[9777] in Commercialization & Privatization of the Internet
Re: More on Telco
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Clay Shirky)
Fri Jan 21 03:17:52 1994
From: Clay Shirky <clays@panix.com>
To: PGSMITH@ucsvax.ucs.umass.edu (Pres Smith)
Date: Thu, 20 Jan 1994 09:48:33 -0500 (EST)
Cc: com-priv@psi.com
In-Reply-To: <01H7W9EO1XYQ8Y8IGQ@phobos.ucs.umass.edu> from "Pres Smith" at Jan 20, 94 06:39:10 am
> I happen to be in favor of attempts at "universal access", preferably
> as in the USPS, and subsidized by the general taxpayer.
Would this not lead to a regressive situation where people who can't afford
networking (or computers or modems) but nevertheless pay taxes end up
supporting access for the middle-class?
> But this is irrelevant to the point being made in earlier posts,
> which was generally that competition lowers prices. With that general
> idea, barring the usual abuses, one can hardly disagree. My point was
> that many of those on Com-Priv are presenting evidence based on their
> rarified experience, rather than the general, and that citing cost
> reductions in long distance service, while it supports the argument
> for competition there, is beside the point for the majority of us with
> little discretionery income.
As a starving artist, I resent the idea that I have some rarefied level
of disretionary income; this is I assure you far from the case. Net access
is a business expense for me. The point about the discussion of com-priv
is that our experiences here are likely to apply to the general case sooner
rather than later. Consider the case of privatising the internet at all. At
the beginning of the decade I could not have gotten local net access for
love or money. I can now get my own IP address for less than $500/year.
Long-distance rates have given us a model which might be more generally
applicable to lowering the barriers to _everyone's_ access, and the courts
have agreed by allowing competition for local markets.
[.....]
> But despite the prospect of cable, telco and
> cellular competition in local markets, the effect may be temporary as
> monopolies emerge or a "mature" situation among several firms leads
> to the usual "administered" industry.
Your proposal for "universal access" looks alot like more like an administered
industry than this competitive model, especially if we take steps to insure
that there is a common carrier model for access to the net for people who
want to offer products and services without being in the business of
administering a network.
> Beyond that, the real idea of "universal access" is to permit
> the sharing of public, social and educational resources--libraries,
> museums, databases, etc.--while the thrust of competition is to
> control access to such services for private profit, via copyright,
> restraint of trade, etc., which are normally features of the
> marketplace, whether regulated by such weak and permeable barriers as in
> our long experience with the FCC, or not.
Your presumption here is that regulated media serve their communities better
than unregulated ones. Take the cable industry; the poor have greater access
to a wider variety of programming for less money in areas where there is
competition for services than in areas where there is one Government-mandated
franchise. As for the sharing of public, social and educational resources,
there has always been a place for civic not-for-profit establishments to use
shared resources in whatever medium, and Al Gore has made it clear that he
means that situation to apply here as well.
For-profit and not-for-profit corporations co-exist in tha real world. Why
should it be an either/or choice here?
--
Clay Shirky
