Amid the jubilation of the announced AOL buyout of Time Warner, one group wasn't celebrating: AOL's allies in its fight to force AT&T to provide open access to its newly acquired cable empire.
"We think it sucks," James Love, director of Ralph Nader's Consumer Project on Technology, told ZDNet News. Jeff Chester, another consumer advocate, called AOL's chairman the "Benedict Arnold of the digital age." Chester explained, telling ZDNet News, "Everyone who wants to compete on the Internet-unless they're a close personal friend of Steve Case or Time Warner CEO Gerald M. Levin-should be worried."
For more than a year, Steve Case and AOL had been these folks' patron saint …