I was going to post a longer, more vague, more meandering post about
network neutrality, the telecom act jockeying, and so on, but things have
changed pretty quickly for the worse I'm afraid.
In the wake of
the aforementioned
collapse last week, Joe Barton of Texas and Illinois' very own
former-high-school wrestling coach turned House Speaker have co-signed a
version of the telecom act (imaginatively named "Communications
Opportunity, Promotion, and Enhancement Act of 2006", or COPE, which
is what we may have to do if this thing passes -- "cope"). According to early analysis of
the bill, this bill is lousy:
* Sure, there's a 5% franchise
fee, but no provisions as to where the money actually goes.
* It
runs into decades of municipal franchise law, and the principle of common
law for public utilities going back centuries
* There's
no legislative rationale supporting this. Congress investigated the
matter -- back in 1984 -- and Congress recommended local and municipal
franchises precisely because nobody knows better how to tailor franchises
to local needs than those folks already in the municipality.
* It
leaves network neutrality to be decided in the realm of the FCC, where
network neutrality could well fester and die (perhaps taking the internet
with it).
Interesting side-note of interest: This bill has (so
far) only one Democrat co-sponsor -- First District's own Bobby Rush
(you'll recall that CMA members attended Bobby Rush's District Wide
Assembly in late 2005).
Folks in the first district of Illinois:
You may want to encourage Representative
Rush to reconsider his sponsorship.
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