For a full list of today's Salon Technology stories, go to the Technology home page. When federal bureaucrats and big business lobbyists are on the same side, my natural tendency is to look for a fly in the ointment. In this case, however, the feds and big business have a point.
Consumer advocates tend to portray open access as an issue of business interests vs. consumers.
In truth, it really is more complicated. The paradox of the communications age is that even as the vast network of interlaced media and communications technologies becomes ever more national or even international in scope, local governments wield a progressively more fearsome regulatory stick. The paradox emerges because every local government threatens, by regulating within its jurisdiction, to exercise a kind of veto power over national policy. The shape of national telecommunications policy, painstakingly crafted within the corridors of Congress and the FCC, effectively becomes hostage to the desires of one or 10 or 100 local legislative bodies. Liberals tend to like the effects in this case.