I bet that the purchaser would get an easement.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Easement

Now, because it is private land, they would have to spend the money themselves to run cable/pipe and build a road, but the easement would allow them to do so on someone's land.

The next question would be, why would you buy a house that you can't get to from a public road, that has no power, or phone, unless you know that going in?

In the 80s people had to be hooked up to cable for the first time, by digging trenches in the streets, and yards to hook up the new technology. Now all homes have all the connections built in.

Where is all the cable located? I bet that almost all of it is located under (in?) public roads or land. How much did the cable company pay us to put that cable in the ground? How much per month are they paying in rent? I can bet that they got to put it in the ground for free, because it served the public good. I even bet that a lot of the costs were paid for by tax payers. If they want to pay monthly rent, by the yard for all the cable in the ground on public land and roads, they can do whatever they want. As long as we the people help pay for the infrastructure (even if it use of our roads to lay cable) we should have some control over it.

Why didn't you build your house next to the road? If you place your house 1 mile from the public road, then yes, I would agree that you should cover the cost of running the cables/pipes to your house from the street. If you choose to live out there, you should still have access to at least the edge of your land.

Today, April 6th 2009, we can live without the internet. The world will not end if we don't have access. However, in 10/20/30 years, the internet will replace phones, TV, and most mail. I want to make it a utility, with all the rules and responsibilities, now. The earlier we do this, the better we will be in the future. So yes, I agree, it is not as important as access to clean water, but it is getting up there with phone and power.

Finding a good job required access to online job ads.
Making appointments is happening more and more online.
Accessing information about the government is more and more online.

Okay, if that is your argument, shut off your power, water, don't drive on the roads, don't send your kids to public school, don't fly, don't go to the hospital, don't use medicine, move to the middle of nowhere and build a house out of mud. All of those things are wants. We don't have the right to any of them.

We the people funded the internet. We the people subsidized the cables in the ground. We the people own the airways. We the people should have access to what we paid for. If companies want to make profit of of the infrastructure, they need to follow the rules we put in place.

The second we take away the roads, power, water, garbage collection, phone, net access, schools, other fundamental services of a first world nation, we become a third world nation. You can say "free market" all you want, but history shows that companies will not deliver these fundamental services if they don't forced to do so. If you lived in small town America, away from high density populations, you did not get power for years after the rest of the country. The same goes for phones.

I want to live in a first world nation, where I have cheep, reliable access to these services.

Why not micromanage? How is the internet not necessary to function in daily life. The government is moving more and more services to the net. Without high speed access, people will be left out. If we don't make the net a public utility now, we will lose our access to government in the future.

For example, if you live in Mass. you can't have your natural gas cut off, no matter how much you owe in winter. If companies were allowed to do whatever they want, it would cut off gas in winter and let people freeze to death. We have similar rules all over the US for phone, water, power, and others.

Net access needs to be treated the same. It should be a right to have cheep, high speed, unfiltered, unshaped, internet access.

In which case, it is time to have a public utility internet access, run by the local/state/federal government. Like Finland, we need to get a law passed that says people have the right to 1/10/100 mb access to the net. In the past, the US government had to step in to get companies to provide phone and power to rural locations in the US. The same needs to be done for high speed internet access, but not just limited to rural locations. Everyone in the US should be able to access the net at a high speed. As we move more and more functions of the government and business to the net, people need equal access.

Like the roads, power, phone, water, garbage collection, natural gas, and others, the Internet has to become a public utility, and companies that want to provide access need to be regulated as such.

Step 1. Send a letter to your ISP asking them to filter your access by a defined criteria.
Step 2. Wait to get content that you requested filtered.
Step 3. ??????
Step 4. Profit.

If they can filter content, based on whatever they want to do, they lose their common carrier status, and are now responsible for all content passed over their networks. If you get a spam message that you did not want, you can sue, at least in a perfect world. I am sure they will get out of it somehow.

What amount do the corporations actually PAY? Did you know that it's close to 0? http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/08/13/study-tallies-corporations-not-paying-income-tax/ Yes, we have one of the highest rates, but that amount is not actually paid.

I say, instead of cutting corporate taxes, raise them, and use the money to teach people new skills. Free college for every American paid for by the corporations that will higher you after you get out.

Now all we need is a large screen in the House and Senate and allow anyone to call up the video from the past.

Congress person A: "Well I never said that we should cut funding to orphans."

Congress person B: "Let's go to the play back. On June 28th at 10:45 am you gave a speech on the floor, let's listen in,'We should cut funding to orphans.' Sounds to me like now you are lying."

I would watch CSPAN 24-7 just to see both sides tripped up by their own words.

Sorry, it might have not been coal. I was going off of memory. All that I remember is that not long after the Sago mine collapse, where several miners were killed, a mine collapsed in Europe. Because of the stricter laws the miners had a bunker they retreated to that had food, water and air for all of them. A few days later when the rescuers dug them out, they were fine. Without the bunker, they would have died. People asked about doing something like that in the US, and the answer was, "It's too costly." At that time, a former Mine owner was in charge of US mine safety, and would not push for more regulation.

My point was that I would rather pay more for gas, coal, copper, iron, or whatever, knowing that the people who are risking their lives are given every chance to survive a disaster.

The Nuclear Power Industry does this all the time. They have a horrid record when it comes to cost over runs and delays. Now they are trying to get rate payers to pay for the possible construction of a new nuclear plant that may or may not be built in the next 5 to 10 years.

No insurance company will insure a nuclear plant.*
No bank will loan money for construction of a nuclear plant.*

*Without government guarantees.

Yes, because I really want to get cancer from drinking water that is polluted by the mine that gathers these elements, or die in a mine collapse because the mine owner is too cheep to provide for safety bunkers.

The number one rule for business is to internalize the profits, and externalized the costs.

It is why gas is taxed to high in Europe. They are trying to capture the costs of the pollution and environmental hazards caused by the use of oil. It is why coal miners in the US die in a collapse, and the European coal miners spend 3-4 days in an emergency shelter waiting to be dug out.

Think about it. You are sitting still on a chair, in your house, on the Earth. The Earth is moving around the sun. The sun in moving around the Milky Way Galaxy. The Milky Way Galaxy is moving in whatever direction it is moving in the Local group. The Local Group is moving in whatever direction it is moving. Heck, the entire universe might be moving through some other medium. Who knows. The point is that we are always moving, even when we are sitting still.