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Appeals Court Decision Kills North Carolina Town's Gigabit Internet (hothardware.com)
MojoKid writes: In early August, the 6th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals ruled the FCC had no authority to prevent states from imposing restrictions on municipal internet. This was a result of the FCC stepping in last year in an effort to "remove barriers to broadband investment and competition." However, the courts sided with the states, which said that the FCC's order impeded on state rights. In the end, this ruling clearly favored firmly entrenched big brand operators like Time Warner Cable, Comcast, and ATT, which lobbied hard to keep competition at bay. The federal ruling specifically barred municipal internet providers from offering service outside of their city limits, denying them from providing service to under-served communities. The fallout from the federal court's rejection of the FCC order to extend a lifeline to municipal internet providers has claimed another victim. The small community of Pinetops, North Carolina -- population 1,300 -- will soon have its gigabit internet connection shut off. Pinetops has been the recipient of Greenlight internet service, which is provided by the neighboring town of Wilson. The town of Wilson has been providing electric power to Pinetops for the past 40 years, and had already deployed fiber through the town in order to bolster its smart grid initiative. What's infuriating to the Wilson City Council and to the Pinetop residents that will lose their high-speed service is that the connections are already in place. There's no logical reason why they should be cut off, but state laws and the lobbyists supporting those laws have deemed what Greenlight is doing illegal. Provide power to a neighboring town -- sure that's OK. Provide better internet to a neighboring town -- lawsuit
Just like States can impose restrictions on where you pee.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
Arrest anyone that tries to shut it off.
At the very least, service should keep running until someone else provides service. It's not as if Comcast is going to provide service within anyone's lifetime just because Greenlight stops.
Have to hope it motivates them to do something about the legislators that did this.
Kind of happy though, good to see the courts get a Constitutional issue right. They have been pulling far too much out of their ass in the name of making feel good lately.
An European here cannot comprehend what's preventing creating a Pinetop Municipal Broadband Company which will provide the connection to locals and contractually buying bandwidth/network and other related services from the Wilson guys?
In the end, this ruling clearly favored firmly entrenched big brand operators like Time Warner Cable, Comcast, and ATT, which lobbied hard to keep competition at bay.
Can we just call a spade a spade, and treat "lobbying" as a bribe? I'm getting sick of seeing this blatant corruption.
Blame North Carolina for passing a bad law. The courts did no more than affirm the states' right to regulate their municipalities.
While you're at it, blame Wilson for overreaching. They could have made a case for installing basic infrastructure (fiber optic cable, no different than roads) and then leasing it by the strand to individuals and businesses to connect to the Internet provider of their choice. And invited providers to enter the market and compete, now with the ease-of-entry facilitated by last-mile infrastructure. Instead they made the same bad decision most municipalities make: run a municipal Internet service with no direct access to the cable for other purposes.
Moderating "-1, Disagree" is simple censorship. Have the guts to post your opinion.
So much for the Free Market Economy.........
"The hands that help are better far than lips that pray." - Robert Ingersoll (1833-1899)
Is this basically the state saying to its people "fuck you, you can't have good internet because it's not sold by our buddies who would rip you off if they could be bothered, but they can't. So again, fuck you"?
Wanna buy a shirt?
https://www.redbubble.com/people/stealthfinger/shop?asc=u
voted their own representatives in the office. They can vote them out if these are so corrupt as to hinder them in access to basic service. If not maybe they should form a well organized militia and hand them bastards. I can imagine this right cannot be argued away by the individual state.
That goodness there is a lobby group available to protect big business and their right to gouge profit from every community around.
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Ideology over common sense (in this case the ideology is that private free market is the highest goal). We all know how well this ended for the USSR.
Is there a "super woosh" or something? Cuz that might have knocked a satellite out of orbit while going over his head.
What a bunch of libertarian infantile bullshit, starting with the 'taxes are coercion' crap and ending with the usual selfish 'it's being spent on something I personally disapprove of and therefore is morally wrong because reasons' type argument.
First off, jackass, people form governments to, you know, govern. Providing essential services has been a government function since before the founding of this country even though libertarians love to rewrite history in their deluded brains to pretend it isn't.
One really can't function economically without Internet access in today's society. The corporate monopolists you seem to have no issue with can't be bothered to even go rip these people off, but they bought a law to make people solving their own problems in a clever manner illegal because they're afraid that people in areas that they do rip off will get ideas.
Where I live I have one cable company to 'choose' from. I also get natural gas from a city owned utility. Guess which entity provides responsive service at a reasonable price? If the gas utility were private, the only thing that would change is my prices would go up because of profits and my service would go down, kind of like what happened when our electric utility which had been owned by a reasonably small company got bought out by an aggressive rent seeking corporation. Their behavior of course is to raise prices and defer maintenance such that when we had a minor brush with the edge of a hurricane recently there were massive outages that went on for days as their crumbling ill maintained infrastructure couldn't handle it.
You want coercion, it's being forced to pay money to monopolists and oligarchs. Some businesses have competition, none of them welcome it. All of them do whatever they can to be rid of it. At least with government I get a vote.
Leaving aside the "OH NOES! TAXES!" BS, the statement you quote never suggests that supplying Internet access is "charitable" or "unprofitable". It says "the majority of the area does not present enough profitability to attract the private-sector investment", not "the majority of the area does not present profit to attract the private-sector investment".
The private sector generally doesn't invest in projects to make small amounts of profit, especially if they're expensive. There are many, many, examples of projects that would more than pay for themselves that you'll never see the private sector take an interest in, because the promise of a 10% return here for a medium risk is unattractive compared to the promise of 100% there, for little or no risk.
As for taxes, I personally like paying taxes. As a wise man once said, in return I get civilization.
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Free to trample on each other, freedom to bribe, freedom to have lots of guns available so accidents happen more often...
Cannot grok it.
... you will have to choose between the Law and Morals.
I have a friend who gets very angry when he talks about Morals; he has no qualms about the concept that the Law must followed however terrible the consequences. He's otherwise a very balanced person.
IMHO the Law is a tool which we produced to help us live in harmony; if it is used to damage the interests of the people, one has to question if that tool is working well according to the original intent (aka the "Spirit of the Law") -- reference: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Letter_and_spirit_of_the_law .
This court decision is not binding on the state of North Carolina. The Sixth Circuit covers Michigan, Ohio, Kentucky, and Tennessee. North Carolina is in the Fourth Circuit. Decisions in other circuits are merely persuasive authority, not binding. Only the Supreme Court can do that.
Anonymous Cowards generally receive no replies because you're a coward and I'm a bitch
Each municipality should have an independent company that works in partnership with the other. With a minimal of overhead, they will be able to sidestep state law.
Based on that flawed logic, most of the rural US would still be lacking power and phone service. Rural communities using taxes to establish essential utilities is a long standing tradition in this nation and is a big part of what has made this country so strong.. Libertarians have some great ideas but usually take them too far.
I'm too lazy to compose a creative sig.
The National Guard is busy in Charlotte, there will be no one around to stop the riot!
Yes, that thing that has never existed, but is routinely blamed by the intellectually dishonest (whether they're pro or anti).
As for taxes, I personally like paying taxes. As a wise man once said, in return I get civilization.
I always feel like that saying misses out the middle step. In reality, in return for taxation you get authorities with more power than you individually have. How much civilization you get depends on the nature of those authorities and how they wield that power, hence another old saying about accepting no taxation without representation.
Getting back to the matter at hand, apparently this is a silly situation that is against the interests of the local residents and yet benefits no-one. On the other hand, the principle of protecting states' rights that seems to have been behind the court decision here is a reasonable one.
If it's also the case that the service here is funded by local government from tax money but is offering its services to those who aren't local voters/taxpayers, then the principle that the locals shouldn't be required to subsidise it through their own taxation isn't entirely unreasonable either. However, this argument seems much more shaky if those local authorities do in fact have the support of their electorate/taxpayers. After all, our national governments typically make international aid payments or use national resources to send assistance to other parts of the world after natural disasters, and a lot of us have no problem with that even though it's (a tiny part of) our tax money that is funding it. We feel like helping others in these situations is simply the right thing to do, and our governments are better able to do it than individual citizens.
That aside, is there a better way to set up this local Internet access, legally speaking, so that a useful practical arrangement can continue without risking a conflict with any fundamental principles of how the government is constituted?
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
Privatize the fiber, call it a Co-Op
There all fixed, next injustice please.
Rick B.
If something is not profitable enough, then that is still a form of charity. For example, suppose that my market rate is $50/hour. An organization tells me that they could really use my services, but all they can afford to pay me is $10/hour. If I accept their offer, then I am essentially giving them the equivalent of $40/hour in charity.
Anyway, let's assume that you're correct and you can earn a nice 10% return by taking a moderate risk. Why not start this company yourself? The private sector is open to everyone. If people want your service badly enough, and they trust you to provide that service, then you should be able to raise the money.
Even if you like to pay taxes, would you be willing to acknowledge that taxes are, at best, a necessary evil, and the use of coercion should be minimized? As an analogy, suppose that you have a police officer who is legally justified in killing a threatening man, but this police officer believes he can safely de-escalate the situation. Would you like the officer to minimize his use of force? If so, then you should also wish to keep the use of taxation to a minimum.
First the coddling of Duke Energy, then HB2 and now this. But go on voting Republican because zOMG SOCIALISM! or you hates them feelthy preverts.
Ooh, moderator points! Five more idjits go to Minus One Hell!
Delendae sunt RIAA, MPAA et Windoze
Based on that flawed logic, most of the rural US would still be lacking power and phone service.
My guess is that rural communities would simply pay a premium for those services. Morally, that seems perfectly acceptable, because more resources are required per customer to service rural communities.
But even if I'm wrong, I still don't see what the problem is. If your hypothetical scenario came to pass, that would mean the urban residents refused to provide the rural communities with charity. Now, if the urban residents are perfectly content with the suffering of the rural residents, then who am I to judge? But if the urban residents are angered by the living conditions of the rural residents, then that would mean the urban residents are complaining about the conditions of the very people that those urban residents chose not to help with charity. In that case, I must confess that I really don't care what some hypocrites think of my policies.
We feel like helping others in these situations is simply the right thing to do, and our governments are better able to do it than individual citizens.
I would argue that the government is not better able to provide charity than individual citizens. For example, the Zika funding bill was voted down, because members of congress disagreed with each other. If Zika funding was provided through voluntary means, then we would not have these stalemates and delays. I won't say that private charities are perfect, but at least you can choose the private charity that you want to donate to; when it comes to government, you only get a "choice" every couple of years, and it's usually not much of a choice.
If something is not profitable enough, then that is still a form of charity. For example, suppose that my market rate is $50/hour. An organization tells me that they could really use my services, but all they can afford to pay me is $10/hour. If I accept their offer, then I am essentially giving them the equivalent of $40/hour in charity.
Based on your first example, I don't think you understand what "charity" means. It's not an imposition, as you imply. If you lowered your price it would mean that you took $40 of value in some form other than immediate monetary compensation. Whether it's a public relations coup that you think you will benefit from at a later date, a warm fuzzy feeling inside, or the reduction in stress from knowing that you won't be inconvenienced while checking out with a credit card because of slow internet, you will have found some offsetting value.
If it's just a reduction of value imposed by the government, it a tax, a fee, or "taking". Charity is not coerced.
Because of all the situations in which the Interstate Commerce Clause has been stretched to extend Federal authority, Internet access isn't one of them.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
Merge the towns, if the barrier to having broadband is the name of your town then merge them. Soon all communities in North Carolina will be called Wilson City.
Calvin:Do you believe in the devil? Hobbes:I'm not sure man needs the help.
Pinetops should just announce that they are now merging with the town of Wilson. No more issues.
Just to be clear, I have absolutely nothing against individuals and private charities doing good work. I donate to some of those charities myself, and long may they continue.
But equally, as a taxpayer, I have nothing against my government using (for example) military personnel and equipment who are trained and able to operate in harsh environments to support rescue and relief operations in areas hit by natural disasters. There is little that I personally can contribute in such an environment other than financial and moral support, because I don't personally own any large transport aircraft or have enough first aid skills to treat seriously injured people with minimal resources for an extended period because the real hospital just got knocked down by a tsunami. If my own friends or family were in such a situation, I would be grateful to anyone else who offered emergency aid, and so I am happy that the resources I contribute to through taxes can sometimes do that for others.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
There's no free market. There's only whoever makes the largest bribe-ish contribution to the politicians.
Is not just the corporation's fault. It's government's fault as well. It takes TWO to tango.
The federal government is granted the ability to override the state government with regards to interstate commerce. The federal constitution also forbids the states from denying certain rights to its citizens (though not clearly spelled out, this has two hundred years of precedence behind it).
You don't need to guess. We have actual history. Rural communities did not pay a premium. They got no service.
And like virtually everyone on your side of these arguments, you are pretending that history never took place. Because if you acknowledge what actually happened, your argument would be nonsensical.
The federal government is granted the ability to override the state government with regards to interstate commerce.
Well, regulate interstate commerce, not override it. And how does Internet sold from one city in the State to another city in the State become interstate commerce? The data may be interstate, but unless that fiber crosses a State boundary - it's intrastate and the Federal Government is not supposed to have overriding jurisdiction there.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
The way our "democracy" works now is we are the carcass the lions [big corporations] feed upon. Any interference is dealt with by the politicians [jackals] who get the leavings. In countries where there are no "democracies" or less desirable forms of government or outright socialism the internet is regulated as a utility and is not metered out for so many bucks a megabite. Wonder who is more corrupt. Nothing term limits can't fix. It's a better alternative to artificially controlled resources being doled out at higher and higher rates. Examples : internet, medicine, food, health care housing. See a pattern here? Do nothing about term limits, see you at the food riots
It's interstate commerce because are out-of state broadband suppliers who are the competition here. This is how it works with telephone service.
While Libertarians repeat their Ayn Rand mantras, reality intrudes
Without government, Captialism will always seek monopoly control, either natural or political.
Creating corporate persons accelerated this process
And now, our political bodies are for sale to the highest bidders
Thus, monopolies.
Where is Teddy Roosevelt when we need him?