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Common Dreams reports
A new report details how local officials can create publicly owned internet programs that not only protect free speech and privacy, but also are accessible and affordable
In response to Republicans' recent attacks on net neutrality and digital privacy protections at the behest of giant telecommunications companies, the ACLU is calling on local government leaders to establish municipal broadband systems.
"States, cities, towns, and counties should take matters into their own hands by creating publicly owned services that do honor those values and can help ensure an open internet." —ACLU report
"Net neutrality and privacy protections are essential for the open internet that has transformed our society. With the Trump administration and for-profit companies abandoning those values, what we're seeing around the country is that local governments can protect them and provide access for all", said Jay Stanley, a senior policy analyst with the ACLU Speech, Privacy, and Technology Project, and the principal author of an ACLU report released [March 29].
The report, entitled The Public Internet Option, [1] describes the internet as "a necessity, like traditional utilities such as water and power"; denounces moves by the Republican-controlled FCC and Congress to roll back measures meant to protect consumers from privately-owned internet service providers, or ISPs; and encourages local officials to invest in publicly owned internet infrastructure. It emphasizes the need for internet options that not only protect free speech and privacy, but also are accessible and affordable.
[...] Outlining the many options available for ensuring internet freedom at the local level, the report explains: "Communities can go all the way and provide high-speed fiber connections directly to their residents' homes, along with internet services to go along with them. Or they can leverage their ownership of crucial assets such as conduits (tubes, pipes, tiles, and other casings for cables) to require private-sector providers using those assets to respect free-internet principles. Or any strategy in between."
Acknowledging concerns "that government-run broadband service will be bureaucratic an inefficient", the report points out that "cable and television internet service providers are among the industries most hated by consumers", while the public internet service in Chattanooga, Tennessee "was rated in 2017 as the nation's top ISP in terms of consumer satisfaction."
[...] cities and counties are fighting [the incumbents' "misinformation" campaigns]. In November, for example, the city of Fort Collins, Colorado approved [2] a ballot measure to invest $150 million in a city-owned broadband utility, despite a well-funded effort by the telecom lobby to sway the vote. The Institute for Local Self-Reliance (ILSR), which reviewed the ACLU report, has developed an interactive map [3] for tracking local broadband initiatives nationwide.
The ACLU sent its report to more than 100 mayors in 30 states who have spoken out against the federal rollback of net neutrality protections. For those who are interested in advocating for implementing publicly owned broadband systems in their areas, the ACLU suggested starting with the Community Connectivity Toolkit, a resource developed by ILSR.
Also at Vice.
[1] Page points to PDF.
[2] Dup'd link in TFA.
[3] JavaScript required.
(Score: 0, Touché) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 30 2018, @07:04PM (22 children)
The monopoly ISPs you so hate were mostly granted their status by Government.
And, Government is itself the worst kind of monopoly: Government came to power not through being good at providing a service, but rather through violent imposition.
You guys are nuts.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 30 2018, @07:14PM (6 children)
That's ridiculous. Government came into being because the alternative was even worse.
If government sucks, it's purely because idiots like you refuse to do anything to make it better. As long as people continue to vote for anti-government nutters we're going to have a government that sucks. It's not because governments are bad, it's because there's a sizable number of people that are too ignorant to vote for their self interests because they find intelligence to be threatening.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 30 2018, @07:21PM (2 children)
Even if the alternative were worse, it's true that Government is a monopoly on various aspects of society, and it's true that Government arose to that monopoly through violent imposition rather than through being good at providing a service (voluntarily, by imposition).
So, you're not disagreeing.
Whether Government is a necessary evil is beside the point.
People are still requesting that one Monopoly be replaced with another Monopoly, the latter Monopoly of which is explicitly based on violent imposition. Strange.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 30 2018, @07:43PM (1 child)
I'm arguing no such thing.
I'm arguing that we're stuck with some sort of a government as the alternative isn't acceptable. And that if we want the government to be one that works for our benefit, we need to actually vote for people that are pushing policies that would make that so.
What's strange here is that you are being so purposefully obtuse about this. The issue isn't that there is a monopoly, the issue is that there's no mechanism for when the source of the service makes decisions that aren't good for society at large. Without either competitors willing to do the right thing or the option of voting the bums out of office, we wind up with the current situation where the service sucks, but we don't have a meaningful say about whether or not to participate as more and more essential government functions are only available online.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 30 2018, @08:43PM
"Everything in the State. Nothing outside the State." That (or the like) was the description of Fascism, according to its founder, Mussolini.
Here's what I say: If Government provides a service, then you are not only forced to pay for that service but you are forced to pay a particular provider of that service (namely, Government). However, if anybody else can provide that service (not including the Government at all), then you at least have choices. Therefore, anybody who wants to live in a free society must try very hard to put as much of society as possible into the hands of organizations that are not the Government.
To flip Mussolini around: "As much as possible outside the State. As little as possible in the State; ideally, nothing in the State."
Where do you draw the line? What is your philosophy? Mussolini is precise; I'm precise. How about you?
If the government's resources are increasingly available only online, then the government should supply ways for every citizen to access those resources.
Oh, wait! It does!
Public libraries provide Internet access (though the wastrels use it to wack off to porn, or bitch in forums about how they deserve more handouts), and there is public transit, subsidized for the poor, to get to those libraries.
Public welfare should NOT be convenient; falling into the safety net should not be an enjoyable alternative to crossing the damn tight rope that everyone else has to cross.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Friday March 30 2018, @07:50PM (2 children)
Go. To. Fuck.
What about the millions of people who voted for Obama? A "sizable number of people" were so desperate for change, and Obama offered Hope AND Change, so they voted for him. Did they find intelligence to be threatening? Which by the way, sounds like a swipe at religious Republicans.
The system itself is broken, and no amount of voting will fix it. Only revolution, war, and bringing the Elites to their knees (makes it easier to cut off the head) will help.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 30 2018, @08:40PM (1 child)
It's definitely fixable without revolution, the problem is that there's a bunch of morons that keep voting to prevent gays from having abortions.
Obama was the best option for the Presidency and at the time he was first elected, he was the only candidate that had a plan for dealing with the impending economic crisis.
As far as the system goes, perhaps if people would stop voting for corporatists and rightwingers we might have some change. When all is said and done, there's a sizable number of people that purposefully vote for people that aren't even pretending like what they're doing is going to be good for the country. If they aren't even promising better and they still get votes, why on earth would anybody expect better?
This year we've got people actually primarying their fellow party members in much larger numbers than usual. We've finally got somebody running against that horrible Pelosi that's an actual liberal. It shocks me a bit that nobody has tried that before as she clearly isn't representing her constituents.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 31 2018, @03:09AM
Obama [...] was the only candidate that had a plan for dealing with the impending economic crisis
I see that you aren't timid about revealing your towering ignorance.
Ralph Nader was on the ballot in 2008. [wikipedia.org]
If you scroll down to 2008[1], you'll see not only Ralph (no single declared party that time), you'll see Cynthia McKinney (Green Party; former Georgia congresswoman) and Gloria La Riva (who is getting to be a Peace and Freedom Party perennial).
Jerry White (not listed on that page) was on the Socialist Equality Party ticket that year.
Any of those had an economic plan that was at least the equal of O'Bummer's bailouts of failed Capitalists (criminals, at that).
A little reminder here that the S&L crooks of the 1980s were imprisoned in the 1990s--not bailed out at taxpayer expense.
[1] Someone who is signed up with Wikipedia needs to add all of those headings to the top of the page so that folks can use a #FragmentIdentifier to index the page to the pertinent part.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Friday March 30 2018, @07:26PM (5 children)
Come on now straw libertarian AC. Surely even you can tell there’s nothing that makes a violently imposed monopoly administered by the guys holding the guns any worse than a violently administered monopoly administered by a a profit-maximizing corporation.
In many ways, the latter strategy is the worst of both worlds. It’s still violently imposed, but if they screw the peasants bad enough that they revolt, the corporation can just evaporate while the guys holding the guns get to say “sorry that didn’t work out, here’s a new administrator that totally isn’t just the same guys as before under a new name”.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 30 2018, @07:39PM (4 children)
At the very least, I can choose not to use the Internet, or I can connive with my buddies to do something wild to access the Internet without using a particular corporation, if only for shits and giggles.
Yet, that's not possible if the Government provides an ISP. The government WILL force me to fund its activities by one means or another.
That's the difference. That's what indisputably makes the Government a violently imposed monopoly.
Surely, even a bootlicker like you can perceive that difference.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday March 30 2018, @10:34PM
I'll take accusations of bootlicking any day over being a naive fuckwit.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday March 31 2018, @12:20AM (1 child)
Are you saying that the existence of a municipal ISP will force you to use the Internet?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 31 2018, @09:56AM
You know that's not what the AC means.
(Score: 2) by meustrus on Monday April 02 2018, @02:51PM
But the government already forces you to fund the ISPs. Your taxes pay for rural broadband incentive packages and other infrastructure rollout funds. Funds which the ISPs often manage to avoid spending on rolling out infrastructure like they are supposed to, but that's beside the point.
The point is that the current ISP system is already a violently imposed monopoly. You cannot choose not to pay for it.
It would be different if the ISP market looked more like the old dial-up market. What made that more free was that anybody could buy a small set of equipment and broadcast over the existing infrastructure. Nobody had a violently-imposed competitive advantage over anyone else.
The only way to make that kind of system work for broadband is to dissociate the infrastructure from its commercial applications. Whomever owns the infrastructure has a competitive advantage, so don't let them compete. Then the ISPs can be a free market layer on top of that infrastructure.
Even then, the infrastructure itself is still a monopoly problem. No one has yet come up with a way to maintain singleton infrastructure without the government ultimately being in control. Whether the public or private sector administers it is irrelevant to the fact that the government is still taking your tax money to build and maintain it.
If there isn't at least one reference or primary source, it's not +1 Informative. Maybe the underused +1 Interesting?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by c0lo on Friday March 30 2018, @10:51PM (6 children)
And now, when the call is for the govt to actually provide a service, you object.
Even more, it would be the local hovts to replace a monopoly granted by the federal govt with many utility-like services. Is that an aggravating factor to you?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Informative) by bzipitidoo on Friday March 30 2018, @11:48PM (5 children)
I suspect this AC of being a telecoms shill. Advances a spurious argument "but, but GOVERNMENT!!", while turning a blind eye to the very real abuses of the monopolistic telecoms-- the price gouging, the indifference to providing any service at all if you live in a backwater, the eagerness to destroy net neutrality, the urge to censor and spy upon us, and force more advertising on us. About the only good thing I have to say for the telecoms is that they have at the least not cooperated with the copyright extremists in ratting us out, identifying us for the MAFIAAs lawyers.
The problem is power. Power corrupts. Doesn't matter if that power is concentrated in government or private hands. However, at the least a democratic government is accountable to the voters. Sure, private corporations are still accountable to market forces, but we've all seen how that can be subverted, for instance via gaining a monopoly.
A good cure is competition. Banning the government from competing at all reduces competition. There's a little to that bit about the government having an unfair advantage, but it's not near as much as the established private corporations would have us believe. FedEx, UPS, and other parcel delivery services managed to prosper in spite of a late start and competition from the US Post Office.
The US Post Office doesn't exist only to provide reliable, low cost mail delivery. Communication was quite rightly viewed as an essential ingredient for a democracy, and it was feared that if left solely to private corporations, those companies could obtain so much power that they could hold the nation to ransom. The existence government operated Post Office service forestalls that. The Internet has become the most important communication network in the world, surpassing what we now scornfully call "snail mail", and also rendering obsolete the "landline" phone service with such things as VoIP. Therefore, there ought to be a government option for this network. If anything, the lack of such an option is irresponsible.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 31 2018, @12:06AM
A government is a special organization; it is an organization that declares its income at the point of a gun.
It's not competition but rather distortion when a government participates in the market—the competing private organizations are forced to fund their opponents, the government. Also, consumers are given a very irritating choice: Either pay the government for its service, or pay both the government for its service and some other competing company... stupid.
With regard to the US Postal Service, I urge you to read about Lysander Spooner.
Inherent in your view of a government communications service is the notion that the government is inherently more angelic than "private" organizations. Yet, how can that be? Both kinds of organization are staffed by Men, who are not angels. Worse for government, though, is the fact that government can declare its income regardless of its performance, and when government commandeers an industry, it does so as a violently imposed monopoly where—BY YOUR OWN ARGUMENT—it is in danger of corruption through lack of competition (especially given the incompetence that necessary comes along with taking over an industry rather than growing the industry through continuously profitable activities).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 31 2018, @12:17AM
Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
Atomic power corrupts... atomically?
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 31 2018, @03:25AM (1 child)
a democratic government is accountable to the voters
That's the hypothesis.
Now, add a Reactionary Supreme Court that repeatedly says "It's fine with us if rich folks want to buy elections."
What was needed from the start were publicly-financed election campaigns.
To get there now will take a constitutional amendment.
We've got the numbers, but, again, they've got the cash.
It's going to be an uphill climb.
-- OriginalOwner_ [soylentnews.org]
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Sunday April 01 2018, @07:13PM
"It's fine with us if rich folks want to buy elections."
It's fine with me too! If you have a problem with that.. direct your ire at the people who sell their votes to the corrupt politician. They do so to get their own little piece of that pie. So don't blame the winners for following the will of the voters.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 31 2018, @09:58AM
A government is a special organization; it is an organization that declares its income at the point of a gun.
It's not competition but rather distortion when a government participates in the market—the competing private organizations are forced to fund their opponents, the government. Also, consumers are given a very irritating choice: Either pay the government for its service, or pay both the government for its service and some other competing company... stupid.
With regard to the US Postal Service, I urge you to read about Lysander Spooner.
Inherent in your view of a government communications service is the notion that the government is inherently more angelic than "private" organizations. Yet, how can that be? Both kinds of organization are staffed by Men, who are not angels. Worse for government, though, is the fact that government can declare its income regardless of its performance, and when government commandeers an industry, it does so as a violently imposed monopoly where—BY YOUR OWN ARGUMENT—it is in danger of corruption through lack of competition (especially given the incompetence that necessary comes along with taking over an industry rather than growing the industry through continuously profitable activities).
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 31 2018, @02:34AM
Because NOBODY . . . EXPECTS . . . the . . . VIOLENT IMPOSITION!!! Or rather, those that DO expect it, like our love-lorn AC here, well, they kind of want it, because it shows everyone what they were going on about! "Did you SEE that? This is what I'm on about! Help! Help! I'm being violently imposed upon!! Eeeeek!!Flummmshlobble!!! Gaaark!!!!"
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday March 31 2018, @07:46AM
Government came to power not through being good at providing a service, but rather through violent imposition.
Oh, stop with the melodrama! You can still vote them out... Nobody forces you to reelect anybody.