p2pnet news | Politics:- “Might be just a coincidence, although it’s hard to avoid the conclusion that the Telecom Trotskyites have scored another victory for the left over a Conservative government that is too scared and nervous to do the right thing.”

Nicely turned

It’s from Terence Corcoran in the Financial Post yesterday, and a few pars back:

Who are the Telecom Trotskyites? Regarding all things related to telecommunications and the Internet, there exists a vast community of people who believe that new technologies have laid the groundwork for a revolution that belongs to telecom users. Anything that stands in the way of almost total telecom freedom, that prevents the movement and transfer of information at near-zero cost to and from consumers, must be overthrown as anti-democratic and suppressive.

If the iTune you download can only be used on your iPod, that’s an assault on your rights. If you can’t resend that movie you just got off the Internet to a dozen friends, your rights are being trampled on. If you want to incorporate part of a television show into your work of art or whatever, you should not have to bother with copyright issues. In this view, just about all corporate attempts to limit use of material, backed by copyright law, are viewed as fundamentally opposed to “basic consumer rights.”

Higher up the policy ladder, Telecom Trotskyites fight for any number of regulatory fixes to impose their open-concept plan for the Internet and telecommunications. New technologies, they claim, have created a collective commons that must be wrested from corporate control and turned over to the people. Industry Canada’s recent wireless-spectrum auction regime, which involves a form of nationalization of telephone-cable assets, has its roots in the idea that the people rule.

Another fave topic for these laptop revolutionaries is “net neutrality.” The basic objective here is to turn the Internet and broadband into a wide-open system to which all users, no matter what their business or personal interests, should have more or less open access. No telecom giant should allowed to charge more for some users than others. The telecom companies may own the system, but it belongs to the consumers who use it.

The leading figure in the telecom liberation movement in Canada appears to be Michael Geist, Canada Research Chair on the Internet and law professor at the University of Ottawa. When Mr. Prentice introduced his wireless-spectrum measures last month, Mr. Geist pronounced them inadequate. We need an “open network” system in which every wireless user could access whatever he wanted to access, regardless of carrier. Mr. Geist is also a tireless warrior fighting for Ottawa to bring in some form of net-neutrality regulation or law that would strip telecom firms of their right to operate their business as a business.

Season’s greetings, all you TT-ites

Slashdot it!

Also See:
Financial Post – The Telecom Trotskyites, December 20, 2007

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This entry was posted on Friday, December 21st, 2007 at 6:36 am and is filed under Politics. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

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