Dan Gillmor
Dan says consolidation of data access into the hands of two or three providers is the real problem (talking about Brand X and Madison River), because they'll always discriminate against competitive content. Big bills for distributing popular content by individuals are a big problem, so P2P is the only real alternative, and the Grokster discussion is most important.
The key message is “don't make me ask for permission.” I'm all for ensuring that competitive modes of access to online resources exist — baseline access. But it's a difficult step to take to ensure more than that. And providers should have the chance to offer more (and different) services if they want to.
These sessions are interesting — it's still not clear what a proto-activist would do to agitate to change the world of online access.
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