"Mark Cuban presents the great net neutrality novel of our time: 'Atlas Unplugged'"
From The Verge:
Mark Cuban is known as a billionaire entrepreneur, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks, and the creator of the EFF's "Mark Cuban Chair to Eliminate Stupid Patents." Henceforth, he will also be known as the creator of the greatest piece of fiction ever written about net neutrality: an update to the Objectivist pulp classic Atlas Shrugged for the internet age.
Cuban's construction is a little confusing at first because, as we
all know, Ayn Rand loved trains and hated regulation. But he's comparing
net neutrality rules, which would forbid internet service providers
from offering different speeds to different companies for a price, with Atlas Shrugged's fictional
rules, like the Equalization of Opportunity Bill that gave inferior
companies an advantage over superior ones. And he's saying that the
real-world justifications for net neutrality (it would stop de facto
monopolies like Comcast from creating artificial barriers between new
companies and subscribers) are as disingenuous as the reasoning of
"looters" in Rand's dystopia:
"It was unfair to let one man hoard several business enterprises,
while others had none; it was destructive to let a few corner all the
resources, leaving others no chance; competition was essential to
society, and it was society's duty to see that no competitor ever rose
beyond the range of anybody who wanted to compete with him."
But that's just boring policy, so we can get to the real meat of his tweets. Namely, a reboot of Atlas Shrugged
in which protagonist Dagny Taggart must defend Comcast from the wily
machinations of the newly introduced villain Reed Hastings with the help
of internet backbone magnate Hank Rearden — who has developed a
revolutionary new kind of fiber optic cable that his competitors are
desperate to suppress or steal — and the mysterious John Galt....MORE
