{"id":188707,"date":"2010-08-09T18:49:00","date_gmt":"2010-08-09T23:49:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2010\/08\/09\/obama-consensus-building-the-incumbent-oligopolies-win-we-lose\/"},"modified":"2010-08-09T18:49:00","modified_gmt":"2010-08-09T23:49:00","slug":"obama-consensus-building-the-incumbent-oligopolies-win-we-lose","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/2010\/08\/09\/obama-consensus-building-the-incumbent-oligopolies-win-we-lose\/","title":{"rendered":"Obama Consensus Building:  The Incumbent Oligopolies Win, We Lose"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Google and Verizon have <a href=\"http:\/\/online.wsj.com\/article\/SB10001424052748704388504575419542307824622.html?mod=WSJ_newsreel_business\">released the details of their carve up the <span>internet<\/span> among the big players proposal<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p><span style=\"color: #000099;\">Google Inc. and Verizon Communications  Inc. on Monday called for equal treatment of most Internet traffic while at the same time saying fast-growing cellular networks and yet-to-be-developed broadband services should be exempt from such restrictions.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000099;\">Google and Verizon released a proposal arguing that broadband providers shouldn&#8217;t be able to discriminate against Internet content providers. Marcelo Prince and Amy <span>Schatz<\/span> discuss. Also, Dennis <span>Berman<\/span> discusses why bond investors are giving up on recovery and jobs.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000099;\">The ideas outlined in the proposal put forth by the Internet search giant and one of the largest broadband providers stand in contrast to the Federal Communications Commission&#8217;s recent proposals on &#8220;net neutrality&#8221; rules, which would prevent companies from giving preferential handling to certain types of online traffic.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"color: #000099;\">In <span>Google&#8217;s<\/span> case, the proposal&#8217;s endorsements of two-tier Internet service and a hands-off approach to cellular-based Web services represent a break with many other online companies, which have argued for strict neutrality in how Internet traffic is treated. Google itself previously expressed general support for rules prohibiting discrimination among forms of Web traffic.<\/span><span style=\"color: #000099;\"><br \/><\/span><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>This is a direct consequence of the tenor and approach of Barack Obama.  It is clear that in <span>internet<\/span> access, the incumbents have taken <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">billions<\/span> of government subsidies, and used this money to cement their monopoly positions, rather than improvement access.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s why US <span>internet<\/span> performance and penetration<sup>*<\/sup> is the worst in the developed world.<\/p>\n<p>These are not people who you partner with to get the outcome you want, these are people you <span style=\"font-weight: bold;\">defeat<\/span> to get the outcomes you want.<\/p>\n<p>As to the long term consequences, I&#8217;ll go with <a href=\"http:\/\/www.eschatonblog.com\/2010\/08\/awful-and-dumb.html\">what <span>Atrios<\/span> says<\/a>:<\/p>\n<blockquote style=\"color: #000099;\"><p>I&#8217;m one who thinks that ultimately the forces of light will prevail  and the repeated attempts to carve out <span>internet<\/span> walled gardens will,  over the long run, fail as killing the <span>internet<\/span> would&#8230; kill the  <span>internet<\/span>. But the long run is a long time and companies will likely  screw and gouge us over the not very short run unless the FCC acts.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So not <span>hopey<\/span> <span>changey<\/span>, and as I have said before, this sort of craven acquiescence to the incumbent players who screwed everything in the first place appears to be a core philosophy of Barack Obama and His Clueless Minions<sup>\u2122<\/sup>, whether it be telecommunications, finance, <span>healthcare<\/span>, etc.<\/p>\n<p><sup>*<\/sup><span style=\"font-size: 78%;\">That sounds dirty, doesn&#8217;t it?<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Google and Verizon have released the details of their carve up the internet among the big players proposal: Google Inc. and Verizon Communications Inc. on Monday called for equal treatment of most Internet traffic while at the same time saying fast-growing cellular networks and yet-to-be-developed broadband services should be exempt from such restrictions. Google and &hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1067,970,997,1111,985,1025],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-188707","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-communications","category-corruption","category-internet","category-monopoly","category-regulation","category-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188707"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=188707"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/188707\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=188707"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=188707"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.panix.com\/~msaroff\/40years\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=188707"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}