All of that and I'm so glad I do not have cable. I have access to two secure wireless hotspots and any number of public ones. Cable companies can take their s**t and shove it as far as I'm concerned.

On that note, a city just a few years ago set up their own non-profit, free community wireless access network.  They were sued by the local cable company for unfair competition, taken to court and lost.  The free wireless acces for the city was ordered turned off and declared illegal.

This is the way cable companies will have it as often as they can get it.

What?  That is pathetic, pathetic, PATHETIC.  It wasn't a business, so how could it be sued for unfair competition?  Next McDonald's will try to sue us for someone making a burger for us.  Did they ever use any other similar situations?  I suppose that's why they want to prevent growing our own vegetables because it "starves" the supermarkets of profits. P A T H E T I C ! ! ! ! ! ! !

Did I mention that was PATHETIC?  Americans could use their own version of the fair go.  Even though Australians don't always get a fair go, the phrase is so inscribed in our consciousness that if someone tried the above in Australia, it would be more likely to lose.  (Hopefully MUCH MORE.)

HEY I'VE GOT A GREAT IDEA - CHILDREN CAN BE FORCED TO WORK AS SLAVES FOR THEIR PARENTS SO THEY "EARN" THEIR INHERITANCE.  Actually this would not happen because rich people love starting their kids off with millions of moolah.  I've never heard of a "right" to profit, so how DARE the cable company sue the council (who should be able to set their own rates and services) and how DARE the courts cave in!!?

Cable companies negotiated a trade-off years ago.  In return for laying the cable infrastructure and maing community access channels available for public use, they were granted the right to be the sole licensed cable network provider in their area. This was supposedly to offset the "community service" they were doing by putting in the infrastructure--which of course they were also going to charge for.

A few years back the free community channel was made no longer mandatory--it's an  option if they choose to offer it. They also are free to NOT offer "ala carte (meaning you pay for only the channels you want) because every time that is brought up in legislature they spend hundreds of million lobbying Congress against it.

So now you are offered those sweet bundles that require over $100 a month--rather than being able to economically buy say your internet and one cable channel you like.   It's all or nothing if you want the "savings".

The only competition is they have to sign a contract with the local municipalitiesthey service and bidding for the contracts is  somewhat competitive--though it's really hard to out one and replace them (As in, "Hey--we built that stuff, we're taking most of it with us if we leave").  So few competitors can usually replace them economically--the development cost for them is higher.

Ironically, we give the cable companies all this exclusions and benefits so they can build a network "for us".  Guess it isn't really ours after all.

So when the city built it's free internet the cable company said, "Hey you have created competition for us while we are contracted to be the area provider here--take it down.".

Now the city was buying the access from the contracted cable company--they just opened up their wireless network and spread hubs around the city so people could connect--same thing truck stops, libraries and fast food restaurants do nw--only it was strong enough to reach residential homes (by design).  the goal was to make same service internet equally accessible to all residents regardless of income.

Can't have that can we?

I can understand the reasoning behind it, but I still think it's stupid and pathetic.  I would be STRONGLY opposed to it if they ever tried it here.  It will be interesting to see how the new Australian Broadband Network will be handled in Australia (if it gets completed enough before Labor loses power).  If it's done the right way, it could be quite good.  Then again it depends on what the Liberals (read: Australian Conservatives) do with it when they get into power.  But I value the influence GetUp! has had on Australia, and even though I don't agree with all their campaigns, they are run very well and get a great deal of their money by people donating for a specific campaign (although you can make a general recurring donation).  At one stage I made a general donation per month, but now I just donate to campaigns I agree with and can afford to donate to.  They are not perfect, but they have their finger on the pulse and it is a HECK of a lot better to have a well-run grassroots organisation standing up for the ordinary person than not.  After all, corporations already have enough money.  GetUp! enables solid competition for mindspace by pooling financial resources when the big guys start shoving their weight around, or people finally get sick of them shoving their weight around.

The legal and business reasoning are understood but it comes down to is the internet a public highway needed for the public good or just a "commodity"?  Imagine if our highway systems were run like cable companies.

Businesses of course call it a "commodity" and claim sole ownership of it.

Sure... they invented it...or was that Al Gore?

Al Gore sold it to them in return for their carbon credits.

Yeah, then I did misunderstand you. If your modem was at fault and they still were worried about what was downstream, that is clearly in the wrong.

Thanks.  That's correct.

Talking about "freedom" and media and the like...

I just ran across this in a  newspaper site and here's the background:  I tried to find a mainstream journalism site covering it in detail and guess what? Couldn't find one.  Some brief mention but no actual coverage.  I did find an offcial article originating from within university news itself but--"the page has been removed".

So here's the Fox News story version as it is the longest I could quickly find.

http://www.foxnews.com/us/2012/07/21/free-speech-codes-on-campus-political-correctness-at-it-most-ridiculous/

My favorite thing out of it?  The universities,  "Second Annual Guide to Free Speech".  I think they missed the irony that the guide one what constitutes free speech has to be updated annually.

McDonalds is pathetic... in a big way.  It sued a 139 year old Ipswich [Qld] bakery named McDonalds for using the McDonalds name... and won because of its greater power and wealth.  The bakery had obviously used the name for a hundred or more years before the burger chain was an onion ring in the eye of its founder, yet the burger chain won because the family bakery simply could not compete financially in the legal argument.  Hence a family business that had served Ipswich for over a century was bankrupted and run out of business by a greedy foreign corporation... and the yanks wonder why they're not liked here in Oz, what with them taking over and/or ruining numerous long standing Aussie businesses.

Ha... the reason we are having all these issues is because in the USA we have government mandated monopolies given to "private" companies. Its not exactly Cronyism because Cronyism is where the government monopoly is granted to a supporter of the current ruling regime. Instead it was granted based on a bidding war (either to buy frequency for wireless, or to commit to a certain level of deployment to poor and far off areas at a loss) so the richest megacorp wins those bids, then they need to milk the public to recover all that money spent on winning the bid, then they keep on milking the public because they can.

Private enterprise > Government run >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Government granted monopolies to "private" companies.

McDonnalds was founded in the USA but it is operating in 119 countries. You don't get more international then McDonnalds. Them ruining a local business in Australia is to blame on the oppressive Aussia government and their unfriendliness to local businesses not on the american people. The aussia government and the McDonnalds exec who was in charge of that case that is.

No, the company lawyers came all the way from the US to prosecute the case in Australian courts... and the local business went guts up because it could no longer afford the mounting legal costs through McDonalds repeatedly drawing out the case... and the nail in its coffin was having to pay McDonalds legal costs once the case was lost, though not by being legally beaten but losing by forfeit. So McDonalds didn't win by fair/legal means but by corporate thuggery.

....and yet at one time the CEO of Makkas was an Aussie.....sadly he snuffed it early from cancer....but he'd made his way up the 'ranks' from pimply-faced server in a local store....;p

Now that is a travesty...

@ Sin, was this in North Carolina with the free access to everybody, I know in Chattanooga, Tn they did the same thing and now have the fastest DL speeds in the country.....

Nothing to be proud of... the food [orright, the poor semblance of food] is crap and about as edible as an old boot boiled up in cat urine.

Roadrunner with time warner was the BOMB! fastest speeds I have ever had, customer service was quick on the ball, even LATE LATE at night, and even worked with me to get my connection's Signal to Noise ratio just right to really jam it into high gear. Never had a problem with using bittorrent and such, IE no letters in the mail telling me to stop (Comcast), no Bandwidth limitations (Comcast.). They were a dream to be a customer of, it was awesome.

To bad I moved out of the area that I had them in. I used to live in Tampa FL and Clearwater, Fl.

-Æ

And a proper pro growth government would not have allowed corporate thuggery, especially not from a foreign business against a local one. See how simple it is?

Or would have immediately judged in the favor of the small business who had the name for a hundred years longer AND slapped McDonnalds the burger chain with punative damages. And made them pay all the legal fees.

We hate americans because our government allows one exceeding wealthy american CEO to send some thugs over and shut our local business is a LOCAL GOVERNMENT problem not a problem with the american people. There are thugs everywhere, inviting and allowing them to cause trouble in your country is stupid and is the local government's fault.

Taltamir, here in Australia, the courts and government are two separate entities and independent of each other once legislation is enacted, so it is not government that administers it/rules one way or the other.  No, the problem arose because John Howard [a former prime minister] signed a 'so-called' free trade agreement with the US under George W Bush... an agreement that gave far more than it received and heavily favoured the US in exchange for a few Australian exports. It was a foolish agreement that opened the door to small and bigger Australian businesses being put through the corporate wringer by US companies seeking to dominate the international market. The US mounted numerous takeovers of Australian businesses, many of them hostile, and US ownership went through the roof while Australian business ownership was decimated.

So why did Howard sign this 'free trade agreement'?  Because the idiot thought he had to concede that much to receive a mere handful of export concessions.  In essence, then, the matter of McDonalds US vs McDonalds Australia was taken out of the court's hands by Howard's moronic idea of fair trade.

As for Aussies hating the Yanks, well I'll rephrase that.  The American people are very much the same as the Australian people, sharing pretty much the same trials and tribulations in their daily lives.  So no, it is not the American people as a whole we hate, but the corporate attitudes of those powerful and wealthy figures at the top, and the damage they have done to Australian businesses.  Add to that the WFC caused by greedy US bankers, and yeah, there is a great deal of resentment, but not just from Australians.  The whole world resents the damage they caused though their insatiable greed.

Trust me Starkers, some if not all feel the same about corporate greed in our country. I just didn't know the extent outside the US. And that pisses me off about what happened to your local McDonald's, if a foreign company can't come to the US and put a local company out of business  because of the name, the same should hold true everywhere else. Alas, I guess it isn't a perfect world...

@Bison...

It happened on the east coast, Virginia and a few other places.  I'd have to go look to find it again.

But the courts only enforce the law as it is written. The court ruled as they did because the laws were written wrong.

Those free trade agreements are a way to stealthily negotiate things that no individual member agrees to and enforce them on all countries involved. An agreement between the USA, Australia, Canada, and some european countries "magically" includes things that are illegal in all countries involved and would never pass in any of them. Because it allows power hyped thugs in government further encroach on civil liberties.

The american small business owner suffers just as much from those treaties as the Australian ones. McDonnalds can do the same as it did to that small aussia company to US companies since the signing of that treaty. Something it couldn't do before and would not have passed through congress as a regular bill. This wasn't a screw australia treaty, it was a screw US small business treaty that was facilitated by australia.

The us congressmen and women who voted for it were bribed by anti-capitalist megacorps like McDonnalds... I don't believe for a fucking second that the aussia government had an "oopsie"... they had to have been bought by someone as well. Only question is who bought them.

The US government just loves stripping its citizenry of rights "in order to comply with international agreements" which they put forth and forced on other nations in the first place.

That all being said, a LOT of those treaties are originated and drafted in the USA and pushed primarily by the US government.