Court ends exclusive cable "rights" in apartments

Since America has become a rentership society, this ruling should have a swift but positive impact.

A federal court ruled today that cable companies can't have exclusive "rights" to cable TV service in apartment buildings. This upholds an FCC decision that outlawed these agreements as anticompetitive.

Under this ruling, new exclusive agreements can't be made, and old ones can no longer be enforced.

Kentucky law seems to already say this much - despite Kentucky lawmakers' increasing hostility to tenants in other matters.

This ruling is especially important because the government's earlier diktat to end analog TV will mean many areas will no longer be able to receive over-the-air TV at all - thus forcing folks to get cable or do without TV. At least with the new court decision, those who get cable can now get it from a different provider - if one exists.

(I can rattle off a list of mid-sized cities like Allentown, Pennsylvania, or Fayetteville, North Carolina, that will probably lose most of their over-the-air network affiliates once analog TV is forcibly shut off.)

The cable industry itself has become anticompetitive. Like the utility business in general, it thrives on monopoly.

(Source: http://www.suntimes.com/business/1591761,w-cable-rights-apartments-052609.article)