I bet the regulators are not looking forward to this one at all. I doubt anyone outside the two companies and their stockholders like this idea, but theyāll be bring so many lawyers, so many lobbyist, so many brought politicians, and gods knows what else. Itāll be war. A useless, destructive war.
I donāt understand Xeniās headline, which sounds cleverly snarky but completely misses the point of the article. Copps was articulating the danger of a non-neutral net controlled by politically powerful corporations. Does that make him a silly āLost in Spaceā robot? Personally, I think the danger is very real.
Same here. The snarky āwaves hands, screams ādanger dangerāā headline seems to be entirely dismissive of the warning, as if the former commissioner is the Robot from Lost in Space, over reacting, yet the warning would seem to be one Iād expect every Boinger to agree with. So whatās up with the headline?
From Arstechnica:
"āI thought the Comcast/NBCU merger was beyond the pale,ā Copps told Ars. āI was just stunned to see a couple years later they come back and they have $45 billion to pick up the second largest cable company.ā
Comcast argued that the deal isnāt anti-competitive because Comcast and Time Warner donāt compete against each other for cable and Internet subscribers in any individual cities or towns, but Copps isnāt buying that argument."
Damn it, reality, I was attempting satire!
(also: āāThe impact on customer bills is always hard to quantify. Weāre certainly not promising that customer bills are going to go down or even increase less rapidly,ā Comcast Executive VP David Cohen said in a conference call today in response to a question on price.ā)
Personally, I think the danger is very real.
It was also very real when he was commish, and he hand-wringingly approved the deals that made this inevitable, and set the precedent.
http://transition.fcc.gov/Speeches/Copps/Statements/2001/stmjc125.pdf
but just look at those wringing hands, approving (though with reservations!!).
Iām sure he means well.
http://hraunfoss.fcc.gov/edocs_public/attachmatch/DOC-300754A1.pdf
I hope he dies a bitter and broken man for making his defeats inevitable, and inflicting them on the rest of us; but his repentance is still more useful than the alternative.
Possibly not much, though.
Eh, I kinda thought that, too, but after a little thought: the robot on Lost in Space looked silly, but he was earnest. It looks silly for a former FCC commish to be warning us about this, but I think heās earnest, too.
It works, but apparently more clever than effective.
I got the same feeling about the headline, but I do agree with his thoughts in the editorial. Letās hope /stifle laughter now/ that Congress and the FCC can pull their respective heads from their respective asses and put together something that protects the future of the internet as an area of functionally unbiased communication.
I āgot itā right away, and Iām just an old geezer who can barely figure out how to ātweetā. Why I remember when Compuserveā¦ nevermind.
Anywho, perfect headline, Xeni! Just the right amount of silly. Danger Will Robinson!
How can you take this guy seriously when he was, during his term, at the epicenter of all the financialization / commodification / consolidation?
Right, because once somebody does something you disagree with, they are wrong for life, and can never change their mind or learn anything new. No matter what they have to say, itās best to just mock them. So much easier than all that tedious debate.
I could read it as someone yelling to the darkness of a world gone mad.
He has always talked the good talk. Thatās the point.
Itās not that he came around. Itās that when he had power, he was saying the same exact things as he is today, except voting opposite.
Itās not that he suddenly came around at all. Heās always SAID he was against it, but his votes, when he had power, prove otherwise.
Seems to me, a far bigger story is the reason behind that discrepancy.
Reminds me of the stunning gulf between the pretty noises Obama can make and his deedsā¦
Coercive puppetry? Or are such worthy sentiments invariably an evil mirage?
Can we tag the soon-to-be merger as condoning the āChris Christieā approach? Choke the pipes that go to your opponents? Because thatās whatās gonna happen.
Also, I love that the Comcast CEO sounds hoarse from yelling about how these two behemoths donāt compete and thatās why they should merge. Isnāt it the function of the open market to force those two to compete if they should want market share in the opponentās area?
Fucking hell, the USA is quickly becoming a pessimistās dream come true.
I have to keep revising my worst fears, as theyāre continually surpassed.
ā¦ just like the Robot. Always waving its arms and shouting āDanger Will Robinson!ā, but never actually doing anything.
Writing it off as āLost in Space robotā is pretty fucken shy of the mark Iām aiming for.
Why is there so much daylight between what these public officials profess to believe, and how they act?
Like Obama, Copps can make such a compelling argument in favour of a worthy stance that itās hard to believe he wouldnāt want to walk the talk; if you can argue convincingly in favour of self-evident principles, how can you possibly be disingenuous?
So how is this possible? You might have to put on your tinfoil to get to the bottom of itā¦ what are the odds that at some point in Obamaās ascendancy, he had to lock away his balls after an unfriendly reminder of JFKās fate, or something like that?
Iām not sure how many would still scoff at such a notion, but to those who would, have you been paying attention? The world is clearly ruled by an opaque oligarchy with no accountability whatsoever, and politicians are ever more plainly puppets, along with most of what remains of the fourth estateā¦ and as each decade goes by these scumbags get more blatant as our disenfranchisement grows.
It was almost certainly ever thus to some extent, but particularly these days, politics is virtually devoid of the management of civic affairs, and is instead just a place where big fish hang out to gobble up up little fish. During the cold war, folks believed their own propaganda and seemed to have a bit more respect for the foundations of liberal democracy, but now itās a fucking free-for-all; a race to see who can grab the biggest slice of the pie before it all falls over in a heap. This is plain for anyone to observe; if anybody disagrees, Iām sure others will back me up.
But anyway, I digress. We should be rioting in the steets until these scumbags are explaining their backflips under oath and leading us to the vile banksters et al.
The elite is lawless, and weāre all living in a police state - fuck that noise.
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