Re: [wg-review] A Reply to Miles B. Whitener... Re: The owners of "the Internet" must manage it for their own benefit

[Kent Crispin <kent@songbird.com>]

On Sat, Jan 13, 2001 at 02:11:39AM -0500, Sotiropoulos wrote:
[...]

> Shall we allow the people who own the hardware (and make a fair sum)
> to also dictate the content? 

That is their option.  I own my servers, I can control what is put on
them.   The amount of money I make or lose is irrelevant.

> Shall I let my waiter choose my meal, or
> shall I eat what I please?

You don't eat what you please, you eat what the restaurant cooks, or you
go elsewhere.  The waiter has nothing to do with it -- the waiter is a
flunky who works for the guy that owns the restaurant, and it is the guy
who owns the restaurant that calls the shots.

> After all, I am paying for it.

No, you are paying for a limited number of choices that the restaurant
offers.  If you don't behave according to the rules of the establishment
the owner can throw you out.  If you want to eat something that the
restaurant doesn't offer, then you buy a kitchen and fix what you want. 

On the Internet, if you don't like the conditions your ISP gives you, 
you have several choices, in decreasing order of feasibility:

  a) swallow hard and accept the conditions

  b) go to another ISP 

  c) say "pretty please" and try to sweet talk your ISP into doing
  something different

  d) become your own ISP

  e) organize a consumer boycott and try to influence your ISP through
  economic pressures.

  f) try to pass laws to nationalize your ISP, and then make them do what
  you want.

  g) etc.

-- 
Kent Crispin                               "Be good, and you will be
kent@songbird.com                           lonesome." -- Mark Twain
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