Monopoly

An Internet For Everyone

July 10, 2016 Devin Coldewey, www.techcrunch.com Create! Decentralization, Democracy, Internet Freedom, Monopoly, Surveillance

By Devin Coldewey for Tech Crunch. The imagination is a powerful thing, and what it creates may in fact be powerful beyond our imagining. That was certainly the case with Sir Tim Berners-Lee and the World Wide Web, the creation of which is documented in a new short film, “Foreveryone.net,” which was directed by Jessica Yu and is currently showing at the Seattle International Film Festival. I sat down ahead of the film’s debut with Yu and Berners-Lee, who, in his inimitable manner, held forth on topics from encryption and social media to the need to, as he called it, “re-decentralize the web.” The film traces the story of the web from its prehistory as a twinkle in Berners-Lee’s eye to the various dangers it faces today: surveillance, the loss of net neutrality and an excess of commercialization and centralization.

Obama Must Confront Monopoly Practices In Health Insurance

August 15, 2015 Lawrence J. Hanley, www.huffingtonpost.com Create! Corruption, Health Insurance, Monopoly, Obama

By Lawrence J. Hanley in The Huffington Post - The flurry of recent merger announcements from the handful of remaining national health insurance providers is cause for alarm for all Americans. The Affordable Care Act (ACA) has taken nearly full effect and it is clear that staggering annual increases in health insurance premium costs are still with us. The skyrocketing costs of health insurance and health care treatment are pushing working American families well past the breaking point. There is a limit to what working people can afford to pay for what should be a human right. The most recent corporate advances down the road of health insurance monopolization are the announcements that the enormous Aetna intends to absorb rival Humana, and at the same time the Anthem corporate giant -- formerly Wellpoint -- is maneuvering to swallow Cigna.

Comcast Got What It Deserved

May 8, 2015 Mark Plotkin, www.thehill.com Resist! Capitalism, Comcast, FCC, Law, Monopoly

Comcast, the giant cable company, is one of the most reviled companies in America. It is notorious for its terrible and odious customer service. In addition to this infamous reputation, it sought to become ever-bigger and more powerful. Not satisfied with its dominance and near-monopolistic position, it sought to buy Time Warner Cable and become ever more dominant and unmistakably a true monopoly in cable and broadband. To accomplish this goal, it hired legions of lobbyists and public relations flacks. Early on, it looked like it had the clout to win. President Obama made more than one visit to Comcast Vice President David Cohen's home to attend fundraisers. Even more stunning and blatant, the chairman and CEO of the company (and co-founder's son), Brian Roberts, golfed with Obama on Martha's Vineyard, Mass. Talk about being well-connected!

FCC To Move Against Comcast-Time Warner Cable Merger

April 24, 2015 Free Press, www.popularresistance.org Educate! Internet Freedom, Media, Monopoly

WASHINGTON -- According to reports in the Wall Street Journal and Politico, Federal Communications Commission staff may be prepared to recommend that Comcast’s proposed takeover of Time Warner Cable be designated for a hearing. Such a move would put the merger request in the hands of an administrative law judge, who would conduct a thorough inquiry into the public-interest benefits of the proposed merger, if any. In formal legal terms a hearing designation merely means that the FCC cannot approve the proposed $45 billion merger at this time without first conducting such a hearing. In practical terms however, this type of preliminary decision generally spells the end for the deal because of the difficulty applicants face to make their case in such proceedings.

Communities Should Provide Internet Service, Not Monopolies

January 15, 2015 Corynne McSherry, www.eff.org Educate! Capitalism, Internet, Monopoly

Community broadband, properly deployed and managed, can give at least some of us an alternative to typical broadband duopoly. Take Chattanooga, Tennessee. Chattanooga’s's local power utility operates a fiber optic Internet service that currently offers a 1 Gigabit speed package (1,000 Mbps) for just $69.99/month. For most of us that would be a 50x speed increase or better. Many fiber services are also symmetrical, offering the same upload speed as download speed. There are a variety of models for community broadband. One particularly attractive model is called "open access." Under an open access model, the local municipality might be the owner of the fiber infrastructure, but agrees to lease access to the system to anyone on non-discriminatory terms. This opens up the possibility of having many local ISPs competing for your business over the same fiber infrastructure and drastically reduces the cost of Internet service.

«1 2 3 »

Daily movement news and resources