Susan Crawford, Cardozo Law School
Susan Crawford, Cardozo Law School
Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age
Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age
Captive Audience is the story of how consumers, let down by deregulatory government policies, are losing the fight for affordable, high-speed Internet access in America.
Crawford uses the 2011 merger between Comcast and NBCU as a framework to explore how deregulatory changes in policy have created a communications crisis in America. From smartphones and television programming to the cost of high-speed Internet access, Captive Audience illustrates that in the Internet era, very few companies control our information destiny. The consequences: Tens of millions of Americans are being left behind, people pay too much for too little Internet access, and speeds are slow. But everyday people can change this story - and what happens in the year ahead could change the game for good.