Allow me to amend the coffee shop analogy a little, to make it more accurately reflect the comcast/net neutrality issue
Let's call the independent coffee makers comcastbucks, and the super market govmart. First, Comcastbucks did not just build a coffee shop, they built an entire coffee communication infrastructure that is required for anyone to make coffee. In fact, they got a lot of financial support from govmart, since govmart figures, once an infrastructure is in place, then other coffee companies can use it too; and these competitors won't have to keep rebuilding the infrastructure over and over and the market will make the coffee services better due to increased competition. Comcastbucks still gets to be the default coffee that is served at govmart. This is consistent with very old practices in the US (and the world) called coffee carriage, which everyone agree is the best thing for consumers and competition, while at the same time rewarding the coffee company who builds the infrastructure by allowing them to be the default coffee served. Of course, Comcastbucks agrees to all this, since they're getting a pretty sweet deal, with so much of their costs covered by the super market, and they get to be the default coffee. In fact, it's misleading to even say that comcastbucks owns the infrastructure, since the super market paid for so much of it. Comcastbucks even agrees to build new and better coffee infrastructures all over so that, even under served coffee communities will now be able to get good coffee. After a while Comcastbucks figures that they want more, and they don't really like the whole competition thing, and they certainly don't want to have to build any more infrastructure, so they argue that they are selling data coffee, not communication coffee and, for some reason, this obscure distinction allows them to take advantage of a loop hole in the coffee carriage practices, so they no longer have to adhere to them. So they can sell their coffee for whatever price they want, to whoever they want, and they can even sell the coffee for different prices to different people, and not sell any coffee at all to some. I think this is a little more accurate analogy. ... Richard On Feb 9, 2008 7:29 PM, Tim Street <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote: > I don't like that they are doing this. I'm against it but I think we > should try to look at from their point of view so that we can > understand where they are coming from and how we might put a stop to > this before none of us can afford to upload our shows anymore. > > Imagine if you ran a Grocery Store and inside your grocery store you > had a coffee shop that was owned by an Independent Coffee Chain. > > Then one day the Government said "Hey you have a Coffee Shop in your > grocery store. You need to let other coffee companies sell coffee in > your store for free." > > So you let Starbucks, Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf as well as Pete's > Coffee and Tully's sell coffee in your store and they didn't pay you > any money but they did create more traffic in your parking lot and > they made it hard for your costumers to get into your grocery store. > > Maybe you might try and keep your parking lot free to only your > customers, unless the government told you that you needed to let > anyone park in your parking lot. > > In a free and open society should a grocery store be forced to allow > other companies to sell products in their store without paying > something? > > Tim Street > Creator/Executive Producer > French Maid TV > Subscribe for FREE @ > http://frenchmaidtv.com/itunes > MyBlog > http://1timstreet.com > > > On Feb 9, 2008, at 4:21 PM, Jay dedman wrote: > > > > This will be the a good real test of whether or not the FCC will > > follow up > > > on their promise to enforce network neutrality, in terms of > > penalties for > > > comcast. I'm not holding my breath. > > > > here's how they are spinning it. > > We are a private company and our network is private. (even if our > > network is run over public property) > > We are telling you in our 10 page contract (with small, legalese, > > ambiguous text) what we are allowed to do. > > You make a choice to use us (even if we may be the only broadband > > network in your area) > > Regulation is slows down competition. (even if we are doing our best > > to become a total monopoly) > > > > somehow this argument makes the current FCC officers feel like all is > > right in america. > > > > Jay > > > > -- > > http://jaydedman.com > > 917 371 6790 > > Professional: http://ryanishungry.com > > Personal: http://momentshowing.net > > Photos: http://flickr.com/photos/jaydedman/ > > Twitter: http://twitter.com/jaydedman > > RSS: http://tinyurl.com/yqgdt9 > > > > > > [Non-text portions of this message have been removed] > > > -- Richard http://richardhhall.org Shows http://richardshow.org http://inspiredhealing.tv [Non-text portions of this message have been removed]
