As yet another tribute to the worthlessness of American
politics, AOL gets a big FCC-style thumbs up to its giant
monopoly.
The FCC allows America Online to merge with Time Warner today, January 12,
2001, finalizing possibly the largest collusion of greedy media money ever. It
has been a year since the proposed monopoly was announced, and with the
latest FCC ruling it is now reality. For just over $100 billion, AOL is now
responsible for deciding how to fuck you over on cable internet for the new
millenium. This will mean more of the same time-honored traditions of AOL such
as overselling bandwidth now in the form of cable modem networks instead of
telephone lines, overcharge the customer for services they don't really need or
could get free somewhere else, and further make individual's computers infected
with the virus of AIM, AOL 6.0, and Microsoft Windows.
As part of the FCC's
restrictions on the AOL Time Warner monopoly, AOL is forbidden from proxying
out Disney material. The FCC didn't make it necessary for AIM to interoperate
with Microsoft messaging or excitathome in order for them to release new,
proprietary versions of their proprietary instant messaging software. AOL Time
Warner is still forced to let little cable modem ISPs "compete" with their
services much in the same way that little cable providers somehow "compete"
with Time Warner. It is as if the FCC is saying, "OK, little league teams
still get to play on the Yankees field, and the Yankees have to let the
tee-ballers get a run in before the Yankees go ahead and step in to hit 100
billion consecutive homers."
This will all be fine until AOL completely
cuts Disney, Intel, and Microsoft from a share of the money by producing
AOL-only cable modem net appliances based on the transmeta crusoe chip. This
appliance, undoubtedly called something repetitious like "Instant AOL" will let
the home user instantly receive new advertisements for other things they don't
need but will be charged for anyway if they cannot remember the password they
use when they sign up for said services. Furthermore, it will occupy its own
unique IP address, which the cable provider (AOL) will charge extra for instead
of supplying users with any sort of linux-based internet router to eliminate
the need for three IP addresses to use three different computers with AIM. I
find the situation very grim considering the lack of any real ISP competition,
with most ISPs already having folded under the weight of big companies like
AT&T selling off Tier-1 "Virtual ISP" services in order to falsely rebrand
internet service over and over until the end user doesn't know who their money
is going to (AOL).
I wouldn't be suprised if AOL sold a brand of cigarettes
and frozen french fries in the near future, advertising a 1-800 number to
listen to your AIM messages and including a copy of AOL 6.0 as a shrink wrapped
CD.
