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How Big Telecom Tried To Kill Net Neutrality Before It Was Even a Concept
An anonymous reader writes This opinion piece at Ars looks at the telecommunications industry's ability to shape policy and its power over lawmakers. "...as the Baby Bells rolled out their DSL service, they saw the cable industry's more relaxed regulations and total lack of competition and wanted the same treatment from the government. They launched a massive lobbying effort to push the Clinton and Bush administrations, the Federal Communication Commission, and Congress to eliminate the network sharing requirement that had spawned the CLEC market and to deregulate DSL services more broadly. Between 1999 and 2002 the four companies spent a combined $95.6 million on lobbying the federal government, according to data from the Center for Responsive Politics, which would rank them above such trade group lobbying behemoths as the Chamber of Commerce and the American Medical Association in total lobbying expenditures for the years. The companies also spent millions to lobby the public directly through aggressive advertising and public relations campaigns."
... instead of spending that money to improve their infrastructure...
I mean.. is this really a surprise?
I hate the concept of having the US government regulating the Internet any more than it already does. The FCC is a PoS, last thing I want is it getting between me an my path to the Internet. Regulation ends up hurting small business as bigger companies lobby to have regs set that push out little guy, look at the relationship between the big banks and government. When the banks fucked up and were set to fail, what did the US government do? Gave them tax payer money to survive. In return the banks give the government citizen records on transactions and deposits all the time
So what you're saying is you're totally not an astroturfer from the other side, and from now on you'd like us to be automatically suspicious of all comments that argue in favor of something you're not in favor of / argue against something you're in favor of (and totally not hoping to shut down any conversation before it starts), and they're probably just comments from people being employed by big evil corporations, but you're totally not astroturfing in the name of net neutrality? And there are totally not any logical fallacies in your argument?
Actually, I'm a big fan of cogent, reasoned responses (to my posts) that put forth a contrary position. They are so rare that I sometimes post a "thank you" in response.
Just saying "this doesn't track with my experience" ("I've taken 200+ cab rides in my life and not once encountered a bad experience", yeah, right), or "you're wrong about that", or "how dare you say the emperor has no clothes" doesn't quite cut it.
So tell me: instead of insinuating that there are logical fallacies in my argument, what exactly *are* the logical fallacies in my argument?
People tend to think of "lobbying" as a dirty word, but keep in mind that lobbying also works on behalf of ideals and organizations you believe in. The EFF is involved in lobbying, for instance, and organization that many of us here appreciate and support. Or, pick an organization you care about, and you can bet they're doing some lobbying of their own. That's not inherently a bad thing.
The word essentially has it's roots in ordinary citizens waiting in the capitol lobby to bend the ear of their representative, telling them how they felt about specific topics. Eventually, it was understood that it's more efficient to hire someone to collectively represent your interested and present them to your representatives, because it's impractical for a politician to meet individually with every single citizen of their district.
The corruption comes in, of course, in the wining and dining of said politicians - when it moves beyond simply trying to convince them and instead giving them subtle or even outright monetary rewards, such as promises of lucrative employment after a term of office is served, etc. That's not lobbying - that's just bribery. I'd be curious to see what exactly all that "lobbying" money is spent on.
Irony: Agile development has too much intertia to be abandoned now.