
Cable-backed anti-muni broadband bill advances in North Carolina - pieter
http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/03/cable-backed-anti-muni-broadband-bill-advances-in-north-carolina.ars
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mousa
This bill is ridiculous. They ignored the small towns, the small towns got
their own connections and very good ones at that, and now they want to be the
only players. As an NC resident I think this is a bill most people left and
right could agree is bad, but unfortunately the only party who cares enough
about it and has clout is Time Warner Cable, so it'll get through.

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IgorPartola
The TriLUG (Triangle area Linux Users Group) mailing list had a very long
discussion about this bill, that very quickly turned into a shit storm (it
lasted for over 100 lengthy e-mails). One thing I learned from it is that not
everybody views this bill as negative, even in the tech sector. Basically, TWC
just strong-armed a few congressmen/congresswomen into voting their way by
contributing to their campaigns, and the opposition could not get organized in
time.

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qeorge
I'm in Raleigh, hate this bill, and want to bring attention to it. I bet
there's a lot of us. We should get organized.

email is george@ill-k.com, anyone who likes can drop me a line.

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epaulson
See this blog:

<http://savencbb.wordpress.com/>

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qeorge
Awesome, thanks! Will check in with them.

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marze
Why shouldn't a city be able to build out a network, if the citizens vote to
do so?

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ja30278

       * having tax-subsidized government entities competing with private business doesn't exactly lead to a vibrant competitive marketplace
    
       * I'd rather not have any facet of government in an easy position to monitor my internet traffic.

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raganwald
By that argument, why is the government in the security business competing
with the private sector to protect citizens against crime?

Up here in Socialist Canada, in addition to keeping its citizens healthy, the
government actually provides the water I drink in direct competition with the
private sector who sell water in nice little plastic bottles. Yum :-)

Also, the expression "tax-subsidized" is not correct. Funding an activity with
taxes is one thing. Subsidizing an activity with taxes is something else, such
as a program to give privately held corporations massive tax breaks in
exchange for locating their businesses in a particular state or county. Which
companies do, and somehow I never hear conservative pundits complain about the
anti-competitive tax subsidizing going on.

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randallsquared
_By that argument, why is the government in the security business competing
with the private sector to protect citizens against crime?_

Well, that's the argument for anarchy, isn't it? (I am not being sarcastic).

But, as you know, "why is the government doing X" is a question which doesn't
have much or anything to do with "ought we have the government do X".

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jbooth
Yeah, the point of the security/anarchy argument is that you can't just argue
blindly from a position of "less government" as if it were an end rather than
a means, because if that's your only concern, you're free to move to Somalia
and experience the free market first hand.

It turns out that many subjects require more knowledge and sophistication than
a 2-word bumper sticker if you want to set smart policy.

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randallsquared
Strangely, it turns out that there are groups in Somalia who will demand that
you pay them in order to continue to exist, and the penalties for not paying
this -- what shall we call it? Oh, yeah -- tax is even worse than not paying
taxes here. The US has far less government/crime* for its GDP than Somalia.

* "government" being what large criminal enterprises are called, basically.

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megaman821
Why can't cities build and maintain the lines and lease them out to ISPs? Then
TW, Cox, Comcast can compete on add-ons and how much markup they have.

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dpatru
Why can't _private_ companies build duplicate lines and compete? It seems to
me that what's keeping broadband prices high is government-enforced
monopolies, usually awarded to a private company. Allowing government itself
to have a monopoly won't fix the problem.

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delinka
So ISP-One digs up your town and lays lines. A year later, Deux Tubes observes
fabulous profits being earned by ISP-One and comes along to dig up your town
again.

See the problem?

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ams6110
Not if Deux Tubes pays for the digging

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delinka
I submit that your neighbors wouldn't allow several companies to repeatedly
dig up roads, driveways and lawns. Also, at some point you just can't add
another set of lines in the ground.

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epaulson
It looks like an ALEC-based bill. The article mentions weird-accounting rules
for indirect subsidies, see section 13.5 of this, ALEC's model "Municipal
Telecommunications Private Industry Safeguards Act":

www.muniwireless.com/reports/docs/antimunicipalbroadband.doc

(I don't know if this is the most recent model bill from ALEC)

