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Florida Court Overturns AT&T Cable Ordinance
jothenull writes: "A Florida judge ruled that a "Broward County ordinance requiring cable giant AT&T to allow rival Internet access to their systems violated the First Amendment."" Available wherever AP articles are found. Since cable systems get a monopoly from local municipalities, it only seems fair that they be required to fulfill certain requirements - carrying a diversity of programming, permitting access to a variety of ISPs - but the cable services are fighting their part of the bargain tooth and nail.
Certian companies may have a wire monopoly but that monopoly is not mandated by the city, they have a wire monopoly because they own the fucking wire and can do whatever the hell they want to do with it (or should, but when it comes to telecomm the feds like to play fast and loose with private property rights.) Nothing is stopping another carrier from coming in and laying wire but the cost of doing so, if you're really that upset about your choices raise some capital and build your own network. The only way I can see how the city could somehow sanction a monopoly would be by a corrupt offical denying access to city owned right of ways to a competitor wishing to lay wire, of course if that ever happened in a sizable market you can bet that the competitors being locked out in this way would be screaming bloody murder to the FCC.
"Listen: We are here on Earth to fart around. Don't let anybody tell you any different!" - Kurt Vonnegut
"Slashdot: Election News for Leftist Neds. Ballot Stuffing that matters."
When I meet a leftist Ned I'll send him right over to slashdot. In the meantime finish reading a sentance before you post an opinion on the article. That's the trick with reading, you have to try read hard to get to that period.
Then AT&T shouldn't be allowed to offer local telephone services. Hey, maybe they shouldn't be allowed to offer local cable service..
Hmm, the ideas...
The AP article without registration:
Court Overturns AT&T Cable Decision
I am a karma whore (who hates it when the partners trick doesn't work on ny times articles).
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He lives in a world where those who do not run the client software of the omnipresent meme are unacceptable.
However, there seem to be sets of laws that change this, so in some cases, companies have less rights and people have more.
But the real purpose of a company is to remove liability from the individual owners and onto the "company" as an entity. In other words, Bill Gates is not legally liable for anything Microsoft does - Microsoft itself is. So if a system based on MS-BASIC caused a building to collapse due to a flaw in MS-BASIC, Gates would not be liable, and could suffer not penalty from Microsoft's fallings. Microsoft would be. This protects every corporate owner from liability from the companies actions.
Don't forget, every stockholder is a part-owner. Imagine your house being taken over because you owned some stock in a company that was forced to pay massive amounts of money in damages!
Because a company has the ability to legally act as any person does (which is why companies can bring lawsuits, for example) a company is also entitled to the same rights.
You are in a maze of twisty little relative jumps, all alike.
Did Al Gore put them up to that?
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
I'll ignore the personal slam here. It's hard to get frustrated with anything posted by an AC, especially one apparently unable to recognize sarcasm and humor when applied to an unfunny situation.
Hell, I want the Electoral College gone--I ran a long "Ask Slashdot" that was rejected that would probably be prudent to read now--and that would put the candidate I didn't want in, Gore, into office. Fine by me--I have a vote, just like everyone else. I don't expect you to agree with me--if you did, I'd worry about you. I'd rather have Gore elected by popular vote than the current maelstrom we have today. But I follow the Constitution, even as I work to have it changed.
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-- Geof F. Morris
Nothing may stop the construction of a competing system today, but that misses the point. Many of the incumbent cable systems were constructed when local governments had the power to grant a monopoly. I can remember when all sorts of sleazy deals were made between local government officials and the cable companies. In many localities, the cable companies basically bribed government officials and "influential citizens" to get the cable franchise. It is disingenuous for them to now claim that there is a competitive market, after they constructed their system under monopoly conditions.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
Excuse me but cable != monopoly, it depends on the location and I see nothing here saying that this Florida county granted a monopoly to AT&T.
Second point, if they do indeed have a monopoly then cry at the government agency that granted/regulates them.
Visit DC2600
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
"The question of whether a computer can think is no more interesting than that of whether a submarine can swim" -EWD
Economics.
The first system builder has 100% of the market and monopoly pricing power. Anyone who is building a second system has to take customers away from the incumbent and compete on the basis of price, quality and service. This makes it substantially less profitable to build a second system and the market is less predictable.
Mea navis aericumbens anguillis abundat
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Apparently the ruling has been reversed. The judge was confused about the placement of the "Yay" and "Nay" check boxes in the paper work.
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In many localities there is an official, government protected monopoly on the actual physical lines, which makes sense when you consider the herculean effort required in laying the lines and coordinating with public utilities. The contracts with the localities generally require that the authorized monopolist allow other companies to purchase use of the wire at a reasonable price. It's all part of the business. If you want to be the monopoly, you have to play by the rules. It's been the case with phone lines and power lines for ages. It disturbs me how the courts have lately been tricked into thinking that the internet somehow works differently.
WARNING: there is a trojan on your
Where I live, AT&T (formerly TCI) has been the only cable company in town for the last 20 years. So many people have complained about the service, though, that the city finally signed an additional contract with another cable company (I don't recall the name). It'll take a couple years for the new company to get their infrastructure in place, but it will be interesting to see whether things improve once people here have a real choice.
"A Florida judge ruled that a "Broward County ordinance requiring cable giant AT&T to allow rival Internet access to their systems violated the First Amendment.""
It seems interesting that whenever an individual's rights get stomped on by a corporation nobody in power seems to care. Yet when a corporations "rights" are threatened, a ruling in favor of the company is made.
Now I realize that this is a company vs a county but still.. I had no idea that corporations had First Amendment rights.
Disclaimer: The link was down when I tried to read the linked article so I am only going on what the blurb said.
Erm..what I could see is some other power company claiming rights to use the power grid for their own plant to their own customers on their own bill.
Cable companies are usually required to obtain a franchise agreement, which grants them the authority to use local city-owned rights-of-way in exchange for a number of things, including, requirements such as providing "open access" to competing ISPs. The agreements are basically lease agreements, leasing the city property in return for consideration.
By law, a municipality cannot grant an exclusive franchise (monopoly), and in fact, most cities are busily trying to lure competitors to their local cable companies into town. They hate having a single cable company as much as the citizens do. But the cost of building a new system is large, and only recently have companies begun to step forward to try and "overbuild" old systems, like AT&T's. The arrival of these overbuilders has less to do with anything congress did (i.e. telecom Act of 1996) than it does the perceived opportunity to run the old coax companies out of business, by building modern state of the art ringed fiber networks, which can offer voice, video, and data at rates and speed vastly exceeding anything that can be done on a crapulent old Coax system. Take a look at Western Integrated Networks proposed system as an example of what these new arrivals want to build. Notice, the fully symmetric 100baseTX ethernet network provided into homes, via a fiber actually brought into the house? That ought to get any self-respecting geek's heart pumping fast.
In regards to "Open Access", the more important thing happening, is th activities resulting from the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruling in Mt. Hood v. AT&T, where the court ruled that @Home was a telecommunications service, not a cab;le service. This ruling will require (if left to stand) that cable comapnies be regulated identically to telephone companies, and thus will be forced to offer competitive access to their networks.
Imagine if your power company also marketed and sold household appliances, tvs, computer equipment, and so forth.
What would happen if they said to their competition, "No, you cannot use our power grid to run your devices. It is an infringement on our rights!"
Gee.. wouldn't that be wacky and interesting?
>So why wouldn't it be considered a monopoly for the cable company? Because under the federal law (47CFR), Cable companies are not common carriers, while telephone companies are. Cable companies do not, as others have noted, have statutory monopolies; it's just tough to be the second one in town. Since telephone companies are common carriers, they are obligated to provide access to anybody. So you can use DSL to reach any connected ISP, or dial-up, or leased telco lines. But cablecos are under a different law. That they provide anything but video is a bonus. If you impose excessive obligations on t hem, they just won't do data at all. Better to let them learn how to be "open" before imposing premature regulation on them.
I would almost be willing to give up the internet if it meant I could put just one cable/telephone/etc. company out of business in the process.
tcd004 Janet RenoMargolis, Election Uncoverage
very useful for those angry about their service. .
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
How willing would you be to set up complex communcations infrastructure or invest millions in development costs if you weren't certain that the government wouldn't bust open your piggy bank to give your product to your competitors or to your buyers in the name of fairness?
I've never heard a case where a cable operator was required to GIVE access away, only required to LEASE it at a reasonable market rate (that is to say at a rate that allows for a fair profit). Keep in mind that without years of government granted monopoly, AT&T would not be a multi-billion dollar company today. ("We don't care, we don't have to, we're the phone company!").
You say that AT&T has been given a monopoly. I dont know if that is true, but if it is.. my answer is still so-what.
Of course its true. How many cable providers are there in your area that can provide service to YOUR house? I know that sometimes cities are split between cable companies, but how does that effect you, if you can still only pick one? Thats the whole reason the fed wants to force AT&T to open its network in that area. To force AT&T to compete.
No company should ever ever be forced to help its competition. No matter how big the monopoly, or how powerful it is. You want high-speed access? There are lots of options. Look around. Just because you dont like the DSL or Cable serivce doesnt mean that the government should force open the private property of some company.
For capitilism to truely work, you need competition. Cable companies have none. Tell me, since you seem to be the expert, what are my other broadband options besides cable or DSL? T1, T3? Nope, thats your local telco also. Satilite? Thats not even broadband. Gov't must absolutly step in to break up monopolies; forcing a company to open its access is one way of doing that.
You want to affect the quality of the service? Cancel your service. Call all your friends. Get them to cancel too. Call everyone who has it, and get them to cancel.
How would that affect service? Do you think if you're the only game in town you'd care if you lost a few customers? Do you really think Ma Bell would've cared if an entire town canceled thier service? Why would Time Warner, or AT&T? All that would happen is they'd sell the francise to someone else, who may or may not get the customers back. And nothing will have changed either. Thats exactly the problem with monopolies, they don't give a fuck about the customer. The local telco here gets fined the maximum penalty under NY law b/c of poor customer service. Do they care? No, its probably cheaper to pay that then to improve service. Tell me you think there's nothing wrong with that if your phone goes out, and you have to wait AT LEAST 3 weeks for them to even begin to look at it.
Besides that, I dont know what you are talking with local dialup. I think you made that up.
You think so? Go do some research. ISPs buy a T1 or T3 or whatever from the local telco. They then setup their own network for you to dialin to, and all the customers share the ISPs line. Now, do you think Bell Atlantic, who offers an ISP service, would allow say Netcarrier, or Voicenet (both local Philly providers i know about) to compete with them using a high speed line they provided? AT&T certainly doesn't want to, why would Bell Atlantic? The answer is simple; b/c the gov't told Bell Atlantic they must open thier network. Do you really think that your mom and pop ISP was allowed to hang wires off the phone companies polls? Even if they did, i'm sure it'd be expensive. Do you think they could afford (or would be allowed) to tear up streets to run their own fiber optics? It would be a very expensive thing, and you'd never see small ISPs b/c starting one would be too expensive. Yet you do. Please, go do some research.
You are whining like high-speed access is your god-given right. Its not.
High-speed access my not be my right, but if you want capitalism to work, you need competition. I'll admit, my cable company has been good so far, but i don't think they'd do anything rash that would cast the impending merger into a bad light. There's also relivitly little that can go wrong with cable, and it still takes a 2-4 weeks to get it installed. I hope you don't have comcast cable for highspeed access and want to VPN to work; you won't be allowed, unless your company purchases a VPN solution from comcast. Don't believe me? Go check out thier contracts. You are not allowed to connect to a noncomcast bought VPN server.
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``Compelled access like that ordered by the Broward County ordinance both penalizes expression and forces the cable operators to alter their content to conform to an agenda they do not set,'' the decision said.
Perhaps. However, look at the issue of penalizing expression from the flip side of the coin.
The article appropriately invoked the specter of the AOL-Time Warner merger. In the case of AOL/TW, a single corporate conglomerate will control 1. A considerable array of content and 2. a significant percentage of the U.S. cable infrastructure.
If the FCC/FTC fails to ensure that AOL/TW opens up its pipeline to competing ISP's, the corporation would be in a unique position to selectively discriminate against competing ISP's and content providers.
To better illustrate this the consequences of Closed Access, consider a well-known white paper from Cisco released in 1999 called Controlling Your Network - A Must for Cable Operators.
The Cisco paper includes such gems as this:
Committed access rate (CAR) is an edge-focused QoS mechanism provided by selected Cisco IOS-based network devices. The controlled-access rate capabilities of CAR allow you to specify the user access speed of any given packet by allocating the bandwidth it receives, depending on its IP address, application, precedence, port, or even Media Access Control (MAC) address. For example, if a "push" information service that delivers frequent broadcasts to its subscribers is seen as causing a high amount of undesirable network traffic, you can direct CAR to limit subscriber-access speed to this service. You could restrict the incoming push broadcasts as well as subscribers' outgoing access to the push information site to discourage its use. At the same time, you could promote and offer your own or partner's services with full-speed features to encourage adoption of your services, while increasing network efficiency.
In other words, a cable operator using Cisco's equipment will be able to selectively discriminate what content a consumer can view, slow down content originating from a competing content provider -- in the words of many Open Access proponents, transforming the "information superhighway" into a "digital toll-road."
Even if the ruling mentioned in this post is correct, I believe that the alternative to mandating open access will result in more significant penalties to free expression.
Sincerely,
Vergil
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