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My first thought is what does ordering out of state mean? The fiber they own, the Right-a-ways they own, any contractual monoplies they own and existing service contracts they own are property with value. Will they be able to sell these assets? If not it's a seizure of private property.

Which is entirely legal in New York State. After Kelo v. City of New London several states amended their constitutions to prevent economic takings. Others passed laws forbidding it. New York did neither. If Charter refuses to do as ordered, NYS can and will use eminent domain to force them to, and they will succeed, very quickly by modern judicial standards, because of Kelo. It won't even make it out of federal circuit court.

I doubt they could force them to sell but even if they did Charter could tie them up in court for years.

New York State can force Charter to sell. It's called eminent domain, and it's an open and shut case in federal circuit court because the Supreme Court has already ruled on the subject recently. Charter could sue to prevent it. They would lose. They could appeal. The appeal would be denied. Kelo v. City of New London is settled case law. Takings for purely economic purposes are the law of the land, federally.

New York State was not one of the states that amended its constitution in response to Kelo. New York State did not even pass any state laws prohibiting economic development takings. New York State did not even pass the law that would have established a study committee to examine the possibility of prohibiting economic development takings.

And it was the Rehnquist court, a majority Conservative (big 'C') Supreme Court, that wrote that ruling.

Yes - according to precedent I've read - Kelo was decided correctly. From my point of view the Institute for Justice lawyers weren't should have also challenged the three incorrectly decided decisions the Kelo loss was based on. I've heard that they were repeatedly asked - if this is what they wanted to do - but that they declined.

The real question we need to ask ourselves, is if you read the US Constitution as it is written and extended how would Kelo be decided. I'm no Constitutional scholar, but it would seem to be that the phase "nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation." would require the public to be able to use the seized area (ie a park, road, etc) or at least be for some government function that is "necessary". I have trouble accepting that an increase in government taxes or that taking private property from one to give to another private group was what most of the framers had in mind. To me this sounds like what a king would do to gain approval from a noble.

A FindLaw discussion on eminent domain:
http://caselaw.lp.findlaw.com/data/constitution/am endment05/14.html

And Castle Coalition : http://www.castlecoalition.org/

Or sometimes not at all. The main thing to worry about is how this will be abused (and I think that is what most people here are worried about).

Check out the Top 10 Eminent Domain Abuse cases:

1. Removing an entire neighborhood and the condemnation of homes for a privately owned and operated office park and other, unspecified uses to complement a nearby Pfizer facility in New London, Connecticut.
2. Approving the condemnation of more than 1,700 buildings and the dislocation of more than 5,000 residents for private commercial and industrial development in Riviera Beach, Florida.
3. A government agency collecting a $56,500 bounty for condemning land in East St. Louis, Illinois, to give to a neighboring racetrack for parking.
4. Replacing a less-expensive car dealership with a BMW dealership in Merriam, Kansas.
5. Condemning a building in Boston just to help the owner break his leases so that the property could be used for a new luxury hotel.
6. Seizing the homes of elderly homeowners in Mississippi and forcing them and their extended families to move in order to transfer the land to Nissan for a new, privately owned car manufacturing plant, despite the fact that the land is not even needed for the project.
7. Taking the building of an elderly widow for casino parking in Las Vegas, claiming it was blighted but without ever even looking at the building.
8. Improperly denying building permits to a church in New Cassel, New York, then condemning the property for private retail as soon as it looked like the church would begin construction.
9. Condemning 83 homes for a new Chrysler plant in Toledo, Ohio, that was supposed to bring jobs but ended up employing less than half the projected number because it is fully automated.
10. Forcing two families (along with their neighbors) to move for a private mall expansion in Hurst, Texas, while spouses were dying of cancer.

Somewhere down the line, government stopped being about the people, and became about capital.

The usefull arts and sciences are those that increase profits.
The economic health of the nation obviously is directly linked to the economic health of the owners of the nation's infrastructures.

And another indicator of this is the case, now before the US Supreme Court, where homeowners in New London, CN are challenging the government's exercise of eminent domain when the taking of property "for public use" consists of taking their homes to turn over to a private developer because an office complex will bring in more tax revenues than private homes do. And this is merely the latest in a long string of similar actions by governments for years.

Actually, governments in several states can legally seize property under eminent domain for use by the private sector.

See 60 Minutes story:
http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2003/09/26/60minute s/main575343.shtml/

Or this group, chartered to fight such abuse:
http://www.castlecoalition.org/

I find the extensive dead-tree version convenient and end up reading more from it than the on-line version that's free.

But, not having a lot of time during the week, I end up buying the print version maybe every 3 days, and quickly scanning the on-line headlines on the off-print days.

The Times really ought to open up its archive and let everyone, including Lexis-Nexis, have free access.

Many years ago at a university library they had an entire special catalog devoted to indexing old NY Times articles that one could read from microfiche. Without the individual paying, either.

There is still a fundamental chasm between archived high-quality material (especially true for scientific journals) and what is freely available and searchable on the web.

Think about how useful it would be for the general public to have access to old, high-quality archives like the NY Times and other scientific periodicals; the pursuit of science and other research would be considerably advanced over where it is today. Then there is the reality: copyright protections and the hope by the copyright owners for a few dollars more by charging for access (that only the very wealthy or institutions can afford) still persists.

It's almost enough that I think the government ought to exercise eminent domain (link to counterpoint about possible abuse of eminent domain - just as they do for land when a freeway needs to go through Aunt Tilly's backyard) and provide some reasonable compensation to the current copyright owners and to appropriate sufficiently old works and make them available publicly.