WAMU 88.5 : The Diane Rehm Show

Susan Crawford: "Captive Audience"

The U.S. has long been a world leader in technology innovation. Finding ways to profit from the Internet has been no exception. Think Amazon, Facebook and Google. But the next Google will not come from the U.S. Or so argues the author of a new book on the communications industry. She says we've allowed a handful of cable companies to become monopolies that stifle competition and innovation. Their monopoly status is also why Americans pay more money for worse Internet service than consumers in most other developed nations. Diane speaks with a communications policy expert about who controls Americans’ access to the Internet and why.

Read An Excerpt

Excerpt from "Captive Audience: The Telecom Industry and Monopoly Power in the New Gilded Age" by Susan Crawford. Copyright 2013 by Susan Crawford. Reprinted here by permission of Yale University Press. All rights reserved.

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