Susan Crawford -- Captive audience
==================================

"Captive audience" is good analysis of a very aggravating and
possibly unsolvable problem.  Crawford is showing us that some
problems just cannot be solved in the U.S. with our form of
government.  When the Federal government can be bought, or at least
rented, by sources of concentrated wealth, wealthy individuals and
the corporations in Crawford's analysis in particular, you will get
decisions and regulations that work for them, not for the rest of
us, and not in the best interests of all.  "Captive audience" is a
detailed description of this problem.

Crawford makes it sound very grim.  Not only are we getting
sub-standard service, but we're paying higher prices.  And, because,
she claims, Comcast is effectively a monopoly in many regions, the
likelihood is that Internet service will not improve and lag further
behind other developed countries.
worse.

Crawford's proposed remedy is regulation.  But, we have a government
by and for corporations.  Lobbying works with our Federal
government.  Therefore, it is very much in the interest of large
corporations to invest heavily in lobbying.  The returns on that
investment are too large to be ignored.  Regulative capture of
Federal agencies by corporations is endemic in the U.S.  So, why
would Crawford think that regulation, which she claims has failed to
stop Comcast's abuses so far, would help in the future?
Deregulation is and has been the trend.  Crawford is fighting
against the wind.

And, of course, we all love to hate our TV service and Internet
service providers.  Perhaps that's just part of what it means to be
human.  If it weren't for that antipathy, Crawford's book would not
have near as much bite as it does.  In part, that's because the real
negative aspects await us in the future, when other developed
nations move far beyond the U.S. with respect to broadband Internet
service.

So, that's another worry to Crawford's book: If these trends and
tendencies continue, that is if Internet service and access in the
U.S. continues to be regulated for the benefit of the corporations
that provide it, rather than for users of that service, then the
quality of that service (our ability to access it from different
locations and devices, its reliability, its speed, and its cost)
will lag increasingly further behind that available in other
developed countries.  And, because of that, technological progress
in the U.S. will slow down.  And, since so many goods and services
depend on the Internet, that will mean lower productivity and poorer
service for all of us in the U.S.  Further, this lag probably
entails lower paying jobs and a lower standard of living.

Crawford describes an alternative strategy in the last chapter of
"Captive audience".  It's called fiber-to-the-home (FTTH), and it
can be done at a local level by the utility system.  What Crawford
seems to be advocating is that Internet access and service should be
viewed in the same way that we view electric service: it should be
available to all; it should be regulated; it should *not* be run by
an unregulated private company that provides it where, when, and how
for it's own benefit.  Crawford wants high-speed Internet service
defined as a "public, and publicly overseen good", which she claims
is more common in other developed countries.

It's this last chapter where Crawford argues for a "publicly
supervised infrastructure  that should be made available to everyone
and provided on a wholesale basis to last-mile competitors.  This
approach, she believes, will keep speeds high and prices low.
Crawford believes that "vertically integrated incumbent monopoly
communications providers" will fight this.  The existing incentives
make doing so the smart thing to do.  A good proportion of "Captive
audience" is spend on the detail of this struggle, which she claims
corporations are winning and the public is losing.

If you're interested in this strategy, you might want to look at one
organization that is dedicated to pushing for it -- The Fiber to
the Home Council Americas: http://www.ftthcouncil.org/.  Perhaps
it's the start of a movement.  And, it would certainly be
interesting to get Crawford's opinion about it.

I'm not so much complaining about the present as I am worried about
the future.  Currently I have adequate high-speed Internet service,
but can grumble a bit about slow upload speeds and relatively high
cost.  But, several years from now, I'm likely to *still* have a 20
Mbps (download) connection, while in other parts of the world most
citizens have symmetric (down as well as up) speeds of 100 Mbps.
When the technology world find uses for that kind of speed, I'll be
living in a backward region of the world.

Crawford is worried about that backward future, too, and the last
few pages of "Captive audience", especially, show that.  And what
she proposes in order to avoid it is a "massive national
infrastructure project".  That work and investment would stimulate
that economy and it would produce infrastructure of incredible value
to the country (the U.S.).  Yes, but, ... the political likelihood
of that project and the regulation needed to enforce that broad
public access that Crawford recommends is next to zero.  It's in
Crawford's discussion of the political requirements during that last
several pages that she conveys how dismal the chances are for this
kind of leadership in the U.S. Federal government.  Read that
section only if you are feeling emotionally strong enough to handle
it.

And, if media monopolies fascinate you, look at "Master switch", by
Tim Wu.

10/24/2014

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