Slashdot Mirror
Rick Boucher To Chair House Internet Committee
Misch writes "Representative Rick Boucher (D-VA) will be taking the chair of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet. Rep. Boucher has been an advocate for consumers rights, is a co-founder of the Congressional Internet Caucus, and has participated in a Slashdot Interview. He was instrumental in defeating key escrow, back in the day."
The entrenched cable and telco companies wouldn't argue in favor of reducing regulatory barriers. On the contrary, they willingly accept such minor restrictions as they can't work around in exchange for effective protection from competition. An invasive regulatory environment best serves the incumbent providers.
"The state is that great fiction by which everyone tries to live at the expense of everyone else." - Bastiat
Over here, they created telco regulations at the turn of the century, at a time the incumbent providers were already very few and very entrenched.
It was horrible.
The regulations got used. When the entrenched telcos tried to stifle the growth of up-and-coming providers with underhanded tactics, they got punished -- I kid you not! The mind boggles. Those guys were only trying to keep making money!
So now we got up to 20Mbps (in the countryside, don't know about cities) with no cap, with such things as custom reverse DNS and IPv6 as free options, installation on Linux officially supported, TV-over-DSL with hundreds of channels, and, oh, free phone to half the planet, too, all for a fixed monthly rate of about $22. The horror! The former entrenched telcos weeped a lot as they lost the marketshare they were rightfully entitled to.
Some silly liberals are probably going to bring forth some silly theory about the point of regulation being to prevent attempts by private interests to stifle competition, but that's a silly notion, of course. And probably a little subversive.
-- B.
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