1. The Case against Forced Access<br > Despite its advocacy by regulators， misguided consumer advo-<br >cates， and opportunistic businesspeople， forced-access regulation<br >has many problems.<br > Problem 1: Forced Access Is a Taking of Private Property<br > Forced-access regulation is essentially at war with private prop-<br > erty rights. In one sense， forced-access regulation is really nothing<br > more than a variant of socialism since it demands that private compa-<br > nies surrender control of their systems or technologies to a govern-<br > mental vision of efficient and proper distribution of resources.<br > Forced-access crusades are always undertaken in the name of<br > cin consumer cholce， competttx~n and operme<br > advan ， g ，-~1~，，~ advance these ends， the enas l ~Y<br > if forceCl access n~~t，~<br > the means. Free market competition means that private property<br > owners--even owners of network properties--are at liberty to use<br > their property as they see fit， and citizens are free to shop around<br > for better arrangements when they feel they are not getting the best<br > deal possible. The alternative is that of government bureaucrats<br > demanding that control over private property be surrendered. Corn-<br > conditions imposed on the AOL Time War-<br > menting on open-access ~ Institute scholar James K. Glass-<br > ner merger， American Enterprise<br > man noted that regulators "have served notice to high-tech firms<br > that if they make big investments in new products like cable modems<br > and instant messaging services， their property rights to those innova-<br > tions may be stripped from them at will for political reasons- 2<br > Moreover， because forced-access regulation forces private prop-<br > erty owners to surrender the ownership or control of their property<br > to regulators there remains a legitimate question of whether it repre-<br > sents an unconstitutional taking trader the Fifth Amendment to the<br > Constitution. Some scholars， suCh as J. Gregory Sidak of the Ameri-<br > can Enterprise Institute and Daniel F. Spulber of the Northwestern<br > University Graduate School of Management， argue that this is the<br > 9<br >