Susan P. Crawford

A fascinating read. Crawford certainly has a vision that she's pushing, but I think it's a great one. Internet connectivity has become essential for American citizens and businesses. It's too important to be left to a few conglomerates that refuse to expand to new areas, invest in infrastructure, and lower their prices. Instead, these companies are trying to prevent competition and artificially drive up the value of their service by monopolizing content and spectrum.

The book can be a bit dense at times if you're not used to reading about business and politics, but it's accessible enough for people outside of those fields and all of the political dealings and business tactics build nicely into a clear vision of network connectivity as a utility which we, as a country, have a duty to make accessible and affordable to as many people as possible if we want to sustain growth and innovation.

(Also, don't worry, about 40% of the book is notes. It's a much quicker read than you'd think.)… (mer)

Greedmeister, price-gouging, mega-bandit US cable-TV and telephone companies: a highly detailed and documented account of how a small number of them have been allowed to gain a largely competition-free stranglehold on very-high-speed Internet access and other electronic communications, to the overall detriment of the country and many of its people. The central villain is Comcast. (Of which I freed myself of patronage long ago, and have never regretted it. More recently, it was Verizon that did everything it could to earn my undying hatred and non-customership.) Quite a devastating book, and that's without it even trying to cover the vital related issue of the trashing of people's privacy by these companies and others.… (mer)