Four more people to add to my list of people who'd make the world a better place if they were dead:
Ted Stevens (R-Alaska)
Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii)
John Breaux (D-Louisana)
Dianne Feinstein (D-California)
Is it intended to be significent that half of these people are representing "states" which arn't even lawfully part of the US?
I think we should probably emphasize this fact to the legislature. Passage of this bill in its current form would basically destroy IT here in this country. Since I work for a multi-national corporation it would be particularly interesting to see how that would work. Just think of the efforts required to change every file server and mail server in the US...
Depends exactly what kind of system the bill actually covers. Is it just "computers" or are, banking and stock exchange systems, telephone systems, ATC systems, rail and road signalling systems, aircraft and rocket flight control systems, etc within the scope of the law?
As an amateur historian, I realize that in the longer term it is hard enough to find materials after the normal process of time. The digital revolution has made this much worse (for example a recent/. story mentioned that England could not retrieve census information that had been recorded c.1980 from obscure 14" optical storage disks). The use of encryption and DRM is going to make this situation much, much worse.
A lot of modern media dosn't last at all. Future archeologists might end up considering out current time to be a "dark age":)
The problem is that DRM does not expire when the copyright expires (assuming congress will eventually allow copyrights to expire, and does not keep extending them forever:-)
If they continue in the present way there will come a point where it is realised that everything in the US is in the public domain due to no constitutional copyright law actually existing.
This is a difficult problem, with no easy solution. A minimal solution is to require that all copyright holders make their product available when it enters the public domain, but this won't help if the organization is no longer in business. Given this view, I don't know if DRM should be legal under copyrights. If DRM is legal, the only workable solution is to go back to the old method of copyrights (pre-1976) where you actually have to register for copyright protection. If you want to copyright something that is only "published" with DRM controls, an archival copy of the original unprotected version must be registered with the copyright authority (presumably Library of Congress, who will need new funding for this responsibility). This method has another real advantage, which is that it ensures that the copyright holder can be identified. The restoration industry has a big problem with "abandoned" works that are still technically under copyright, but they have no contactable owners.
There is also the possibility of renewel every few years for an exponetially rising fee. e.g. initial registration 1 doller, renewel at 5 years 5 dollers, at 10 years 25 dollers. This would be a big disincentive to hording, especially for material more than 25 years old. If someone thinks they can make more than 2 and a half million dollers a year of 5o year old material good luck to them...
This is a long term problem, and typically people don't worry about the long term (companies have trouble thinking past the end of the quarter!).
If anything this should result in copyright terms falling, rather than rising...
When evaluating a copyright, one should assume that the original author put in his work everything he felt necessary for that particular piece of intellectual creation. If the performer is adding any fundamental essence to the original ideas, then he is doing a derivative work.
Scripts are often more outlines than comprehensive instructions on performing a play. Often many people, not just the actors, must provide some level of creative input in order to make a performance. Once methods of recording a performance were developed the issue of the copyright of the performance recording arose. Which a little later lead to new variations of performing arts where the specific aim was to create a recording.
and the hardware will encode your hardware serial number and home adress in your posts so that the FBI can find you and take care of your illegal hardware.
You don't thing all of the hacked hardware might put out a serial number belonging to some George Walter Bush...
The only rational extention of the DMCA if for the supreme court to strike it down as a clear violation of free speech.
Actually what would probably need to happen would be for a significent proportion of the US population to take the Federal Government (including Congress and the Supreme Court) off of the pedestal the have somehow ended up on. Congress can only pass unconstitutional laws so long as the rest of the population goes along with them. It would be a lot harder for special interests (even rich ones) to actually change the US constitution.
There are various reasons people don't get broadband.
1) They don't know much about it.
2) They haven't used the Internet long enough to get sick of 56k access
3) They don't know what hardware to get/ are put off by the ongoing expense.
and of course availability too.
Number 3 should probably come at the top of the list. Other bits would be "dosn't appear to be worth the asking price" and "the whole package is somehow wrong" (e.g. some ISPs appear to deliberatly make their cable modem/DSL offering emulate limitations more applicable to modem dialups or to cripple the service in some way)
Sen. Hollings says the reason broadband isn't as popular today as it should have been is because media giants are afraid to provide large quantities of digital content to the masses over it.
The only people making this claim are these same publishing companies. Who's real argument appears to be that they don't know how to make money using this media. When exactly did the "right" to corporate profit enter the US Constitution? Let alone that the US is supposedly a "capitalist" country...
Therefore, the public has no 'interest' in broadband. This is blatently wrong.
It's a complete non squitur...
Then, the best part, he says that, in order to increase public interest in broadband, the government needs to step in to regulate the digital media industry a little.
Again this does not follow. If there is a need for regulation here it would make more sense directed towards the telecoms industry. But most of this is outside the jurisdiction of the US Federal Government anyway. Let alone that this dosn't appear to be about regulating the "digital media industry" at all. One of these cases where the title of a piece of legislation is deliberatly misleading, sometimes to the point of implying the exact opposite of what it's really about. One simple way in which they could provide plenty of "content" for broadband would be by a "back to basics" on copyright. Plenty of stuff from 1988 and earlier...
Silly little details weren't a problem for Helena Kobrin. I got a message from her because I was canceling her fake usenet cancles. I sent the letter to the legal guys who said ignore it and then someone tried to DOS our box. It took her a while to understand that the af.mil on the domain would result in her getting a visit in person telling her just how long she could expect to spend in jail if she keep up with the nonsense.
You mean she didn't have a clue what af.mil might be. Attempting to DOS a machine belonging to the military potentially qualifies as suicidal.
Out of curiousity, since when can a media outlet violate copyright law and be protected by the US First Amendment? that is the crux of the issue.
The clause making copyright possible is part of the unammended document. The "first ammendment" is an ammendment. Which modifies the original to produce a new version, which supercedes the older version. If IP was a later ammendment then you could argue that it took precedence... Typically where you have an ammended legal document it is the latest version which matters, why should the constitution of a federal republic be any different? It basically boils down to which is more important the freedom of "the press" or a statutory "carrot" to encourage a producer of IP to continue producing more IP.
The CoS(Crate of Shit... ummm Church of Scientology) attempt to use the DMCA is unconstitutional. www.xenu.net is a journalistic site. Therefore it is protected under freedom of the press, WHICH CANNOT BE SUPERSEDED BY ANY LAW LESS THAN A CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT. Therefore, the DMCA DOES NOT apply.
Effectivly what you are saying is that the US constitution voids this use of the DMCA because it says that no law (passed by Congress) can be used in this way. (Which is subtly different from the idea of a law being struck down as unconstitutional.) Is this possibly the intent of the ammendment otherwise it would appear to require the US Congress to consider every possible use (and misuse) of every law passed and to provide no easy redress they should make a mistake.
*sigh* You're the idiot. The US First Amendment applies only to Congress ("Congress shall make no law").
So who exactly passed the DMCA, was something impersonating the US Congress at the time.
On the other hand, DMCA applies to google as much as it applies to anyone else in the USA, and it hasn't been ruled as unconstitutional.
There is a loophole in that if you can get something past the US Congress then it's assumed to be in accordance with the US consitution. Even if it self evidently isn't. The only way of then getting anything done about it is to be given leave to appeal a case involving that law to the US supreme court. IIRC the US supreme court was never also intended to act as a court of appeal, instead only as a method of checks and balances against the US Congress. Probably also expected that the justices would show initutive too.
Haha... you ever see the movie "The Distinguished Gentleman" with Eddie Murphy? There's a very similar discussion among some representatives about a bill they just voted on. Of course, neither has a clue what the bill is, but a group of schoolkids asks and, well...;-D
The question would be how much of this movie is invented and how much is actually a documentry perporting to be comedy?
Isn't the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA) really the
Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Prevention Act?
Or even "perversion"..."Promotion" would include things such as price regulation and advertising. You generally promote a product by making it available, makeing sure people know about it and ensuring that people think it's worth the asking price. The other questionable part is the "Consumer" bit. This is being promoted by publishers rather than comsumers or consumer advocates. Who'd tend to be interested in such things as quality, value for money, product availablity (e.g. music, television, books, movies to suit a wide variety of tastes and interests).
Why is it that some parts of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are held in such high regard, such as the right to Free Speech, and others, such as copyright, are looked upon as the acts of the devil? Why is copyright extended every 20 years? Why can't I copy an out of print book from 1950 and give it to my friends? Are we ready to draw a line in the sand and say that profits are more important than education? More important than wonder? This is not about MP3s, or DIVX movie streams.
Mor should it be, laws which specifically enumerate specific technologies tend to need constant tinkering. Whereas the likes of "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries..." can be applied to todays technology just as well as they can be applied to the technology of 200 odd years ago and indeed whatever technology may exist in 200 years time.
This is about taking the basic deal between content producer and content consumer and twisting it until every one of us must pay for every second we are exposed to anything created by anyone. There is no more concept of property. I don't "own" a book, or a dvd anymore. I am merely leasing it from the company.
A third party is also present here that is the publisher it is generally these entities, who are in effect middle men between content producers and content consumers, behind changing the law. What newer technology does do is make it easier to publish, possibly even to the point where people who are actually producing don't need a third party publisher.
In court, we are frequently asked to deliberate on the "intent" of the law, rather than the wording. I say that the original intent of copyright law does not exist even slightly anymore. Moreover, instead of a bill that gives ever more rights to copyrightholders and ever more penalties to copyright consumers, perhaps our elected representatives could swing the proverbial pendulum back in our favor by stripping the entertainment industry of its most devastating weapon against freedom of information: the DMCA.
Quite often the copyright holder is not even the producer of the work anyway. With quite a few kinds of work the vast majority of the time the copyright holder ends up being the publisher. Something which the writers of the US Constitution would appear to be against, since they based what they wrote on a British law known as the "Queen Anne Copyright Statute" which took copyright away from publishers.
Microsoft makes money because Windows is preinstalled on almost every computer and most people have no idea there are alternatives.
The easiest way to make lost of money is to have a highly non-free market. If you had a free market then you'd instad get lots of companies making a moderate profit.
Actually, we don't need Microsoft.
If Microsoft disappeared, there would be initial panic, then adjustment, and finally we'd realize we got things done in spite of Microsoft, not because of them.
Developers would find it very easy to write code that would compile on Linux, *BSD or OSX.
You don't even need Microsoft to still be around for people to write programs for Windows. Indeed it might be easier, since programmers wouldn't be trying to hit a moving target.
You dont understand the cause. Do you know what GNU and GPL is about? Open Source?
Theres two groups in this country. The group which wants informations to be free, which is against patents, and intellectual property, then you have the group which wants information to be owned.
Except that the GPL certainly isn't against "intellectual property". Since it is a copyright licence. Also this is being presented as a false dicotomy of IP or no IP. There are many ways in which copyrights and patents could be reformed to work in ways which might be better. e.g. more limited terms, not being transferable, ending when the author/inventor dies, etc.
I barely heard anything mentioned last election about any issues I particularly cared about. Copyright and the War on Drugs (two issues that seem to be very important with my age group) weren't even mentioned at all.
One possible problem is that an issue won't be addressed at all if all candidates hold similar views. Which is a lot more likely with 2 political parties than it is with 20 (and possibly some independants)...
Not to be a prick, because I'd love to have 80 million people against this, but how many of those 80 million are probably of voting age?
IIRC one of the reason turnouts are so low in the US is that there isn't that much in the way of choice in candidates. Even though this may be self fulfiling.
It doesn't work like that. When they wait 18 month to light up the fibers, they pay just as much then as they would now. Even though the equipment they use to do it then will be better.
But it means that didn't have to spend or borrow money 18months ago. Thus have either saved 18 months worth of interest on a loan or made 18 months worth of interest on money they already had.
It costs you a LOT to dig that trench. If you put the minimum two fibers you need in it, when you need more you'd have to DIG ANOTHER TRENCH. So you put in a BUNCH of fibers. You don't want to dig another trench for a century or so.
Unless you are using fibre designed to be buried direct, you'd typically install ductwork (100mm plastic pipe). Once you have a trench open it dosn't make much odds if you put 1 or 6 sets of duct in. The expensive side is negotiating with landowners, the construction equiptment and paying the people. Fibre is then put through this. Putting a cable in a duct costs money, but a lot less money than digging a trench.
Laying cable is not nearly as difficult as it may seem. I was actually recently chatting with my uncle, who is the civil works administrator for a large wired city, and digging up pavement is a legacy of the past.
Actually digging a trench is expensive, especially if it is a paved surface even more especially if you need to divert traffic. Usually when people dig new trenchs now they will install at least twice as much ductwork as they think they might need.
There are so many redundant tubes under our roads right now that nearly any expansion that needs to be done can be fed through them. In our city, natural gas was put in by running new tubes through old waste-water mains. I'm sure fibre will be easier still to lay down.
Never heard the phrase "waste-water mains". Typically these are called "drains" or "sewers"... Interestingly it is still important that ducting carrying fibre is gas tight. More from the POV of gas leaking in than leaking out though.
Can the U.S. serve someone outside the U.S.? Usually - it has treaties with most other nations exchanging that privilege. Granted, if you had a server in, say, Iraq, you'd probably be out of their jurisdiction.
When did US courts start taking much notice of the concept of "out of jurisdiction?
Then again, try finding a mail server in Iraq where locals won't dig up the cable and sell it for the copper.
Any Iraqi embassy is considered to be "in Iraq". Embassys are typically in urban areas where paved surfaces and police tend to discourage digging up telephone cables.
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Four more people to add to my list of people who'd make the world a better place if they were dead:
Ted Stevens (R-Alaska)
Daniel Inouye (D-Hawaii)
John Breaux (D-Louisana)
Dianne Feinstein (D-California)
Is it intended to be significent that half of these people are representing "states" which arn't even lawfully part of the US?
I think we should probably emphasize this fact to the legislature. Passage of this bill in its current form would basically destroy IT here in this country. Since I work for a multi-national corporation it would be particularly interesting to see how that would work. Just think of the efforts required to change every file server and mail server in the US...
Depends exactly what kind of system the bill actually covers. Is it just "computers" or are, banking and stock exchange systems, telephone systems, ATC systems, rail and road signalling systems, aircraft and rocket flight control systems, etc within the scope of the law?
As an amateur historian, I realize that in the longer term it is hard enough to find materials after the normal process of time. The digital revolution has made this much worse (for example a recent /. story mentioned that England could not retrieve census information that had been recorded c.1980 from obscure 14" optical storage disks). The use of encryption and DRM is going to make this situation much, much worse.
:)
:-)
A lot of modern media dosn't last at all. Future archeologists might end up considering out current time to be a "dark age"
The problem is that DRM does not expire when the copyright expires (assuming congress will eventually allow copyrights to expire, and does not keep extending them forever
If they continue in the present way there will come a point where it is realised that everything in the US is in the public domain due to no constitutional copyright law actually existing.
This is a difficult problem, with no easy solution. A minimal solution is to require that all copyright holders make their product available when it enters the public domain, but this won't help if the organization is no longer in business. Given this view, I don't know if DRM should be legal under copyrights. If DRM is legal, the only workable solution is to go back to the old method of copyrights (pre-1976) where you actually have to register for copyright protection. If you want to copyright something that is only "published" with DRM controls, an archival copy of the original unprotected version must be registered with the copyright authority (presumably Library of Congress, who will need new funding for this responsibility). This method has another real advantage, which is that it ensures that the copyright holder can be identified. The restoration industry has a big problem with "abandoned" works that are still technically under copyright, but they have no contactable owners.
There is also the possibility of renewel every few years for an exponetially rising fee. e.g. initial registration 1 doller, renewel at 5 years 5 dollers, at 10 years 25 dollers. This would be a big disincentive to hording, especially for material more than 25 years old. If someone thinks they can make more than 2 and a half million dollers a year of 5o year old material good luck to them...
This is a long term problem, and typically people don't worry about the long term (companies have trouble thinking past the end of the quarter!).
If anything this should result in copyright terms falling, rather than rising...
When evaluating a copyright, one should assume that the original author put in his work everything he felt necessary for that particular piece of intellectual creation. If the performer is adding any fundamental essence to the original ideas, then he is doing a derivative work.
Scripts are often more outlines than comprehensive instructions on performing a play. Often many people, not just the actors, must provide some level of creative input in order to make a performance. Once methods of recording a performance were developed the issue of the copyright of the performance recording arose. Which a little later lead to new variations of performing arts where the specific aim was to create a recording.
and the hardware will encode your hardware serial number and home adress in your posts so that the FBI can find you and take care of your illegal hardware.
You don't thing all of the hacked hardware might put out a serial number belonging to some George Walter Bush...
The only rational extention of the DMCA if for the supreme court to strike it down as a clear violation of free speech.
Actually what would probably need to happen would be for a significent proportion of the US population to take the Federal Government (including Congress and the Supreme Court) off of the pedestal the have somehow ended up on. Congress can only pass unconstitutional laws so long as the rest of the population goes along with them.
It would be a lot harder for special interests (even rich ones) to actually change the US constitution.
There are various reasons people don't get broadband.
1) They don't know much about it.
2) They haven't used the Internet long enough to get sick of 56k access
3) They don't know what hardware to get/ are put off by the ongoing expense. and of course availability too.
Number 3 should probably come at the top of the list. Other bits would be "dosn't appear to be worth the asking price" and "the whole package is somehow wrong" (e.g. some ISPs appear to deliberatly make their cable modem/DSL offering emulate limitations more applicable to modem dialups or to cripple the service in some way)
Sen. Hollings says the reason broadband isn't as popular today as it should have been is because media giants are afraid to provide large quantities of digital content to the masses over it.
The only people making this claim are these same publishing companies. Who's real argument appears to be that they don't know how to make money using this media. When exactly did the "right" to corporate profit enter the US Constitution? Let alone that the US is supposedly a "capitalist" country...
Therefore, the public has no 'interest' in broadband. This is blatently wrong.
It's a complete non squitur...
Then, the best part, he says that, in order to increase public interest in broadband, the government needs to step in to regulate the digital media industry a little.
Again this does not follow. If there is a need for regulation here it would make more sense directed towards the telecoms industry. But most of this is outside the jurisdiction of the US Federal Government anyway.
Let alone that this dosn't appear to be about regulating the "digital media industry" at all. One of these cases where the title of a piece of legislation is deliberatly misleading, sometimes to the point of implying the exact opposite of what it's really about.
One simple way in which they could provide plenty of "content" for broadband would be by a "back to basics" on copyright. Plenty of stuff from 1988 and earlier...
Silly little details weren't a problem for Helena Kobrin. I got a message from her because I was canceling her fake usenet cancles. I sent the letter to the legal guys who said ignore it and then someone tried to DOS our box. It took her a while to understand that the af.mil on the domain would result in her getting a visit in person telling her just how long she could expect to spend in jail if she keep up with the nonsense.
You mean she didn't have a clue what af.mil might be. Attempting to DOS a machine belonging to the military potentially qualifies as suicidal.
Out of curiousity, since when can a media outlet violate copyright law and be protected by the US First Amendment? that is the crux of the issue.
The clause making copyright possible is part of the unammended document. The "first ammendment" is an ammendment. Which modifies the original to produce a new version, which supercedes the older version. If IP was a later ammendment then you could argue that it took precedence...
Typically where you have an ammended legal document it is the latest version which matters, why should the constitution of a federal republic be any different?
It basically boils down to which is more important the freedom of "the press" or a statutory "carrot" to encourage a producer of IP to continue producing more IP.
The CoS(Crate of Shit... ummm Church of Scientology) attempt to use the DMCA is unconstitutional. www.xenu.net is a journalistic site. Therefore it is protected under freedom of the press, WHICH CANNOT BE SUPERSEDED BY ANY LAW LESS THAN A CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT. Therefore, the DMCA DOES NOT apply.
Effectivly what you are saying is that the US constitution voids this use of the DMCA because it says that no law (passed by Congress) can be used in this way. (Which is subtly different from the idea of a law being struck down as unconstitutional.) Is this possibly the intent of the ammendment otherwise it would appear to require the US Congress to consider every possible use (and misuse) of every law passed and to provide no easy redress they should make a mistake.
*sigh* You're the idiot. The US First Amendment applies only to Congress ("Congress shall make no law").
So who exactly passed the DMCA, was something impersonating the US Congress at the time.
On the other hand, DMCA applies to google as much as it applies to anyone else in the USA, and it hasn't been ruled as unconstitutional.
There is a loophole in that if you can get something past the US Congress then it's assumed to be in accordance with the US consitution. Even if it self evidently isn't. The only way of then getting anything done about it is to be given leave to appeal a case involving that law to the US supreme court.
IIRC the US supreme court was never also intended to act as a court of appeal, instead only as a method of checks and balances against the US Congress. Probably also expected that the justices would show initutive too.
Haha... you ever see the movie "The Distinguished Gentleman" with Eddie Murphy? There's a very similar discussion among some representatives about a bill they just voted on. Of course, neither has a clue what the bill is, but a group of schoolkids asks and, well... ;-D
The question would be how much of this movie is invented and how much is actually a documentry perporting to be comedy?
Isn't the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Promotion Act (CBDTPA) really the Consumer Broadband and Digital Television Prevention Act?
Or even "perversion"..."Promotion" would include things such as price regulation and advertising. You generally promote a product by making it available, makeing sure people know about it and ensuring that people think it's worth the asking price.
The other questionable part is the "Consumer" bit. This is being promoted by publishers rather than comsumers or consumer advocates. Who'd tend to be interested in such things as quality, value for money, product availablity (e.g. music, television, books, movies to suit a wide variety of tastes and interests).
Why is it that some parts of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights are held in such high regard, such as the right to Free Speech, and others, such as copyright, are looked upon as the acts of the devil? Why is copyright extended every 20 years? Why can't I copy an out of print book from 1950 and give it to my friends? Are we ready to draw a line in the sand and say that profits are more important than education? More important than wonder? This is not about MP3s, or DIVX movie streams.
..." can be applied to todays technology just as well as they can be applied to the technology of 200 odd years ago and indeed whatever technology may exist in 200 years time.
Mor should it be, laws which specifically enumerate specific technologies tend to need constant tinkering. Whereas the likes of "To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries
This is about taking the basic deal between content producer and content consumer and twisting it until every one of us must pay for every second we are exposed to anything created by anyone. There is no more concept of property. I don't "own" a book, or a dvd anymore. I am merely leasing it from the company.
A third party is also present here that is the publisher it is generally these entities, who are in effect middle men between content producers and content consumers, behind changing the law. What newer technology does do is make it easier to publish, possibly even to the point where people who are actually producing don't need a third party publisher.
In court, we are frequently asked to deliberate on the "intent" of the law, rather than the wording. I say that the original intent of copyright law does not exist even slightly anymore. Moreover, instead of a bill that gives ever more rights to copyrightholders and ever more penalties to copyright consumers, perhaps our elected representatives could swing the proverbial pendulum back in our favor by stripping the entertainment industry of its most devastating weapon against freedom of information: the DMCA.
Quite often the copyright holder is not even the producer of the work anyway. With quite a few kinds of work the vast majority of the time the copyright holder ends up being the publisher. Something which the writers of the US Constitution would appear to be against, since they based what they wrote on a British law known as the "Queen Anne Copyright Statute" which took copyright away from publishers.
Microsoft makes money because Windows is preinstalled on almost every computer and most people have no idea there are alternatives.
The easiest way to make lost of money is to have a highly non-free market. If you had a free market then you'd instad get lots of companies making a moderate profit.
Actually, we don't need Microsoft. If Microsoft disappeared, there would be initial panic, then adjustment, and finally we'd realize we got things done in spite of Microsoft, not because of them. Developers would find it very easy to write code that would compile on Linux, *BSD or OSX.
You don't even need Microsoft to still be around for people to write programs for Windows. Indeed it might be easier, since programmers wouldn't be trying to hit a moving target.
You dont understand the cause. Do you know what GNU and GPL is about? Open Source?
Theres two groups in this country. The group which wants informations to be free, which is against patents, and intellectual property, then you have the group which wants information to be owned.
Except that the GPL certainly isn't against "intellectual property". Since it is a copyright licence.
Also this is being presented as a false dicotomy of IP or no IP. There are many ways in which copyrights and patents could be reformed to work in ways which might be better. e.g. more limited terms, not being transferable, ending when the author/inventor dies, etc.
I barely heard anything mentioned last election about any issues I particularly cared about. Copyright and the War on Drugs (two issues that seem to be very important with my age group) weren't even mentioned at all.
One possible problem is that an issue won't be addressed at all if all candidates hold similar views. Which is a lot more likely with 2 political parties than it is with 20 (and possibly some independants)...
Not to be a prick, because I'd love to have 80 million people against this, but how many of those 80 million are probably of voting age?
IIRC one of the reason turnouts are so low in the US is that there isn't that much in the way of choice in candidates. Even though this may be self fulfiling.
It doesn't work like that. When they wait 18 month to light up the fibers, they pay just as much then as they would now. Even though the equipment they use to do it then will be better.
But it means that didn't have to spend or borrow money 18months ago. Thus have either saved 18 months worth of interest on a loan or made 18 months worth of interest on money they already had.
It costs you a LOT to dig that trench. If you put the minimum two fibers you need in it, when you need more you'd have to DIG ANOTHER TRENCH. So you put in a BUNCH of fibers. You don't want to dig another trench for a century or so.
Unless you are using fibre designed to be buried direct, you'd typically install ductwork (100mm plastic pipe). Once you have a trench open it dosn't make much odds if you put 1 or 6 sets of duct in. The expensive side is negotiating with landowners, the construction equiptment and paying the people. Fibre is then put through this. Putting a cable in a duct costs money, but a lot less money than digging a trench.
Laying cable is not nearly as difficult as it may seem. I was actually recently chatting with my uncle, who is the civil works administrator for a large wired city, and digging up pavement is a legacy of the past.
Actually digging a trench is expensive, especially if it is a paved surface even more especially if you need to divert traffic. Usually when people dig new trenchs now they will install at least twice as much ductwork as they think they might need.
There are so many redundant tubes under our roads right now that nearly any expansion that needs to be done can be fed through them. In our city, natural gas was put in by running new tubes through old waste-water mains. I'm sure fibre will be easier still to lay down.
Never heard the phrase "waste-water mains". Typically these are called "drains" or "sewers"... Interestingly it is still important that ducting carrying fibre is gas tight. More from the POV of gas leaking in than leaking out though.
Also, even for the cost of providing a call, isn't the cost of establishing the call far greater than that for keeping the call connected?
There is also a cost associated with printing the bill. Do US telephone companies tend to itemise not chargable calls or not?
Streets are dug up every day to install water pipes, sewers, etc. Laying fiber is dirt cheap compared to the backend switching equipment.
Not quite, digging up the street is very expensive. But the marginal cost of putting some extra services into an already dug trench is low.
Can the U.S. serve someone outside the U.S.? Usually - it has treaties with most other nations exchanging that privilege. Granted, if you had a server in, say, Iraq, you'd probably be out of their jurisdiction.
When did US courts start taking much notice of the concept of "out of jurisdiction?
Then again, try finding a mail server in Iraq where locals won't dig up the cable and sell it for the copper.
Any Iraqi embassy is considered to be "in Iraq". Embassys are typically in urban areas where paved surfaces and police tend to discourage digging up telephone cables.