever use it for more than data-transmission. Every once in a while I will watch a podcast, but that is the exception not the norm. I have a land line, but use my cell for 85% of my calls. A few years ago we tried video conferencing, but the conclusion after two years was that our business suffered because face-to-face time was limited. I travel more, but my business and income has increased. According to one of my customers, "we like you because you take the time to be here in person."
Am I the exception or the norm? I do know that my expenses have gone down after sky-rocketing in the late 1990's. Why? I got rid of all the extra capacity that I never used. How many Americans will be using these technologies? And be willing to pay for them?
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Quoting you agian.. forgot to add something, ok so if this is a money issue, how come they don't offer you this increased network capacity for a price? they are not even CONSIDERING this option, they want to control the content you can use, and that's all there is to it.
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Remember when........Things changes
Next. Dial up, competition with everyone offering more bandwidth to the point of tech limit of the local loop. Next price drop competition. Then the sites increase their content slowing the dialup.
Now we have broadband access, in my area with limited competition, I still see some price reduction. But with the increase bandwidth, The sites increase content.
Things to consider, The industry is still changing, players come and losers go. The ones the offer the best under whatever the conditions are, will win and call the shots, whether the Government helps or hinders.
Sit back and enjoy or endure the ride….
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In the end the loser is average Joe. Let me tell y
I, you and average Joe get on google to search anything we look for without paying google a penny.
If verizon starts charging google because I, you and average joe using the engine then google is going to charge me, you and average joe.
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get government mandated monopolies out of the cont
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identify those who naysay net neutrality
Each of these organizations that spew on net neutrality; Each of these players that voice bad opinion about net neutrality; each of these politicians that insist on no net neutrality protection; all should be catalogued, monitored, and documented thoroughly. This way when Acres at AT&T makes his move, Siedenberg at Verizon makes his move and the rest of the cable and satellite monopolies all band together to control the web... every one of these people that supported no protection for the web can be tracked down and held responsible. There will be no room for political sidestepping and these people will be branded the next next time they run for public office or try to claim they represent the interests of society.
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The propaganda, OH the propaganda...
Bought, and paid for by the Teclo's propaganda department.
FACT: Telcos were given a ton of money in subsidies and incentives to build out a wired, natural monopoly network. The government gave them rights of way (which no one else can get). In exchange, they had to open their networks up to others to provide services. In other countries, this has resulted in robust competition and better services -- which was the point. I.E. WE PAID FOR THEIR NETWORK!
And you think misdirection in the media is bad now?
Lack of bandwidth and QoS is a front, a lie. The point is that big Telco's should not have the right to filter, limit or give preference to ANY content in ANY way.
Canada's internet is suffering from not having network neutrality with no recourse. Would you have us be next?
http://www.slyck.com/news.php?story=1083
What will it take to pull our head out of the dirt? If we give private corporations control of OUR public information superhighway, you don't think they will put of a toll gate at on/off ramps? Whoever controls information, is in the drivers seat of our country. "We the People," ring any bells? If you think is about anything other than power, control, and profits, your a complete idiot and deserve what you get.
The Bill our elected officals rejected: (and it looked good to me) http://www.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/epo0631.pdf
This is a Pandora's box. You need to take a step back and look at the big picture, how can you even think this is about QoS? QoS is not even a term or technology with defined rules as there are MANY things that fall under this term. Quality, in QoS, is defined differerntly depending on who you ask. For the VoIP end user is means sound consistency, for the ISP's it means PROFIT MARGINS, i.e. whoever can pay us the most can get a guarantee their data comes first and anyone else gets what's left over if anything! Or mabey we will give preference and punishment a try.
QoS on Cisco equipment is giving priority rating to a protocol by tagging the packets sending them out in a first come first served basis by priority and hope the next stop qualifies them the same way we tagged them, QoS on a WatchGuard Appliance is bandwidth throttling or capping of a protocol or destination for the traffic on it's own ports. The QoS Telco talk about not possible except in a laboratory where there are only 2 traffic type and combined = the total bandwidth available. Not in any network outside of a controlled lab, my dear diluted propaganda technicians.
You may think this is not about the Skype and Vantage taking profits from the outdated business model of AT&T. But know that the Teclo's smell a windfall of profit if we lay down and give them the power to say who can do what, where, and when, or not on MY network.
The current laser technology can afford us terabytes per second of data, this can be sent on a single fiber line, arguing that there is not enough throughput mind boggling. And a fiber trunk can carry upwards of 96 fiber or more. And there are hundreds of thousands of miles of "dark fiber" across America are left unused, left dormant by bankrupted startup web companies.
Will we let the Telco's be the next OPEC Oil Barons of our information? How much is a byte of content this week AT&T? Oh, you don't like them? I guess i'll have to trust you have my best interest in mind when you tell me I can't go there...yea, ok...
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