[governance] Are Internet users powerless or empowered, and how?

[Dan Krimm]

At 9:46 PM -0500 11/30/07, George Sadowsky wrote:
>Dan,
>
>I would disagree that low costs and more consumer choice, as reported
>by Veni, support Karl's claim of powerlessness.

That's not what I said.  Veni pointed out that in the US choice is *low*
(he contrasted that with the higher competition in Bulgaria, which I wish
we had in the US).

In the US, we have relatively little power of choice over consumer
broadband connectivity, compared with many other countries in the world.
This is because of intentional regulatory choices made by the
Republican-controlled FCC, with which I personally disgree quite
vehemently, BTW (especially the categorization of broadband service along
the lines of cable instead of telecom, so as to avoid the
competition-preserving interconnection rules for telecom, upheld on a
narrow technical/procedural basis by SCOTUS in the Brand X case in 2005,
which started-up the whole net neutrality debate in the US legislature
because of the anti-competitive effects in the ISP market in the US).

In any case, this tangent is still a red herring, IMHO.

Dan
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