Telecoms lobby against public wireless
There’s a bill on the desk of the governor of PA to prevent the city of Philadelphia from offering ubiquitous, low cost wireless internet. 19 months ago, that bill was just a proposal, drafted by lobbyists for telecom companies.
Issue 1: Corporate interests wrote this law. Nobody is even pretending that this law was written in to serve the best interests of the citizens, or to advance society and achieve large scale goals. This is a law that is going to pass, plain and simple, because government works for the rich and powerful and not for the people.
Issue 2: Head-in-the-sand tactics piss me off. From the recording and film industry spending up until about a year ago pretending that the internet didn’t exist, and trying to legislate it out of utility, through Bush saying “if we don’t do stem cell research, then nobody else will be able to either, and that’s moral!” This law would rather hold back technology than try to cope with the modern world.
I have no problem with small government. I have no idea whether or not, as a nation, we ought to be providing free wireless. However, the fact that a state is going to legislate to *prevent* one of its cities from spending that city’s money on a project like this…that gets me.
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