NC Governor Allows Anti-Community-Broadband Law

zerocore writes "North Carolina governor Bev Perdue will not veto a bill that will limit small town municipalities' ability to create community broadband when private industry will not go there. 'The governor said there is a need to establish rules to prevent cities and towns from having unfair advantage over private companies. But she said she was concerned that the bill would decrease the number of choices available to consumers. The bill would require towns and cities that set up broadband systems to hold public hearings, financially separate their operations from the rest of government operations, and bar from them offering below cost services. They also couldn't borrow money for the project without voter approval in a referendum.'"

Comments

Ummm

[maugle]

Is there a problem here? If the bill is truly what the summary (read the article? never!) makes it out to be, it sounds quite reasonable.

Re:Ummm

[PPH]

Right. More public projects should have to comply with requirements like these. Transit systems being an excellent example.

Re:Ummm

[PPH]

But once everyone rides transit, who is going to fund its losses? Better to lay the foundation of a transportation system that can pay its own way* now rather than squeeze cash out of private car drivers who will become increasingly scarce as time goes by.

*We tried that a few years ago in Seattle. But the political machine shit themselves and killed it in favor of a system that allows them to slosh public funds back and forth to the point that nobody really knows what their rail system costs.

Re:Ummm

[hedwards]

This isn't a competitive industry. I'm sorry, but I'm not sure where you got the idea that internet service was competitive. Somebody owns the wires going to your house, and they get to charge whatever they like for that knowing that there are at most one or two other options.

Around here the mayor wanted to do something like this 6 years ago and was told by Qwest that they'd be doing something about the problem in the near future. Well, it's 6 years later, the infrastructure still sucks and Qwest hasn't done jack shit about it. They just keep taking people's money because we don't have other options. Comcast managing to be even worse than Qwest.

When you take into consideration the fact that these towns weren't profitable to provide service in the first place, I'm really curious as to what the justification for pretending that treating broadband as a utility is so bad.

Re:Ummm

[coaxial]

Ha! The potholes, the bridge collapses, the American Society of Civil Engineers, the Economist, and pretty much anyone that has ever seen a road in the United States, knows that that America's transit infrastructure, it's roads, it's mass transit, everything is shit. Yes, it was once the envy of the world, but that sixty years ago.

While it is true that roads are paid for with gas an vehicle taxes and fees, the amount of revenue being generated under the current regime is demonstrably insufficient, and has been for decades. After 30 years of repeated tax cuts, with increased demand for basic services, we do have a self-imposed revenue problem.

Re:Ummm

[drsquare]

But once everyone rides transit, who is going to fund its losses?

Who funds the losses of the roads? Unless you live in Europe or somewhere with similarly high fuel taxes, your roads are probably subsidised by the government. But that's one form of socialism that Americans have no problem with...

If everyone used public transport, there's no reason it couldn't be run at cost.

Double Standard

[iluvcapra]

If a town wants to start a new bus line, or double the number of stops, or open a new school, or put water fountains on Main Street, they just hold a vote at a city council meeting.

If a town wants to hang some antennas to offer a public amenity on Main Street, probably costing about as much as the water fountains, they gotta go through the equivalent of a consent decree. This sounds like broadband provider protectionism to me. That a municipal utility can provide better service than a private utility is an open question and a lot of cities do very well with publicly-owned electric grids and traction transit; adding hoops to jump through for broadband wifi in particular is just a way of protecting Comcast's fiefdom.

Allegory

[Dracos]

Someone should write an Onion article about states banning/hampering municipal water systems because Coke and Pepsi demand it.

Public Works?

[spire3661]

Can we jsut get community wide IT infrastructure labeled as public works please? During the New Deal era, were toll road operators suing to prevent the national highway system? The idea that we should worry about private enterprise profits at the cost of public works is retarded.

Yeaaaa, because

[unity100]

any group of people who band together and form a 'company' have the right to privately fuck all other people as they will. and, if they are not even wanting to come to your locale and screw you over privately - you shouldnt do anything - because their right to fuck you whenever they want, however they want should be preserved over what YOU want. crooked ? that's capitalism. until a capital owner decides to fuck you over, you people should just shut up and wait.

Re:Open Source Broadband

[camperslo]

Clearly the states that have clean air laws are discriminating against the private sector by insuring that "free" air is breathable. Clearly that has prevented the growth of new jobs in the bottled oxygen industry, at a time when jobs are so desperately needed. Why do we put up with these anti-jobs bureuocrats?

Providing free access to sidewalks and paths for bicycles also harms taxi drivers and countless other businesses.

Countless consumers make unlicensed copies of bacteria that is in the food they buy.
Freeloaders, every one of them.

Will there be no end to this epidemic of unchecked freedom?

So how do you feel about eminent domain?

[jeko]

I get your point, I really do. If you feel this way about property taxes, how do you feel about eminent domain? How do you feel about easements? What about squatter's rights?

Also, I know of medium-sized towns where every square inch of property in the town is owned by one family. Let me assure you these places are not bastions of freedom where the blessings of liberty apply to all. How would you feel if $some_trillionaire bought an entire state? An entire country?

Also, if the government (government, as in We the People, of by and for) doesn't ultimately control the land, then what is your claim to it? You say this is your acre of land? How? Oh, you paid someone for it? How did they get it? They paid someone for it, and so on? Hmm, Mr. Running Crow here says you've received stolen property, that he was driven off his land by force, by the Government. Just because you paid for stolen property doesn't mean you haven't committed the crime of receiving stolen property, else we'd have to let every professional fence out of jail.

Oh, you live in Europe? In say, Scotland? Clan MacDonald would like a word...

Thank you, Ms. Palin. Yes, you live in Alaska on land so barren no human being has ever laid claim to it, not even the Inuit? This land is yours because you got to it first? OK, so the Moon, or at least the Sea of Tranquility, belongs to the United States? How do you lay claim to this land? Did you make it?

Oh, you claim it because you have lived here so long, and your family has worked this land and has fought for it. Fought for it by serving in the government's army, you mean?

You've stumbled into an old, old argument the philosophers have been chewing over for literally thousands of years. Ultimately, it boils down to this. You own this land by agreement. This is your land because everyone else in the group agrees it is, and if they don't, then the best you have is a house under siege. The ability to demand, defend and grant rights over real estate is in fact referred to as sovereignty, and that is a function of government. Those few individuals on Earth who can claim that they own this land, and can back that claim up without appealing to some other authority, are referred to as "kings."

Like it or not, "private property ownership" is a function of government. Ultimately, this is your land because the guys with the most and biggest guns say it is. The only other logically consistent argument is the one Thomas Paine espoused, basically that no one can claim to own any part of a world that they had no hand in creating.

Yeah, I know, this means Ayn Rand was a spoiled little rich girl who sat around bemoaning the loss of the family fortune and smoking crack. Shocking, I know.