On Fri, 6 Dec 2002, Tim May wrote:
>
> If Bob wants to have a cellphone number that is not sold to others, he
> should make arrangements with the cellphone company.
Just for my own edification, does this apply to landline service
as well(or other government-sanctioned monopolies)? For example, are your
calling habits and landline number "assets" of your phone company? Many
of them seem to think so.
Of course, this isn'y [generally] as applicable with wireless
service since [at the moment, in most places] you can shop around for
service. But when a local monopoly telco says that your data is their
asset and the prospect of having that data sold is a condition of doing
business with them, from a libertarian perspective, is regulation of what
they can do with that data acceptable?
I suppose from a libertarian perspective you'd try to avoid
monopolies, gov't sanctioned or otherwise, but in certain fields(utilities
like water, power, phone, and data should be) it's fairly impractical to
have multiple competing groups building out infrastructure(laying pipes or
cables) in the same area.
-adam
