READ Internet founder blasts ISPs for hurting national interests

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

________________________________________
From: Karl Auerbach [karl () cavebear com]
Sent: Thursday, July 24, 2008 5:32 PM
To: Dana Spiegel
Cc: David Farber
Subject: Re: [IP] READ Internet founder blasts ISPs for hurting national interests

Dana Spiegel wrote:

> > We need to open the doors so that new players will provide alternatives
> > to the existing telco and cable TV local copper.
>
> Rules and Regulations don't prevent new companies or even existing
> companies from making investments or making money. This is a completely
> bogus perception.

The fact that some may go ahead and invest and innovate does not mean
that there has not been a diminishment from what could have been.

Let's take one example with which I am quite familiar: ICANN.  It has
created a regulatory system that for a decade has denied the opportunity
to those who wish to spend their own money, risk their own shirts, at
building completely lawful new top level domain products.  ICANN's
regulatory system has been a tremendous boon to the incumbents, most
particularly Verisign, which I compute is obtaining perhaps more than
half a billion (yes billion with a 'b') dollars of yearly profit as a
result of ICANN's regulatory protection.

And we have the historical example of the way that AT&T, in partnership
with its then regulatory partner the FCC, crushed innovation, even
innovation as harmless as a plastic widget the Hush-a-Phone) that
clamped onto the mouthpiece of a phone handset.  It was the puncturing
of that regulatory protection via the Carterphone and MCI cases that
eventually lead to things like the internet and the huge innovations in
communications that we have today.

There are, of course, examples of where regulation might have been a
good thing.  For example, there are the rules that would have permitted
CLECs to have equal access to the copper loops that we, the public who,
through the accumulation of years, have paid for over and over and over
again and have granted valuable concessions to cross public and private
rights of way.  Those rules, which could have perhaps allowed the growth
of alternatives were not enforced and amplified rather than redressed
the underlying problem.

I'm not suggestion that abandonment of the regulatory system - lord
knows that there have been, and still are, enough abuses that such
systems are greatly needed.  Rather, we need to recognize that
regulatory systems are often captured by those being regulated, are
often subject to being subverted so that they serve to protect abuse
rather than redress it, and are often cast in terms that prohibit what
is not desired behaviour rather than terms that open the door to what is
desired.

                --karl--




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