The Gun Owners of America sent out an op ed piece to conservative news outlets Monday explaining why it has teamed with the bane of the far right, Moveon.org, in the fight for network neutrality.
Network neutrality, or how much control broadband networks have over their pipes, is one of the key issues in telecommunications reform legislation currently being debated in Congress.
Via Flutterby [1], “Gun Owners Make Neutrality Case To Conservatives [2]”
Smirk and I were talking about this the other day and it has him quite worried—worried enough to entertain the notion of nationalizing the phone lines in this country (and if you know Smirk, that's a radical position for him to take—very radical). He asked me what my opinion on this was, and my thought was that instead of breaking Ma Bell [3] into RBOC (Regional Bell Operating Company)s (a geographic breakup), we should have instead broken it up into the physical infrastructure and services (a service-oriented breakup). The physical company would have the pipes to the homes (and the right-of-way) and let them charge people for transferring whatever they want (phone, TV, data) over the wires.
Or better yet, get rid of Federal corporate subsidies and let companies actually compete on service and price instead of competing with lobbyists in Washington.
[1] http://www.flutterby.com/archives/comments/8928.html
[2] http://www.broadcastingcable.com/index.asp?layout=articlePrint&arti