Comcast has sued the state of Vermont to try to avoid a requirement to build 550 miles of new cable lines.
Comcast's lawsuit against the Vermont Public Utility Commission (VPUC) was filed Monday in US District Court in Vermont and challenges several provisions in the cable company's new 11-year permit to offer services in the state. One of the conditions in the permit says that "Comcast shall construct no less than 550 miles of line extensions into un-cabled areas during the [11-year] term."
Comcast would rather not do that. The company's court complaint says that Vermont is exceeding its authority under the federal Cable Act while also violating state law and Comcast's constitutional rights:
The VPUC claimed that it could impose the blanket 550-mile line extension mandate on Comcast because it is the "largest" cable operator in Vermont and can afford it. These discriminatory conditions contravene federal and state law, amount to undue speaker-based burdens on Comcast's protected speech under the First Amendment of the United States Constitution... and deprive Comcast and its subscribers of the benefits of Vermont law enjoyed by other cable operators and their subscribers without a just and rational basis, in violation of the Common Benefits Clause of the Vermont Constitution.
[...] Comcast previously asked the VPUC to reconsider the conditions, but the agency denied the request. (Vermont Public Radio posted the documents that we've linked to and published a story on the lawsuit yesterday.)
Comcast entered Vermont by purchasing Adelphia in 2005, despite already being aware of state procedures that ascribe great importance "to building out cable networks to unserved areas to meet community needs," the VPUC's denial said.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday September 01 2017, @06:16PM (2 children)
I naturally assumed that because the house was obviously equipped for cable TV, that it was also equipped for cable Internet.
Instead I got to spend three years operating my business over a dialup modem: the cable company said they didn't have any routers in Owl's Head.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Snotnose on Friday September 01 2017, @07:01PM (1 child)
There's a really cool museum in Owl's head, they have a prototype Mustang circa 1963. I should dig out my pictures.
I came. I saw. I forgot why I came.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday September 01 2017, @07:13PM
In many ways I really enjoyed my life there. But it was during the dot-com crash; life was hard.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Some call me Tim on Friday September 01 2017, @06:20PM (10 children)
You idiots signed the contract now you get to live up to it! Now you know how your customers feel when they need to cancel their service for some reason, or one of your "contractors" talks them into switching from another provider for a great low price that you have no intention of honoring.
Questioning science is how you do science!
(Score: -1, Offtopic) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @06:32PM
Pfft whatever George :P
(Score: 2, Informative) by insanumingenium on Friday September 01 2017, @06:40PM (5 children)
This isn't a contract in the traditional sense, it never is when there is a regulating agency involved. They can't run their business without this agency's permission.
Calling it a first amendment case is just stupid though.
(Score: 2) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday September 01 2017, @07:14PM
Married with Children.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 3, Insightful) by mhajicek on Friday September 01 2017, @08:02PM (2 children)
They always have the option to take their business elsewhere...
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 2) by mcgrew on Saturday September 02 2017, @03:28PM (1 child)
Not if con-cast is the only provider in town.
Carbon, The only element in the known universe to ever gain sentience
(Score: 3, Touché) by mhajicek on Saturday September 02 2017, @04:58PM
You misunderstand. I'm saying Comcast has the option of not doing business in Vermont.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @08:37PM
I can't imagine a single person feeling sorry for these giant ISPs if a miracle happens and they somehow get forced to do this. In the past, they were given taxpayer money to build out their lines, but they either did much less than what they said they were going to do or didn't do anything at all, and then just got away with it because our government is immensely corrupt.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Sulla on Friday September 01 2017, @08:14PM
This. Contracts are contracts. Was it Oracle's fault that the State of Oregon signed a contract for a multi-million dollar software project without milestones? No. Just like in this case it is not Vermont's fault that Comcast did not read the fine print, although I suspect more than likely they figured they would just fight it later. The best way for Vermont to respond would be to just pull the permit and charge them for operating illegally (not endorsing the right of the state to say what businesses can and cannot operate).
Ceterum censeo Sinae esse delendam
(Score: 2) by VLM on Friday September 01 2017, @08:49PM (1 child)
It varies by state, but generally state PUCs don't contract anything they license. The muni gets a contract to provide monopoly service in exchange for $$$ and public access channels and so forth. The feds also have some interaction.
Eventually because there's only a handful of monopoly providers the whole mess will have to be regulated (if not nationalized) at the federal level.
IF cable companies were like railroads, the FCC is kinda like the EPA (no blowing interfering smoke into the USA air) at the national level, the states frankly are mostly toothless but used to regulate telegraphs and haven't been retired yet, and the muni would be like having to buy a license from each little city to do business in that city.
Very much like its hard to force a railroad to provide a service its not interested in providing, its tough to force a cable company to serve a location they're not interested in serving.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by fido_dogstoyevsky on Friday September 01 2017, @11:13PM
Or it might be easy, it just depends how much the cable company wants its "11-year permit to offer services in the state".
It's NOT a conspiracy... it's a plot.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by tangomargarine on Friday September 01 2017, @06:39PM (7 children)
"Okay, well if you feel that way about it, we're revoking your license to practice business in the state. Send in the next-largest provider."
(or whatever the legal wording would be...there's gotta be a way to do it)
"Is that really true?" "I just spent the last hour telling you to think for yourself! Didn't you hear anything I said?"
(Score: 4, Insightful) by edIII on Friday September 01 2017, @08:44PM (6 children)
Exactly what they should do.
That and "Comcast's Constitutional Rights". It has NO RIGHTS!! Corporations are not people. What about all the easements? Tax breaks? etc.
Comcast needs to pony the fuck up and actually hold up their end of the bargain.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @09:14PM (4 children)
Corporations have no rights whatsoever? The Constitution doesn't specify this. But if we're to believe that, does that mean that if, for example, a corporation is developing a video game, the government could censor it? After all, the corporation has "no rights" and therefore no right to free speech either. If you say that people, who have rights, are working to make the game and therefore it would violate their rights if the government censored their art, then that logic could apply to any situation involving a corporation. What are the limits to this?
What you should have said is that building lines has nothing to do with freedom of speech, which is true.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by stretch611 on Friday September 01 2017, @09:35PM (3 children)
If companies are given full constitutional rights (and sadly the supreme court has started doing this) It basically means the company can be treated like another individual.
The problem is that corporations have access to more cash and money than all but the richest people. Unfortunately, this means they can buy more advertising and more "influence" in DC. This means that the companies can easily drown out most opposition to their opinion.
The other problem is that corporate owners have two venues to speak out instead of the common person's one. This is also unfair.
We need to kill the idea of corporations getting individual rights. It just give more power and influence to the wealthy which do not need any more, and shouldn't have any more than any other person in this country. (But good luck trying to change this with most of our elected officials already in the pockets of their corporate masters... regardless of whether there is a "D" or "R" after their name.)
/end rant
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 1) by anubi on Saturday September 02 2017, @03:03AM
Responsibility also comes with rights. As corporeal beings, we are subject to the pain of physical deprivation or even the pain of administered violence if the powers-that-be deem it necessary.
Do we have the ability to enforce responsibility on ephemeral entities, created on documents, which exist only for the transfer of profits?
"Prove all things; hold fast that which is good." [KJV: I Thessalonians 5:21]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 02 2017, @03:41AM (1 child)
So what rights should corporations have, if any, then?
(Score: 1) by redneckmother on Saturday September 02 2017, @05:42PM
"So what rights should corporations have, if any, then?"
The right to file Chapter 11, and "Get off my lawn!".
Mas cerveza por favor.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 02 2017, @03:39AM
As others have said, I'll believe that a corporation is a person when they execute one. Until then, it's just an entity that absorbs blame for most things. Until we have the means and will to execute them when they start murdering people, I refuse to acknowledge their personhood.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by urza9814 on Friday September 01 2017, @06:45PM (7 children)
Wait...Comcast is trying to claim that laying cables is a FREE SPEECH issue?!? The whole "money is speech" thing was bad enough, but this is just insanity!
How long until someone starts trying to claim homicide is a form of free speech too??
(Score: 5, Funny) by MichaelDavidCrawford on Friday September 01 2017, @07:15PM
Damn.
Now I have to figure out how to hide the bodies.
Yes I Have No Bananas. [gofundme.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @07:16PM (5 children)
The KKK had that covered long ago.
Punch a neo-nazi today!
(Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @07:37PM (4 children)
Sounds like you've got all the neo-nazi aspects down pat, except you have ideological hatred instead of racial.
Violence begets violence, c'mon now.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @10:38PM (3 children)
If you think punching someone because they're trying to exterminate blacks - or, alternately, all of them except for ones kept in slave labor - is "ideological hatred", there's no hope of having a reasoned discussion. You ain't thinking it through.
The neo-nazis (and the KKK, they overlap) have an explicit violent agenda based on race, and a differing opinion means less than nothing to them. You don't reason with a charging bear.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @11:07PM (1 child)
No, I am totally thinking it through to the logical conclusion that happens when you make it OK to commit violence for ideological reasons.
Now, if I am at a protest and some people are getting into a fight I would try and break it up. If one of those people was a swastika tatted fucker then the fight would likely get broken up by taking that assclown to the ground, and in the scuffle it would be likely I'd punch em' in the face unless they don't fight back.
However, if said asshat is just being a loud mouthed hateful piece of human garbage I would just take pictures and not commit assault. If you can't figure out the nuances here then please stay home, I'd rather not have someone out there itching to start a race/culture war, no matter how righteous you feel. I believe we have a massive problem with racism still, but going out and punching people is not going to solve or prevent anything.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 02 2017, @04:35AM
Congratulations, asshole, you've just taken the side of the aggressor.
The KKK, neo-nazis, white supremacists, and their ilk started the violence. Suggesting that hitting a nazi is "violence for ideological reasons" shows that you're a fucking shill. Or just stupid.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 02 2017, @09:08PM
hmm, they aren't trying very hard because, besides random loons now and then, nothing ever happens. should i conclude that "blacks" are "trying to exterminate" white people b/c of their few loons that do the same thing? your paranoid delusion is just as dangerous as whatever caused these people to flip out and probably less justified. just accept the racialism that is within you. It's not as evil as your history books taught you it is, especially when kept in reasonable perspective. Then you wouldn't have to make yourself feel better by defending the poor defenseless POC from the "racial violence" that is overflowing from your brain holes.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @07:58PM (1 child)
Litigate
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 01 2017, @11:09PM
Finally, and end to all the whatever-gates!
(Score: 5, Informative) by Thexalon on Friday September 01 2017, @08:30PM
Comcast is simply trying to engage in the time-honored strategy used by all telecoms:
1. Take nice large federal subsidies that are supposed to go to building out capacity in rural areas.
2. Don't build out the capacity as promised and just keep the money.
3. Bribe the enforcement agencies as needed to prevent anyone from calling you on it. Make up technicalities as needed for why you can't do it.
4. PROFIT!
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by MrGuy on Friday September 01 2017, @08:40PM (1 child)
How much, approximately, would it cost to build 550 miles of cable lines?
And how much, approximately, does it cost to sue a regulator on ridiculous first amendment grounds?
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Friday September 01 2017, @10:27PM
A lot less than the amount they charge homeowners to extend the lines to their house.
It is not unusual for them to ask for $10,000 or more to pull lines a quarter mile.
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P
(Score: 2, Interesting) by GreatOutdoors on Saturday September 02 2017, @03:14PM
You agreed to terms of a contract, now you must follow through. If this crap is allowed to be litigated away, then the terms of every citizen's contract with you should also be void since you are exempt from contracts..
Vermont: don't give them an inch. In fact, make a new law that penalizes companies for this type of crap so they lose even more money.
Yes, I did make a logical argument there. You should post a logical response.