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Landlords, ISPs Team Up To Rip Off Tenants On Broadband (backchannel.com)
"Network operators like Comcast, Time Warner Cable, and ATT, in cahoots with [real estate] developers and landlords, routinely use a breathtaking array of kickbacks, lawyerly games of Twister, blunt threats, and downright illegal activities to lock up buildings in exclusive arrangements," reports Harvard Law Professor Susan Crawford.
itwbennett writes: Eight years ago, the FCC issued an order banning exclusive agreements between landlords and ISPs, but a loophole is being exploited, leaving many tenants in apartment buildings with only one choice of broadband service provider. The loophole works like this: Instead of having an exclusive agreement with one provider, the landlords refuse to let any other companies than their chosen providers access their properties...
"This astounding, enormous, decentralized payola scheme affects millions of American lives," Crawford writes, revealing Comcast's revenue-sharing proposals for property owners and urging cities (and national lawmakers) to require broadband neutrality in residential buildings. Other loopholes are also being exploited, Crawford writes, and "it's why commercial tenants in NYC pay through the nose for awful Internet access service in the fanciest of commercial buildings... We've got to take landlords out of the equation -- all they're doing is looking for payments and deals...and the giant telecom providers in our country are more than happy to pay up."
"This astounding, enormous, decentralized payola scheme affects millions of American lives," Crawford writes, revealing Comcast's revenue-sharing proposals for property owners and urging cities (and national lawmakers) to require broadband neutrality in residential buildings. Other loopholes are also being exploited, Crawford writes, and "it's why commercial tenants in NYC pay through the nose for awful Internet access service in the fanciest of commercial buildings... We've got to take landlords out of the equation -- all they're doing is looking for payments and deals...and the giant telecom providers in our country are more than happy to pay up."
Have mod points, would rather educate.
You have a lawsuit against your landlord. Federal law grants you the right to mount a dish.
I have personally fought a home owners association, and won.
https://www.fcc.gov/consumers/...
It's much better to take millions directly from foreign governments, while actively serving in office, amirite?
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Slashdot survives on readers' submission and over the years I have done my share of submissions
Whenever I submit an article, I submit articles that I think is interesting, something which is related to 'tech', something for the geeks to enjoy, as the geeks make up a large part of the Slashdot reader base
Something must have happened in Slashdot recently, however --- All 3 of my most recent submissions have been tagged as "SPAM"
I am putting up the links to the 3 "spam submissions". You guys decide if they are spam, or not
FYI, I never expect all my submission to be adopted
I recognize that the editors have the final say on which submission to use, which to reject
Anyway, anyone else experience the same treatment?
I am posting as AC because they have locked up my account and not letting me to use it to post comment any more
Info of my account is at https://slashdot.org/~Taco+Cow...
Just in case you need to know if any of my submissions were ever accepted, here are a few examples
https://hardware.slashdot.org/...
https://slashdot.org/story/16/...
https://news.slashdot.org/stor...
And yes, in my account, my karma is still rated as *EXCELLENT*
I would vote for Bernie over Trump but Trump over Hillary, but How You Remind Me is something I listen to. I thought Closing Time might be a Nickelback song, but it's apparently by a group called Semisonic.
Photograph isn't too bad, but falls outside my taste to actually listen to really. I have a vague impression of several good songs that sound like they might be Nickelback songs, and that may be giving Nickelback fans the impression that Nickelback songs are good or at least better than they actually are. There's a song with lyrics that go "Hey now, you're a rock star. Get your show on. Get paid."- and saw they had a song called, "Rockstar". Not the same song at all.
Don't you understand.
No, just like you don't...
To Trump's loyal followers, what Trump does is irrelevant.
Nonsense, Trump has done and said several things that make me wince...
What Trump has going for him is that he isn't Hillary, I look at her and say "well, whatever Trump's failings, at least he isn't evil like her".
All that counts is that he hates Mexicans and Muslims
He doesn't, but if you really think he does, that explains why you don't understand.
Don't you understand. To Hilary's loyal followers, what Hilary does is irrelevant. It doesn't matter. Her actions, her behaviors, her history, they have no bearing on her fgitness and sutability. All that counts is that she has a (D) next to her name, and will do some vague things that will somehow make everything better.
Where I lived, there was a long period during which you didn't want a TWC installer coming in and working unsupervised. They are (were?) generally subcontractors and at that time the quality varied very wildly--and unless you had already weird cable, you really had little chance of knowing the quality of who was going to get dispatched to you...and the bad ones did more than just leave you with no working cable.
This is a legitimate reason for a landlord to ban them: "This company's installers have a tendency to do unnecessary property damage, and while some may be competent or better there's no way to ensure we get any of those."
The better solution of course is for the companies to do what the local TWC did: start actually being careful about ensuring your installers are actually competent...
Long-term, it ought to be possible by now to get it so a cable or satellite installer doesn't need to do much alteration to the building's structure--have it built into the walls like electrical wiring, so an installer's simply dealing with plugging things in, with all new lines being outside the building...which would solve the problems bad installers cause, eventually.