Re: Should we oppose the Data Superhighway/NII?

[Stanton McCandlish <mech@eff.org>]

> I, like Tim May, also cancelled my cable-TV subscription a few months ago,
> and would have long before that if my kids didn't like the Disney channel
> so much.  None the less, the data highway _is_ being built, right now, by
> the phone and cable companies, and digital video-on-demand and videophone
> capabilities seem to be basic assumptions.  I can reference articles in
> EE Times and elsewhere, and people who watch TV already know this from
> things like AT&T's "you will" commercials.
[...]
> Seems to be that a general videophone capability is the only building block
> that's needed.  Seems to me the only possible roadblock is regulatory, that
> is, the phone companies being prohibited from doing video and the cable
> companies prevented from doing phone service.

This isn't precisely what I meant.  What I mean is that, whatever the
source of or type of wires that carry this "data highway" traffic, for the
dominant use and format of it to be modelled on the tired and all but
useless one-to-many format of tv would be disastrous.  I don't care who
builds, it, only what I can do with it.

-- 
Stanton  McCandlish  mech@eff.org  1:109/1103   EFF  Online  Activist & SysOp
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