Wonder where it all went.

What I do have a problem with is a reduction in my service. To compare it to cell phones, you’re currently paying for, and receiving, an “unlimited plan”. They’re now wanting to charge you the same and restrict your minutes.

Don’t forget that it’s not exactly a free market. Local government have granted (or sold) monopoly rights to these companies. A monopoly should come with restrictions. Ask TWC whether they’d rather give up their bandwidth cap or allow another provider to start pulling cable and you’ll see my point.

I’ll cancel just on principal at this point. They’re never going to stop pushing as long as people are willing to keep paying through the nose.

Huggggs!!

And… we agree that coercive force is sub-optimal. I just think that government coercing corporations is a lot more tolerable than corporations coercing individuals.

http://www.nytimes.com/aponline/2009/04/16/business/AP-TEC-Metered-Internet.html?_r=1

April 16, 2009
Time Warner Cable Shelves Plan to Cap Internet Use
By THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

Filed at 4:43 p.m. ET

Time Warner Cable Inc. is shelving its plan to bill customers based on how much Internet traffic they generate, following mounting public and political outcry.

Time Warner Cable’s capitulation doesn’t bode well for the future of metered billing of the Internet, in which people who use more bandwidth pay more.

Frontier Communications Corp., a Time Warner Cable rival in one key test market, Rochester, N.Y., also has dropped its plans for metering Internet use.

There is, for me, something fundamentally wrong with the use of coercion. Not morally or ethically wrong. I could care less about that nonsense. No – practically wrong. It undermines the very social dynamism you seem to value as much as I do. It disallows experimentation with new forms.

Yes – even “oversight” of “big business.” Especially oversight of big business.

Democracy is a pathetic substitute for peoples’ ability to vote with their dollars. That is about as fluid and non-hierarchical as you can get. Especially when compared to the state. Any state.

Sure a government that imposes what we want on everyone else (and makes them pay for it) is the best of all possible worlds. But it is not a practical expectation.

But then – I don’t think either one of us is being very practical. But I do think you could make a solid public goods argument for coercively financed free internet. Just don’t expect the internet we get to improve much. Without a profit motive, why would anyone take the extraordinary risks needed to seed innovation.

Besides, all that institutional organization comes at a cost — the institutional dilemma is just the accounting of all the energy that institutions expend to maintain their efficient output. Corporations excel in organizing for productivity; governments (some better than others) excel at managerial tasks.

I am more interested in post-managerial organizing, or the kind of organizing that’s made possible when the costs of forming groups is lowered and/or abolished. The Internet facilitates forming groups by making available the tools of self-organizing and self-publishing. Blogs, Flickr, wikis… these are all tools that facilitate spontaneous and unplanned, as well as deliberate and planned, group-forming behavior. That is, I’d rather opt out of the institutional dilemma, and many of the tools made available to the public, often for free, via the Internet, make it more possible than ever before to opt out.

So, my issue is with limiting the use of, and thereby access to, the Internet. And given the requirements that we place on governments for transparency and accountability, and the fact that in a democracy the people are the rule-makers, I’ll take more government oversight and less corporate oversight.