IP: telecom red-baiting

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

> Date: Wed, 17 Oct 2001 16:59:46 -0400
> To: farber () cis upenn edu
> From: "David P. Reed" <dpreed () reed com>
> Subject: telecom red-baiting
>
> Those of us who are serious about exploring opening up the spectrum and 
> creating user-financed fiber systems now have to cope with being called 
> communists, and violently anti-capitalist:
>
> >
> > http://www.worldtribune.com/wta/Archive-2001/mc10_01.html
> >
> > "Leave it to the geniuses in the People's Republic of San Francisco to 
> come
> > up with a full-blown communist solution to that problem. In a move that
> > would leave the most violent anti-capitalist revolutionary in 1959 Cuba
> > aglow with feverish ecstasy, some Bay Area citizens are constructing 
> "free"
> > wireless networks. These wireless local area networks (LAN) offer free
> > Internet access to anybody with a laptop/PC compliant with the 802.11b
> > wireless networking standard and within range of the wireless LAN's
> > antenna."
>
> I am about as big a fan of open markets as they come, and see no problem 
> with user-financed networking.  I guess the problem is that these folks 
> annoy companies that convince governments to give them monopoly rights 
> where they are not needed and block competition.  That may make the free 
> wireless folks market revolutionaries, but hardly a violently 
> anti-capitalist revolutionaries.
>
> The true anti-capitalist parasites are more likely to be found in the big 
> incumbent telecoms.
>
> - David
> --------------------------------------------
> WWW Page: http://www.reed.com/dpr.html


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