The FSF makes no secret of the fact that it uses donations to pay people to work on free software. Normally they pay programmers, but they also hire people to work on documentation. What do you think they did with the money?
Before accepting a contract to write this book, I suggest contacting other people who have been paid to write documentation for the FSF in order to determine what they thought of their experience. Due to privacy concerns, I cannot go into detail, but I know of at least one person who was very unsatisfied with his experience. (hehe, not me!)
You should at a minimum make sure there are very well defined criteria for determining when a particular piece of the book is of acceptable quality. I hear that RMS can be extremely nitpicky about documention, requiring many, many revisions before he is satisfied. This can be frustrating and time consuming for everyone involved.
Does AT&T have a contractual monopoly in Portland? Most modern franchise agreements are non-exclusive. If a municipality is stupid enough to sign an exclusive one, that is their fault. There are lots of competitive cable companies out there. Plus there is satellite if there isn't one. (I think a few million people actually have those 18" dishes now). Cable companies have competition in every market/line of business they serve.
Access lines are end user telephone connections. The LD companies control virtually none of that. LD prices are way down. I pay 9 cents a minute 24 hours a day. Ameritech (my local phone company) charges 8 cents a minute for a 15 mile call within the Chicago area - 19 cents a minute if it goes to Indiana! That's the real monopoly. And even the 9 cents would be a lot cheaper if 20-40% of it weren't going to the local telephone monopolies as access charges.
That's an interesting point. Local monopolies and state regulation was actually sought by the utilities themselves. AT&T in particular was glad to trade a little regulation for monopoly status at the turn of the century. They were very effective at manipulating the regulators and earning above market returns. Most people think that governments acted to restrain greedy corporations when in fact the corporations themselves manipulated the process for their own gain.
wrt the history of telephone regulation, the Cato Institute (a libertarian think tank) has a paper someplace that talks about how AT&T did this.
Most cable contracts are NOT exclusive these days. The franchise agreement only gives the cable company access to public rights of way. Many, many communities have granted competitive cable franchises. Here in Chicago Ameritech has many competitive franchises in the suburbs and a company called 21st Century is wiring most of the north lakefront with competitive cable.
If you think that open access is such a public good, then you should lobby for the government to provide socialized bandwidth paid for by tax dollars. It is simply ridiculous to make a private company take 100% of the risk of failure on an infrastructure project while letting everyone else participate in the upside if it succeeds.
The editorial comment accompanying this piece is just wrong. The cable infrastructure was not installed "in cooperation" with the local government. It was installed 100% by the cable company. In fact the only role of the local government was to extort franchise fees and free cable access channels out of the cable company.
This "open access" provision is simply a sop to AOL, which is a multi-mega-billion dollar company that could easily afford to invest in its own infrastructure if it desired. Indeed, Microsoft has done this by investing billions in cable companies. AOL just wants a free ride. It want AT&T to spend billions to replace their old cable infrastructure with new high capacity data grade fiber and then sell access to them at wholesale prices. Of course if cable modems flop or are destroyed by DSL, AOL will lose nothing and AT&T will be left holding the bag. How fair is this? AOL wants the upside for themselves and the downside for AT&T.
People will say that phone companies are required to resell access to all comers, which is true. Cable is a vastly different animal for many reasons which I've outlined before but will be happy to do so again if people need a refresher.
BTW: I do not work for AT&T or any other cable company or ISP.
I for one think it is a very bad reflection on SPI that they have failed to act in a timely manner on this trademark dispute. They called for comments from the free software community in 1998 (FWIW I told them they should give the mark over to OSI) and said they would have a decision by the beginning on 1999. Well, here we are and it's June and we haven't heard anything out of them. I emailed them in Feb or March and was told they were running behind but hoped to come up with something RSN. (They also told me they got disappointingly few responses).
If SPI wants people to trust them with their money, they need to do better about following through on doing what they say they are going to do. Or at least communicating why it is that they can't do it.
In general, there is no reason to oppose anyone changing a free software product. The whole idea of free software is that it puts the user in charge and allows him to make changes to suit his needs, even those change the author might not approve of. Larry Wall has stated that he wants to try very hard to ensure that there is only one version of perl (the implementation is the standard) and it looks like this company will be donating most of their code back, so a split is probably unlikely in this case.
Where I have a problem is with the proprietary add on components it looks like they will be developing. I'm not familiar with this company, but from the FAQ it looks like much of their business is writing "freedom subtracted" add-ons to Perl. I think this is very unfortunate and do not think companies should be rewarded for leveraging free software to sell proprietary products.
I cannot agree more with the "read the fine print" suggestion in this article. Every DSL provider I have seen has very onerous terms of service that make it difficult to use the pipe to its fullest. In fact, I consider these deals quasi-scams. The DSL provider wants to brag about giving you this huge pipe, but they they basically make it impossible to use. That's why the price is so much more attractive than a T1. TANSTAAFL! Here are common restrictions:
-- No servers. That's right, no hosting your own email, web, ftp, etc. Also note that some companies don't even give you a "real" IP address!
-- One machine only. You are not allowed to put multiple machines on the segment. You are not allowed to run NAT.
As you can see, this makes DSL less than useful for a home network. All it basically lets you do is download porn faster.
A CLEC is a competitive local exchange carrier. That is, a phone company that competes against the local monopoly. Companies like Bell Altantic are ILEC's, or incumbent local exchange carriers. They are the monopoly. The CLEC in the DSL equation is actually the DSL provider. Typically, these companies lease co-location space in an ILEC central office (CO), then lease what are called "unbundled loops" to the customer location. The unbundled loop is the pair of copper wires from the CO to your house. The DSL provider terminates this on the DSL equipment, then delivers it to whatever ISP they've partnered with to provide the service. Some DSL companies are their own ISP, or are selling their own branded service. Others are a silent partner to an ISP, providing just the DSL access portion. Others do both. When Bell Atlantic provides DSL, they are handling everything themselves: the copper loop, the DSL equipment, and the net access.
A classic newbie prank is to pipe the output of banner to write to disply obnoxious stuff on someone else's screen. (It's almost as classic as using xloadimage to change someone's root window to a hardcore porn pic). This guy obviously hasn't gotten over it, though honestly I laughed my ass off when I saw it.
Here's a copy of a letter I just fired off to my Congressman. (Hope it's accurate...):
To the Honorable Janice D. Schakowski:
The federal government has always been a leader in consumer protection. Unfortunately, our state governments are not always so progressive. The National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws (NCCUSL) is planning to meet in July to vote on the ratification of the proposed Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act ("the Act"). The Act is a revival of the highly criticized "2B" amendment to the Uniform Commerical Code (UCC). The Act would be an unmitigated disaster for consumers of software products. Among its provisions, the Act would:
-- Drastically increase the enforceability of "shrink wrap" software licenses. These licenses are typically included inside the sealed software packages that appear on store shelves. Consumers have no ability to negotiate terms or even see what it is they are agreeing to prior to paying for the software. These licenses often contain draconian terms such as prohibiting anyone from publishing bechmarks or evaluations of the software without the manufacturers permission (ie, muzzling free speech), prohibiting the transfer of the product to a third party (ie, gutting First Sale rights under copyright law), and prohibiting reverse engineering (ie, gutting Fair Use rights under copyright law).
-- Allows software vendors to more easily disclaim any warranties and escape liability for defective products.
-- Gives specific authorization for software vendors to remotely disable software if the vendor believes its license terms have been broken -- without any finding of this fact by a court or other neutral body, no due process for accused license violators, and insufficient safeguards for customers who might not even find out they have been accused of a violation until such time as their software has been shut off. Even a threat to revoke the license of a mission critical software product could be an unfair bargaining lever against small businesses without the resources to fight back.
I urge you to investigate this matter and take steps to ensure that software consumers are adequately protected. Most software sales involve some form of interstate commerce and so federal jurisdiction should apply if Congress decides to exercise its authority in this matter. It is imperative that Congress put the states on notice that it will not tolerate legislation that harms consumers and benefits only multi-million and billion dollar corporations. It is important to act fast because if the NCCUSL approves this "model" legislation in July, it is highly likely that state legislatures will give rubberstamp approval to it just as they do to UCC changes. If that happens, Congress should not hesitate to override this anti-consumer state legislation.
Software manufacturers are already entitled to 95 years of protection under existing copyright laws, including both civil and criminal penalties for copyright infringers. It is imperative that the existing rights of consumers under copyright law are not stripped away by an added layer of contract rights granted at the state level.
For additional information on the Act, please see the article "Licensing time bomb: Software-law dispute explodes as enactment draws near" in InfoWorld magazine. This article is available on the World Wide Web at http://www.infoworld.com/cgi-bin/displayStory.pl?/ features/990531ucita.htm Additional InfoWorld articles about the Act are available at http://www.infoworld.com/cgi-bin/displayStory.pl?/ features/990528ucitareport.htm
Thank you for taking the time to consider my concerns.
This provision could end up being the end of the Uniform Commerical Code. Right now commerical contracts are largely governed under this "model" legislation which is passed at the state level. If the state's flub it though, the federal government has the power to override this via its interstate commerce powers. Consumer protection legislation has always had better luck at the federal level than at the state level. If the state's pass laws that allow companies to screw over consumers too badly, look for consumers' groups to lobby the federal government to pass overriding legislation. The states could see their precious contract rights laws thrown out the window! I'm planning on forwarding a copy of that article to my Congressman.
You have threatened to re-write a whole bunch of things though. Maybe someone just assumed you'd done for E what you're doing for spreadsheets and want to do for email, etc.
It's certainly no problem for a public interest law firm to take on a case for an individual. That's how the ACLU and other organizations work. A foundation that provides funding or other assistance to people who wish to defend their free software work should be fine.
That may be true, but if a cartel of ISP's all decide on a certain policy, you are still totally pimped. In the US there are laws limiting collusion between supposedly competing businesses, but they are rarely effective unless there is blatant price fixing going on.
I downloaded the M5 release and tried it out. First I tried building from source, which succeeded, but they when I tried to run it I had an assertion failure in ld.so ("DYNAMIC LINKER BUG", etc) so that was out. I then downloaded the binary. Somebody had said M5 was way faster than previous versions. Well, not for me. I found it to be extremely slow. As in sit back and wait for the button bar to repaint sort of thing. What is being done for the speed? I ask because if they embed this thing inside something else with its own layer of slowness ontop the speed would be intolerable.
You should check out Excessive Use of the Force, a review of the Star Wars special edition by Jonathan Rosenbaum. He is the film critic of the Chicago Reader and IMO one of the most knowledgeable film writers in the world.
Unfortunately, most agricultural subsidies are designed to keep prices high, not low! Paying farmers not to plant, setting production quotas, government price supports (wanna buy some cheese?), import restrictions, ethanol programs, etc all are an attempt by the government to keep food prices high in order to subsidize farmers. They are not designed to benefit the poor.
I encourage you to take a look at a signle agricultural product and look at all the government subsidies and rules about it. You will be shocked. I suggest looking at milk. Not only is is a staple product for most people, the regulations and price fixing on it are particularly outrageous.
Some of the laws regarding pure resale in the telphone business might not be so great either.
As I've pointed out elsewhere, the phone companies are fighting total service resale of DSL and just might win that regulatory battle. Unbundled network element access is part of a quid pro quo whereby the RBOC's are compensated for the opening of their network through entry into the long distance market and the removal of price cap/profit regulation once the market is competitive. AOL wants the cable companies to open their networks and get absolutely nothing in return for it.
Also, cable companies have to basically replace their entire cable plant in order to offer digital broadband services. Phone companies don't have to re-wire the neighborhood. All they have to do is invest in new CO equipment that is largely success based. That is, they purchase DSL CO equipment as they need it due to customer demand. There is much less stranded capital risk for the phone companies.
Re:Why should cable get a monopoly that phones don
on
Internet Freedom Act
·
· Score: 2
Another thing I forgot: cable companies don't have locally granted monopolies. In most cases the local government is free to award additional franchises and many of them has. Ameritech (the phone company) brags that it has nabbed well over 100 cable franchises where it plans to compete against the incumbent cable operator.
First, you are wrong. The whole point of DSL is that is uses the existing copper plant. That's the expensive part to replace.
As I posted elsewhere, phone companies are also fighting the pure resale model for DSL. Additionally, phone companies are getting something in return for offering unbundled resale of network elements, namely entrance into the long distance market from which they were previously barred. The cable companies would get nothing in return for opening up their networks. But AOL would sure get a huge boost.
Re:Why should cable get a monopoly that phones don
on
Internet Freedom Act
·
· Score: 2
Cable companies pay to use those rights of way. Typically they pay franchise fees and also give several free channels on their system to the local government/community.
Lots of businesses use public ROW. In fact, anybody who leaves their own property uses it. That doesn't entitle the government to strip people of their private property rights just because someone uses public ROW. Instead, we are charged for the public ROW we use.
Slashdot Mirror
The FSF makes no secret of the fact that it uses donations to pay people to work on free software. Normally they pay programmers, but they also hire people to work on documentation. What do you think they did with the money?
I'm sure I will regret posting this, but...
Before accepting a contract to write this book, I suggest contacting other people who have been paid to write documentation for the FSF in order to determine what they thought of their experience. Due to privacy concerns, I cannot go into detail, but I know of at least one person who was very unsatisfied with his experience. (hehe, not me!)
You should at a minimum make sure there are very well defined criteria for determining when a particular piece of the book is of acceptable quality. I hear that RMS can be extremely nitpicky about documention, requiring many, many revisions before he is satisfied. This can be frustrating and time consuming for everyone involved.
Does AT&T have a contractual monopoly in Portland? Most modern franchise agreements are non-exclusive. If a municipality is stupid enough to sign an exclusive one, that is their fault. There are lots of competitive cable companies out there. Plus there is satellite if there isn't one. (I think a few million people actually have those 18" dishes now). Cable companies have competition in every market/line of business they serve.
Access lines are end user telephone connections. The LD companies control virtually none of that. LD prices are way down. I pay 9 cents a minute 24 hours a day. Ameritech (my local phone company) charges 8 cents a minute for a 15 mile call within the Chicago area - 19 cents a minute if it goes to Indiana! That's the real monopoly. And even the 9 cents would be a lot cheaper if 20-40% of it weren't going to the local telephone monopolies as access charges.
That's an interesting point. Local monopolies and state regulation was actually sought by the utilities themselves. AT&T in particular was glad to trade a little regulation for monopoly status at the turn of the century. They were very effective at manipulating the regulators and earning above market returns. Most people think that governments acted to restrain greedy corporations when in fact the corporations themselves manipulated the process for their own gain.
wrt the history of telephone regulation, the Cato Institute (a libertarian think tank) has a paper someplace that talks about how AT&T did this.
Most cable contracts are NOT exclusive these days. The franchise agreement only gives the cable company access to public rights of way. Many, many communities have granted competitive cable franchises. Here in Chicago Ameritech has many competitive franchises in the suburbs and a company called 21st Century is wiring most of the north lakefront with competitive cable.
If you think that open access is such a public good, then you should lobby for the government to provide socialized bandwidth paid for by tax dollars. It is simply ridiculous to make a private company take 100% of the risk of failure on an infrastructure project while letting everyone else participate in the upside if it succeeds.
The editorial comment accompanying this piece is just wrong. The cable infrastructure was not installed "in cooperation" with the local government. It was installed 100% by the cable company. In fact the only role of the local government was to extort franchise fees and free cable access channels out of the cable company.
This "open access" provision is simply a sop to AOL, which is a multi-mega-billion dollar company that could easily afford to invest in its own infrastructure if it desired. Indeed, Microsoft has done this by investing billions in cable companies. AOL just wants a free ride. It want AT&T to spend billions to replace their old cable infrastructure with new high capacity data grade fiber and then sell access to them at wholesale prices. Of course if cable modems flop or are destroyed by DSL, AOL will lose nothing and AT&T will be left holding the bag. How fair is this? AOL wants the upside for themselves and the downside for AT&T.
People will say that phone companies are required to resell access to all comers, which is true. Cable is a vastly different animal for many reasons which I've outlined before but will be happy to do so again if people need a refresher.
BTW: I do not work for AT&T or any other cable company or ISP.
I for one think it is a very bad reflection on SPI that they have failed to act in a timely manner on this trademark dispute. They called for comments from the free software community in 1998 (FWIW I told them they should give the mark over to OSI) and said they would have a decision by the beginning on 1999. Well, here we are and it's June and we haven't heard anything out of them. I emailed them in Feb or March and was told they were running behind but hoped to come up with something RSN. (They also told me they got disappointingly few responses).
If SPI wants people to trust them with their money, they need to do better about following through on doing what they say they are going to do. Or at least communicating why it is that they can't do it.
In general, there is no reason to oppose anyone changing a free software product. The whole idea of free software is that it puts the user in charge and allows him to make changes to suit his needs, even those change the author might not approve of. Larry Wall has stated that he wants to try very hard to ensure that there is only one version of perl (the implementation is the standard) and it looks like this company will be donating most of their code back, so a split is probably unlikely in this case.
Where I have a problem is with the proprietary add on components it looks like they will be developing. I'm not familiar with this company, but from the FAQ it looks like much of their business is writing "freedom subtracted" add-ons to Perl. I think this is very unfortunate and do not think companies should be rewarded for leveraging free software to sell proprietary products.
I cannot agree more with the "read the fine print" suggestion in this article. Every DSL provider I have seen has very onerous terms of service that make it difficult to use the pipe to its fullest. In fact, I consider these deals quasi-scams. The DSL provider wants to brag about giving you this huge pipe, but they they basically make it impossible to use. That's why the price is so much more attractive than a T1. TANSTAAFL! Here are common restrictions:
-- No servers. That's right, no hosting your own email, web, ftp, etc. Also note that some companies don't even give you a "real" IP address!
-- One machine only. You are not allowed to put multiple machines on the segment. You are not allowed to run NAT.
As you can see, this makes DSL less than useful for a home network. All it basically lets you do is download porn faster.
A CLEC is a competitive local exchange carrier. That is, a phone company that competes against the local monopoly. Companies like Bell Altantic are ILEC's, or incumbent local exchange carriers. They are the monopoly. The CLEC in the DSL equation is actually the DSL provider. Typically, these companies lease co-location space in an ILEC central office (CO), then lease what are called "unbundled loops" to the customer location. The unbundled loop is the pair of copper wires from the CO to your house. The DSL provider terminates this on the DSL equipment, then delivers it to whatever ISP they've partnered with to provide the service. Some DSL companies are their own ISP, or are selling their own branded service. Others are a silent partner to an ISP, providing just the DSL access portion. Others do both. When Bell Atlantic provides DSL, they are handling everything themselves: the copper loop, the DSL equipment, and the net access.
banner -w80 'Linux Still Sucks!'
A classic newbie prank is to pipe the output of banner to write to disply obnoxious stuff on someone else's screen. (It's almost as classic as using xloadimage to change someone's root window to a hardcore porn pic). This guy obviously hasn't gotten over it, though honestly I laughed my ass off when I saw it.
Here's a copy of a letter I just fired off to my Congressman. (Hope it's accurate...):
/ features/990531ucita.htm Additional InfoWorld articles about the Act are available at http://www.infoworld.com/cgi-bin/displayStory.pl?/ features/990528ucitareport.htm
To the Honorable Janice D. Schakowski:
The federal government has always been a leader in consumer protection. Unfortunately, our state governments are not always so progressive. The National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws (NCCUSL) is planning to meet in July to vote on the ratification of the proposed Uniform Computer Information Transactions Act ("the Act"). The Act is a revival of the highly criticized "2B" amendment to the Uniform Commerical Code (UCC). The Act would be an unmitigated disaster for consumers of software products. Among its provisions, the Act would:
-- Drastically increase the enforceability of "shrink wrap" software licenses. These licenses are typically included inside the sealed software packages that appear on store shelves. Consumers have no ability to negotiate terms or even see what it is they are agreeing to prior to paying for the software. These licenses often contain draconian terms such as prohibiting anyone from publishing bechmarks or evaluations of the software without the manufacturers permission (ie, muzzling free speech), prohibiting the transfer of the product to a third party (ie, gutting First Sale rights under copyright law), and prohibiting reverse engineering (ie, gutting Fair Use rights under copyright law).
-- Allows software vendors to more easily disclaim any warranties and escape liability for defective products.
-- Gives specific authorization for software vendors to remotely disable software if the vendor believes its license terms have been broken -- without any finding of this fact by a court or other neutral body, no due process for accused license violators, and insufficient safeguards for customers who might not even find out they have been accused of a violation until such time as their software has been shut off. Even a threat to revoke the license of a mission critical software product could be an unfair bargaining lever against small businesses without the resources to fight back.
I urge you to investigate this matter and take steps to ensure that software consumers are adequately protected. Most software sales involve some form of interstate commerce and so federal jurisdiction should apply if Congress decides to exercise its authority in this matter. It is imperative that Congress put the states on notice that it will not tolerate legislation that harms consumers and benefits only multi-million and billion dollar corporations. It is important to act fast because if the NCCUSL approves this "model" legislation in July, it is highly likely that state legislatures will give rubberstamp approval to it just as they do to UCC changes. If that happens, Congress should not hesitate to override this anti-consumer state legislation.
Software manufacturers are already entitled to 95 years of protection under existing copyright laws, including both civil and criminal penalties for copyright infringers. It is imperative that the existing rights of consumers under copyright law are not stripped away by an added layer of contract rights granted at the state level.
For additional information on the Act, please see the article "Licensing time bomb: Software-law dispute explodes as enactment draws near" in InfoWorld magazine. This article is available on the World Wide Web at http://www.infoworld.com/cgi-bin/displayStory.pl?
Thank you for taking the time to consider my concerns.
Sincerely,
Aaron M. Renn
arenn@urbanophile.com
This provision could end up being the end of the Uniform Commerical Code. Right now commerical contracts are largely governed under this "model" legislation which is passed at the state level. If the state's flub it though, the federal government has the power to override this via its interstate commerce powers. Consumer protection legislation has always had better luck at the federal level than at the state level. If the state's pass laws that allow companies to screw over consumers too badly, look for consumers' groups to lobby the federal government to pass overriding legislation. The states could see their precious contract rights laws thrown out the window! I'm planning on forwarding a copy of that article to my Congressman.
You have threatened to re-write a whole bunch of things though. Maybe someone just assumed you'd done for E what you're doing for spreadsheets and want to do for email, etc.
It's certainly no problem for a public interest law firm to take on a case for an individual. That's how the ACLU and other organizations work. A foundation that provides funding or other assistance to people who wish to defend their free software work should be fine.
That may be true, but if a cartel of ISP's all decide on a certain policy, you are still totally pimped. In the US there are laws limiting collusion between supposedly competing businesses, but they are rarely effective unless there is blatant price fixing going on.
I downloaded the M5 release and tried it out. First I tried building from source, which succeeded, but they when I tried to run it I had an assertion failure in ld.so ("DYNAMIC LINKER BUG", etc) so that was out. I then downloaded the binary. Somebody had said M5 was way faster than previous versions. Well, not for me. I found it to be extremely slow. As in sit back and wait for the button bar to repaint sort of thing. What is being done for the speed? I ask because if they embed this thing inside something else with its own layer of slowness ontop the speed would be intolerable.
You should check out Excessive Use of the Force, a review of the Star Wars special edition by Jonathan Rosenbaum. He is the film critic of the Chicago Reader and IMO one of the most knowledgeable film writers in the world.
Unfortunately, most agricultural subsidies are designed to keep prices high, not low! Paying farmers not to plant, setting production quotas, government price supports (wanna buy some cheese?), import restrictions, ethanol programs, etc all are an attempt by the government to keep food prices high in order to subsidize farmers. They are not designed to benefit the poor.
I encourage you to take a look at a signle agricultural product and look at all the government subsidies and rules about it. You will be shocked. I suggest looking at milk. Not only is is a staple product for most people, the regulations and price fixing on it are particularly outrageous.
Some of the laws regarding pure resale in the telphone business might not be so great either.
As I've pointed out elsewhere, the phone companies are fighting total service resale of DSL and just might win that regulatory battle. Unbundled network element access is part of a quid pro quo whereby the RBOC's are compensated for the opening of their network through entry into the long distance market and the removal of price cap/profit regulation once the market is competitive. AOL wants the cable companies to open their networks and get absolutely nothing in return for it.
Also, cable companies have to basically replace their entire cable plant in order to offer digital broadband services. Phone companies don't have to re-wire the neighborhood. All they have to do is invest in new CO equipment that is largely success based. That is, they purchase DSL CO equipment as they need it due to customer demand. There is much less stranded capital risk for the phone companies.
Another thing I forgot: cable companies don't have locally granted monopolies. In most cases the local government is free to award additional franchises and many of them has. Ameritech (the phone company) brags that it has nabbed well over 100 cable franchises where it plans to compete against the incumbent cable operator.
First, you are wrong. The whole point of DSL is that is uses the existing copper plant. That's the expensive part to replace.
As I posted elsewhere, phone companies are also fighting the pure resale model for DSL. Additionally, phone companies are getting something in return for offering unbundled resale of network elements, namely entrance into the long distance market from which they were previously barred. The cable companies would get nothing in return for opening up their networks. But AOL would sure get a huge boost.
Cable companies pay to use those rights of way. Typically they pay franchise fees and also give several free channels on their system to the local government/community.
Lots of businesses use public ROW. In fact, anybody who leaves their own property uses it. That doesn't entitle the government to strip people of their private property rights just because someone uses public ROW. Instead, we are charged for the public ROW we use.