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2014_0616_CCpacket
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PUBLIC DOCUMENT-TRADE SECRET DATA HAS BEEN EXCISED <br />Comcast of Minnesota <br />Page 18 <br />3. The NSCC Staff's repeated demands regarding Comcast's technical, <br />construction, financial, and legal history and system are not narrowly tailored <br />or necessary to achieve important government interests. The NSCCs <br />"disclosure requirements must be measured against the O'Brien test to <br />determine whether they unduly burden [the cable operator's] First Amendment <br />rights."31 Comcast has operated franchises in the member cities for the past 11 <br />years, and the NSCCs own consultants found that 90 percent of those surveyed <br />are satisfied with Comcast's performance. The NSCC has audited Comcast's <br />technical and financial capabilities, and is familiar with Comcast's management <br />team. Clearly, Comcast is not a stranger to the NSCC and the member cities and <br />has proven that it is legally, financially, and technically qualified to operate a <br />franchise—by doing it successfully for more than a decade. <br />Nevertheless, the RFRP repeatedly seeks extremely detailed information <br />about Comcast's subscriber network and geographic areas, technical system, <br />and construction. Many of the NSCC's demands seek information that the <br />NSCC already has or that is publicly available or that concerns issues that are <br />not in dispute or that are unnecessary to its evaluation of whether Comcast will <br />reasonably meet the member cities' cable needs going forward. One example is <br />that the NSCC seeks detailed and unnecessary financial information when <br />Comcast's financial ability is not in question.32 Insofar as the NSCC will <br />condition Comcast's right to engage in speech on meeting these unnecessary <br />demands, Comcast objects. <br />In addition to not being narrowly tailored, many information demands by <br />the NSCC's RFRP violate the First Amendment because they are unduly <br />burdensome to answer. For example, the NSCC has asked Comcast about <br />thousands of franchises and hundreds of companies, detailed and confidential <br />financial information that is not kept in the ordinary course of business, and <br />detailed and confidential technical information about the manner in which <br />Comcast delivers cable. Collecting and answering these demands—assuming <br />they could even be met—would substantially burden Comcast. The NSCC staff <br />has not justified — as it must, before so burdening a speaker — how all this <br />information is necessary to evaluate the qualifications of a company with which <br />it already is familiar. <br />31. Group W Cable, Inc. v. Santa Cruz, 669 F. Supp. 954, 971 (N.D. Cal. 1987). <br />32. See, e.g., Group W, 669 F. Supp. at 971 (an LFA cannot "deny a franchise for <br />the failure to answer questions that are irrelevant to its [cited substantial <br />government] interest in minimizing disruption of the public domain"). <br />
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