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A State-By-State Guide To Restrictive Community Broadband Laws
blottsie writes On Tuesday, President Obama will unveil a dramatic push to improve broadband Internet service for people around the country through community-built municipal broadband networks. Problem is, state legislatures around the country have passed laws making it considerably more difficult for these public Internet projects to get off the ground. In some states, building municipal broadband is prohibited altogether. This piece dives into the state laws standing between us and more competitive Internet service markets.
I live in GA, and I see that here the service is unregulated. Does that mean that my local municipality can build something out? If so, what is stopping them? I have either Cramcost or AT&T DSL, and I would like the option of Google or some other fiber. Please help me understand!
>> deep-pocketed government entities from undercutting a private sector unable to keep up
Funniest thing I read all day.
These laws have been passed because certain municipalities have been able to successfully cover the cost and maintenance of their own networks.
On one hand, free access to information is arguably a fundamental right. The simple fact is, our governments are moving more and more towards online services. It's more painful, for example, in my state, to attempt to set up an appointment at the DMV via phone, than it is to click a few buttons on a web form. (And heaven forfend you simply show up without an appointment - hope you have a week of vacation saved up. I'm only slightly exaggerating.)
On the other hand, the Federal government has no mandate, nor any business whatsoever, backing public Internet access projects. This is solely within the domain of the powers of individual states.
On that third mutated hand, a man in a funny hat named Lincoln bitchslapped the sovereign power of states (admittedly, for perhaps worthy goals) with extreme prejudice, so screw that noise - grind the states and municipalities into dust if they want to suck the phallus of monopolizing providers.
Laws prohibiting municipal broadband are entirely anti-city. In a country where politics is such that cities are routinely decried (while ironically states redistribute their tax revenues to rural areas and suburbs), I think it is time to frame broadband rights as a freedom from government for cities.
Cities should be allowed to be more independent from the states that hold them. They should not be stripped of the competitive advantages that localized economies of scale provide. They should be allowed to offer their own utilities, to toll the interstates that cut through them, and they shouldn't have to pay a gasoline tax that largely serves rural interests, and above all, part of that independence should be to allow them to offer broadband.
This is my sig.
So if you support such nonsense, WHERE in the Constitution does it grant the Federal Government the power to regulate internet providers?
Its called the "commerce clause" and even "originalist" extraordinaire Anton Scalia has no problems with that (see his concurrence in Gonzales vs Rauch).
When you can show me an Internet system that only provides service within a state, and does not transmit packets across state lines, I will believe that that one particular system (but not others generally) should be free from Federal regulation. Otherwise the power to regulate interstate commerce in the Constitution provides the authority. This was uncontroversial in the 19th Century when the Interstate Commerce Commission was created (1886) to regulate railways, and did so within states, since they carried interstate commerce.
Second class citizen of the New Gilded Age
There are hundreds (maybe thousands) of Public Utility Districts in the country that provide electricity and telephone service to their customers often with lower cost and higher quality of service than the for profit competitors. They have boards elected from the customer base and their only focus is providing the service to their customers. I see no reason that can't work for internet connections as well.
educate yourself
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/N...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R...
then form an opinion
do you honestly believe that if government wasn't there the big guys would fade away? with weak government, the power vacuum is filled even more by plutocrats. they *want* a weak government. without government you think monopolies don't or won't exist? less government means less *regulation*, they gobble up more, you get less choice buddy. and you get less legal recourse from being shafted
what you want, if you follow through on the coherent thought, is less corruption, not a weaker government that is even yet more beholden to money. not possible? study the laws on corruption in the nordic countries, you know, those evil socialist horrors that are actually richer, happier, and more upwardly mobile meritocracies than the usa pretends it is, but is rapidly losing with a shrinking middle class and corrupt congresswhores beholden to the financial powers that less government unleashes even more
good luck kid escaping the bullshit mythology
intellectual property law is philosophically incoherent. it is your moral duty to ignore it or sabotage it
Chattanooga lost their credit rating did to overwhelming debt from their government broadband attempt
No. This, at least, is unsubstantiated FUD.
From Forbes.com:
In fact, contrary to Stephenson’s claims that municipal broadband hurt municipal credit ratings, S&P just upgraded the Chattanooga public utility’s bond rating, stating, “The system is providing reliable information to the electric utility on outages, losses and usage, which helps reduce the electric system’s costs.”
A quick google search of Chattanooga and broadband turned up multiple articles agreeing that their local internet deployment has been a roaring success, particularly in bringing a new wave of business and revenue to the city.
Not every city is successful, but that's no reason for states to prohibit them from trying, if nothing else to give the monopolists an incentive to improve their crappy race-to-the-bottom service.
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...
After finding that wonderful article on rent seeking (although you still don't seem to understand that "rent seeking" is a failure of government, not markets), I suggest you look up the articles on "regulatory capture" and "public choice theory". More regulation is the primary mechanism by which "plutocrats" engage in rent seeking and create monopolies, and politicians and government employees invariably support them in that effort, not because they are bad people (most of them are quite well meaning), but because that's the way such systems function.
Government is responsible for creating artificial monopolies. So, "without government" there wouldn't be any artificial monopolies. Would we be dragged into a quagmire of natural monopolies if government got completely out of the business of regulating markets? Nobody knows for certain because it has never been tried, but given what we know, it seems very unlikely.
Take it from an ex-northern European: you don't know what you're talking about. I suggest you read "The Almost Nearly Perfect People" by Booth. Northern Europe is neither socialist, nor a meritocracy, nor particularly successful. And even if it were any of those things, we couldn't implement the Nordic model in the US.