What Was the Supreme Court Thinking? Part Two

As is its habit, the Supreme Court has released a whole bunch of decisions right at the end of June. One of the least heralded decisions concerned cable television, and whether cable companies that provide Internet service have to share their networks with rival companies.

The Supreme Court said that the cable companies don't have to share. At first blush, this makes sense. After all, the cable companies own the wires with which their customers are accessing the Internet, so it doesn't seem fair for the government to tell them that they have to invite competitors to use their own private property to compete with them.

That's certainly what the phone companies are going to argue. The Federal Communications Commission, you see, does force phone companies to share their Internet Direct Service Lines with competitors. But thanks to this ruling, this situation might not stand for very much longer. The new head of the FCC, when he's not protecting us from Janet Jackson, is very big on deregulation.

This would be too bad for consumers. Why? Well, when companies don't have to compete, they have no incentive to offer good service, and no incentive to keep prices at competitive levels, either. Do we really want companies to monopolize Internet service? Of course we don't.

Here at the Blasphemy Blog, we wish our government would look at those wires as a public resource, like a river. The companies may own the wires, but the ability to transfer information with wireless telecommunications...shouldn't that belong to all of us? Or do the cable companies own the ether, as well?

We sure hope not.