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Supreme Court To Revisit 1996 Telecom Act This Term
Masem writes "In addition to the cases of online adult material mentioned yesterday, the Supreme Court is slated to hear several cases regarding the failure of the 1996 Telecommunications Bill and it's affect on the current market, as summarized by NYTimes (Free Reg Req). Namely, 10 high profile cases that were in the federal circuits are being condensed into 3 specific cases that the court will hear separately. The first is dealing with rates and fees the local bell can incur on competing services (including alternate carriers and DSL CLECs) that use their equipment. The second is whether there still exists differences between the concept of common carrier between phone and cable services since the types of service that both are providing are quickly merging. The third is in regard to the ability for the federal system to overrule state utility boards in their decison and penalty of telecom companies."
Good news. DCMA next?
There should be a moratorium on the use of the apostrophe.
Max V.
NeXTMail/MIME Mail welcome
He said that any meaningful reform of the 1996 telecom act would need a lot of intervention from Capitol Hill, and the interests that oppose reform are giving like mad to our elected leaders.
-sting3r
I just hope that they reign in Ashcroft's demands some. I don't mind the governmnet trying to protect it's people, but I do not what to lose my civil liberties...I get the feeling Ashcroft would like to subject every American to full cavitity searches twice a day.
Something about him bugs me.
"To give up liberty for security, you will end up with neither." - (I get conflicting stories on who said this...but whoever it was I give you the credit.)
Sean D.
"Hmm. I am to metaphor cheese as metaphor cheese is to transitive verb crackers!"
hope that helps everyone! Gant
It was all a matter of time before the checks and balances system we have (in the USA) would test this.
First the companies buy their laws.
Second the courts review, comment, and declare consitutionality, and offers suggestions
Third the companies start over at one.
And in another five years we'll be doing this over and over again.
You know... the funny thing is... They have an editor on staff already. I'm no journalist, but doesn't an editor check things like grammar and spelling?
Isn't that his job??
Good quote, too many chars. Seriously, the slashdot 120 char limit sucks!
It's pretty well known that replacing "www" with "archive" gets you around registration. I went a step further. Drop this line: /etc/hosts and www is redirected to archive. Then just click the link on any /. story and you'll read the article, no reg required.
208.48.26.212 www.nytimes.com
into
uname: testtest
pword: testtest
Cheap banner: Indymedia.org
Best quote from the article:
Despite being poorly written, the intentions were good. If I remember correctly, there was a great deal of deal-making going on in the last hours to even get the bill passed.
Senator Exon (D) and some Republicans had all kinds of crap thrown in there.
Supposedly there's a clause stating that you can't use a dialup connection and drink alcohol at the same time.
Can anyone verify my memory on this?
I'm a 2000 man.
So Congress passes a law that deregulates telecom five years ago. Billions of dollars flow into capital markets to finance competition for phone service and broadband. But the Bells just get in the way and delay, delay, delay, until the startups flame out. I seem to recall reading a /. post a while back that said Verizon was happily paying fines for failing to open local phone circuits so their competition would burn through all their VC money just trying to stay afloat until they could get some revenue.
These lawsuits are nice in a judicial sense, but from a financial and business standpoint I don't think Verizon and the others are shaking in their boots much. This is pretty much just mop-up work to be done now that the competition has been crushed.
Let AT&T have its monopoly back. But this time, regulate the damn thing. Regulate hell out of it.
A consumer-regulated monopoly is a thing of beauty. The monopoly benefits: no competition, and a guaranteed profit.
More importantly, though, the consumer wins: nearly anything the consumer wants, the consumer gets. The only limiting factor is that the monopoly must be allowed a reasonable profit.
Fixed prices based on reasonable profits. Cool. You don't have to worry about your provider going tits up because they sold at a loss, and you don't have to worry about being gouged because there's only one provider.
Guaranteed service. Very cool. Make the telco responsible for the line all the way to the phone. No more $130/hr service calls.
Standardization. Also cool. We can force them to use the latest cell technology. Useful cellular service -- my god, it'd almost like living in Europe!
Infrastructure upgrades can be controlled: people in Podunk don't have to be shafted with decade-old crap pilfered from the big-city telco exchanges. Goodbye mechanical switches... at last!
Guaranteed coverage. Wouldn't that be too sweet?
Etc.
With a consumer-regulated monopoly, you don't rely on market forces to "push" the company into delivering new services or better prices. The company jumps through *our* hoops. As long as they're guaranteed a reasonable profit, they'll do anything we want.
It's win-win.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Why wasn't this pointed out in 1996?
I posted to
Clinton Suspended from Arguing Before High Court also "In other action, the court rejected arguments that FBI blunders should give Oklahoma City bombing co-defendant Terry Nichols the chance for a new trial."
Court Order
Eve Fairbanks says I drive a hybrid!LOL
Before people ask (as they always seem to) why /. doesn't just post this in the story, could it be because they can be held responsible for the stories, but refuse responsibility for comments. That is, should the NYT see a link (such as the one above) in a comment, /. can denounce the poster (if it gets that serious), but should they see it in a story, then /. might find themselves liable. Liable for what, I don't know, but I'm sure a "good" lawyer would find something.
Tom
Oh arse
I'm looking at the post, and I don't see any spelling errors or particularly noticable grammar flaws. Perhaps it could have been written more eloquently, but I don't believe it's the place of the editors to make every article pristine.
It is always amazing to me that a law that tries to get rid of monopoly/ies has left so much power in their hands without real controls on the amount of rents they can extract. It is especially strange since telecom lines in today's world are a public good, much like roads in the early 20th century. While there are toll roads, it would have been inconceivable to have all roads be toll in the 1950's, for example. I wonder if it is possible to argue in court that the nature of the service provided has changed and thus various other laws now apply to telecom lines (thus creating a conflict with the telecom law that must now be resolved by the supreme court).
The second is whether there still exists differences
should be "exist differences" or "exists a difference".
Telecommunications Bill and it's affect
should be "its [no apostrophe] effect".
decison and penalty of telecom companies
should be perhaps "decisions of a penalty for"?
Those who sacrifice security to condemn liberty deserve to repeat history or something. - Benjamin Santayana
also, visit #gift on irc.openprojects.net for even more info
Some cases in point: long-distance competition has been a great thing. Local telephone competition is (and always will be) a mess-- even when (if) most customers have two or three choices, there will be limited incentive for a price war between the competitors.
This link works better
/ technology/01TELE.html
http://KARMAWHORE@archives.nytimes.com/2001/10/01
The poster is quite correct that if we expect meaningful change in the law, it will have to come from Congress, not from the court.
To which I think we should all say - Amen! There are many laws and policies that I oppose but it is shortsighted (in most cases) to look to the court to fix it. In order for the issue to be before the court at all my position must have already lost in the congress; that is to say my position lost in the democratic process. That process is not perfect, it is not directly the "will of the people", there is certainly corruption; but it is better than the alternative.
The court is not a democratic institution, the justices are not elected, they don't even pretend to be accountable in any way to the people and they are not supposed to be. They may make the "right" decision in my opinion but if it only reflects the justices personal preferences with only a pretense of constitutional reasoning it is functioning as a benevolent dictatorship. In the short run I get what I want but it is a lousy deal for several reasons. First I have no confidence that they will stay 'benevolent' (i.e. agree with me). And anyway it is only 'benevolent' from my position as an advocate, I'm sure those that oppose my position would characterise it differently. My opponents initially 'won' in the democratic/legislative process - I can accuse them of winning through fraud & corruption but as a partisan I am probably not the most reliable witness.
Finally there are very few checks and balances on Judicial power once they have discarded the self imposed check of sticking strictly to the constitution, there is almost no recourse for the losing side. Without viable political recourse they may abandon political/democratic means of pursuing their agenda. If the issue is merely commercial there may be very few consequences, maybe a slight increase in corruption and disregard for the law. If the issue is more fundamental and emotional the consequences can be severe. Look at the incresing violence of the abolitionist movement after Dred Scott and to a lesser degree the anti-abortionists after Roe. Representational democratic politics gives us a way of resolving conflict, take that away and the if the losing side is passionate enough it may resort to more primitive methods of resolving the conflict.
I think we have proven that long distance competition has been a boon for consumers and ultimately for those l.d. companies who had the stamina to survive the winnowing out process over the years.
Local service, on the other hand, is a natural monopoly: because there is really only one pipe coming into your premises, it doesn't make sense to have multiple providers yanking the other end of it around to this, that, or the other central office. As a prime example, I hand you the d.s.l. debacle. Tell me that great experiment worked!
The natural monopoly-ILECs did everythnig in their power to squash the so-called competitors providing d.s.l. over their last-mile circuits. I just saw a t.v. ad for some wannabe competitor to BellSouth Telephone the other night and just chuckled. I don't know how much longer they can stay in business promising discounts of greater than 50% off what B.S.T. charges. They are probably just reselling B.S.T. dial tone at wholesale rates, but why should B.S.T. sit there and let them rake in the bucks? I bet they'll do everything they can to delay orders, screw up orders, accidentally disable service, whatever they can to the competitor's customers.
I look for no substantive changes from the Supreme Court. Competition is good, except where natural monopolies exist, as in last-mile provisioning.
slashdot: A failed experiment.
So while a poster can include a link (which is their responsibility only), a company such as the one that owns /. cannot.
...Open Source isn't the only answer -- but it's almost always a better value than the alternatives...
One of the most irratating things of dealing with the Bells is their refusal to delivery service within a decent amount of time. For example, ordering DSL from a competitor that uses a Bells' local loop will take sometimes three weeks or longer, but ordering DSL directly from the Bells' you can easily have the connection up and running within a week. The Bells' intentionally delay delivery of local loop and repairs to competitors using their lines. Unless this is addressed, no matter what deregulation or fines are imposed, Bells' will continue to have control of the market and the uncontrolled ability to put competitors out of business.