The article talks about how Western Union telegraph was taken over by essentially one person, which in turn thoroughly destroyed the credibility and trust in the system. I can imagine something similar happening to the internet, and some people are already wary of this (that is why we have so many projects along the lines of Tor/Freenet).
There's also a troubling story of how freedom of press was stifled despite the technology. Doesn't this sound familiar in context of Youtube videos of demonstrators being taken down, recently, in England?
And finally, as mentioned in the article, this is a concrete instance where freedom was not essentially a zero-sum game, which meant, regulation by the government was not necessarily a bad thing. This squarely addresses some arguments made today about Net Neutrality among other things by people who favor a more laissez-faire approach.
I don't think that people are distrusting the Internet because of a rogue company taking it over. They are distrusting it because of the government taking it over. Tor and Freenet are to prevent eavesdropping from governments.
What I would like to see happen is absolutely no subsidized infrastructure. Once you subsidize, you have a responsibility to make sure the taxpayers get their money's worth (theoretically). If you ignore this responsibility, as government often does, you get the situation in the article.
One person lives a lot shorter life than a government. For example, Standard Oil was a monopoly and yet, even they were naturally losing their grip as time went on. I don't think you should be worried about a single person taking over. Sure it may mess things up for a few years, but so what? Better that than forever, by law. At least in my opinion. Competitors will pop up and the old guard will become old.
I'm not saying I favour net neutrality or not. Just that if the government could just resist getting involved in every single thing, they will find economical solutions.
Today's problem is that many governments subsidized the creation of the infrastructure and then handed over the keys to the private companies. Sounds familiar? I don't get how anyone can look at the past 200 years in North America and still make that decision.
So based on that history, regulation is necessary to make sure that citizens get their money's worth.
There's also a troubling story of how freedom of press was stifled despite the technology. Doesn't this sound familiar in context of Youtube videos of demonstrators being taken down, recently, in England?
And finally, as mentioned in the article, this is a concrete instance where freedom was not essentially a zero-sum game, which meant, regulation by the government was not necessarily a bad thing. This squarely addresses some arguments made today about Net Neutrality among other things by people who favor a more laissez-faire approach.