roundtable: Re: universal service and non profit amendments to cable-telco legislation

roundtable: Re: universal service and non profit amendments to cable/telco legislation

Re: universal service and non profit amendments to cable/telco legislation

James Love (love@Essential.ORG)
Tue, 22 Mar 1994 20:36:43 -0500 (EST) 

Date: Tue, 22 Mar 1994 20:36:43 -0500 (EST)
From: James Love <love@Essential.ORG>
Subject: Re: universal service and non profit amendments to cable/telco legislation
To: Mary Gardiner Jones <mgjones@idi.net>
In-Reply-To: <Pine.3.85.9403181406.B8202-0100000@idi.net>
Message-Id: <Pine.3.85.9403222043.E855-0100000@essential>

On Mon, 21 Mar 1994, Mary Gardiner Jones wrote:
> I understand from Scott Cooper that the 
> non profit amendment may still vbe in trouble in conference. Scott is 
> looking for a way to pin down the definition of non profit so that it 
> takes in all the publicinterst organziations, libraries, schools and 
> health care facilities and leaves out what we might refer to as the 
> pseudo non profits. I must say I dont have any thoughts on this except 
> that I should think the 501 c 3 designation would be sufficient. But if 
> anyone has any ideas, shoot them along.

   Mary, we are quite keen on a US version of the Netherlands model, 
where special non-profit umbrella groups are allotted time on the basis 
of the size of their membership (subject to audit, and a "cut-off" size), 
and these groups  in turn decide who gets the time (and money) for 
non-commerical programming.  These are democratically run organizations, 
which only do the non-commerical programming, much like some 
public tv and radio stations are run by members, except that they must 
compete against each other for membership, and there will be more than 
one "winner," resulting in more diversity.

  We think this provides a nice balance of several goals, there will be 
a wider diversity of views represented, a democratic mandate, and a 
consumer driven solution (the "customers" "choose" the content, by 
selecting which groups to support through membership, and resources are 
allocated according to the number of members.

   Let me know what you think of this model.  jamie

ps, Mike Ward has some literature on this.  

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James Love, Taxpayer Assets Project; internet:  love@essential.org
P.O. Box 19367, Washington, DC 20036; v. 202/387-8030; f. 202/234-5176
12 Church Road, Ardmore, PA 19003; v. 215/658-0880; f. 215/649-4066
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