Usually, these days, when companies beg the gov’t for protectionist policies against upstart competitors, they at least work out a convoluted story about some sort of real harm (i.e., beyond the bottom line of those asking for protection) caused by the upstart. So, you get the record companies claiming that music will stop being made, or perhaps food companies complaining about the safety standards of foreign food products. There may even be some truth to those stories (or not), but the real reason is to avoid competition. Over in Russia, for example, it appears that a bunch of telco execs are complaining about Skype. They at least try to pass off a plausible non-save-our-asses reason: mentioning security, but they don’t do a very good job hiding the truth. Repeatedly they seem to plead that Skype is evil because it makes it difficult for the old guard telcos to charge super high fees. Competition is such a pain sometimes…
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