> -----Original Message-----
> From: owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com
> [mailto:owner-lbo-talk at lists.panix.com]On Behalf Of Doug Henwood
> AOL, which has over 20 million Internet-access subscribers, has been
> sparring recently with Time Warner over the issue of cable-TV
> companies allowing access to their high-speed lines into consumers'
> homes to Internet service providers.
And how do we resolve such sparring in our "market economy"-- of course, we end competition through merger.
First AOL was allowed to merge with Nescape, now this.
Hell, I am ready to call for the Justice Department to call off its antitrust action against Microsoft. Gates may end up being the only counterweight to the MCI-Sprint-Worldcom and AT&T-TCI and AOL-Time/Warner megaliths being allowed to dominate the media-Internet landscape.
Instead of an ideal of separation of content control from infrastructure control to assure non-biased access to information for consumers, the fight over high-bandwidth access to the home is going to end up being a bloody censorship war over who controls access to the home as these megaliths fight it out.
Joel Klein at the antitrust desk is pathetic if he does not block this, which he probably won't.
-- Nathan Newman