The FCC is not just refusing to comply with the New York state Attorney General’s investigation into widespread comment fraud committed during the FCC’s net neutrality repeal comment period; they’re actively blocking it. Something is not right here, and it may point to a sign of culpability of someone at the FCC that Chairman Ajit Pai is covering for—or worse—he’s trying to shield himself from guilt.
Filed under: Net Neutrality |
Good morning, you two—and that dog if it’s still around.
the dog? I took him down to the humane society. he’s found a home by now.
Have you seen this:
https://np.reddit.com/r/technology/comments/7o41rf/the_fcc_is_preparing_to_weaken_the_definition_of/ds6w3aw/
Back in 2015 I was doing research for a now defunct project called “Fix the Media.” The question was raised, what does the FCC claim to do. That opened up a Pandora’s box of reasons to be critical of the FCC. It so happened to be around the time of the vote on Net Neutrality.
In April, I actually watched the vote take place. Each commissioner, of which there were 5 made a comment before the vote. Back then, Wheeler was the FCC head. But Ajit was a commissioner and made a lengthy statement opposing the measure. He seemed to be arguing as I often do that big government wasn’t the solution to Internet disparity. It’s also worth noting that the 2 audience members that caused a ruckus and were ejected were both opposed to the measure.
When one of the female[D] commissioners made her statement, I was reminded of the robotic housewives of Westworld. She made the claim that over 4 million Americans had taken the time to voice their opinions about the issue. She further claimed that all those people clogged up both their internet and phone systems in their fervent desire to be heard. I remember thinking, uh, OK. She went on to joke about how dealing with all the hiccups was worth it to ensure our democracy.
Then the vote went down and took about 5 seconds before the gavel came down. The quickness of the whole thing was the most shocking. But after a few minutes to reflect, I decided the claim of over 4 million comments was the most concerning. I became convinced right there that the public comments were either just a made up statistic or were all paid for. So, it doesn’t surprise me in the least that they are suppressing the data on this go round.
The question I have now is, why did the establishment need Net Neutrality back then and don’t need it now?
Hi Peter (I’m a little sick today so have patience with me please)
Your confusion is based on two erroneous assumptions: 1. the 4 million comments in support of Net Neutrality in 2014 were fraudulent in some way and 2. “the establishment” is unipolar in it’s desires.
First, every single single poll taken shows folks want Net Neutrality and it’s by a larger percentage now than it was then. Take for instance the new FCC standard Agit Pai is trying to push now that Net Neutrality is gone. He is saying a good standard for every American is speeds of 10mbps download and 1mbps upload. Why is he doing that? Because if they can redefine those speeds as adaquate for American citizens, then they can allow the ISP companies to throttle back to those speeds as the baseline without them being held accountable for doing damage to people’s access to the internet. At those speeds it would take me 5 hours to upload a 20 minute video and you couldn’t watch it without loading bars popping up every 30 seconds or so.
So we see what Agit and his “no Net Neutrality” plan is all about right off the bat. Truth is, folks better understand the argument now than they did back then.
Now, there is an even better example of what you are talking about concerning Pai’s screeching about “Big Gubment” getting in the way from back in 2014 and that is from… Di$info Jone$. Yep. You were on his side last time. Sorry to point that out to you. But it’s true.
It is a confusing issue but I absolutely believe 4 million people left comments in favor of maintaining Net Neutrality back then as I absolutely believe the comments this time around were as one sided as everyone says they are and most of the comments coming in in favor of doing away with Net Neutrality were fraudulent… as many have been proven to be.
Second… “the establishment” is never as unipolar as we think. Why? Because, interests conflict with one another.
The power structure back then had just received or were in the process of receiving the gifts brought about by Snowden and Greenwald which means CISPA (CISA) and USA Freedom Act. Privatization of security state. That’s when we started hearing about “the internet of things” remember?
Amazon was in the process of taking over as the biggest company in the world. Google was flexing their muscles. Netflics was taking over the movie delivery business.
Do you think it would be in their best interests to suddenly be at the mercy of upstart ISPs who would then be legally allowed to blackmail Big Businesses like them with the threat of throttling their services if they didn’t pay up?
And it’s not just them. Other major businesses in the country were concerned about it. Walmart does a lot of online business as does ABC and ESPN and Bank of America and even the major media outlets.
So, when you ask why “the establishment” was on one side in 2014 and now suddenly they are on another… it’s not exactly accurate. Truth is, there must have been a lot of behind the scenes negociations taking place that we will never see. Contract negociations between various Big Business assets and the ISP companies for example. Plus now the whole thing will be “monitored” by the FTC which, while toothless and captured by various businesses, can still inflict some damage on the ISPs if they attempt to throttle the Big Boys or hold them hostage.
I think that is the difference now. We all knew it was going to happen back in 2014 after the victory. The only question was when. Folks in the alternative world wrongly believe Obama was pressured by THEM to enact Net Neutrality rules. That is a fallacy. If his support of TTP, RomneyCare and TTIP taught us anything is was that he never gave a shit about what we thought. He stalled it until Big Business could work out the details behind the scenes. Like he always did.
I hope that helps.
Hope you get to feeling better soon. Thanks for the info. I concede that you raised a couple issues I wasn’t familiar with. I’ve got some unique insight too, having worked for tier 1 internet providers previously, 1 of which was deeply involved with what eventually became ICANN. Their president, Scott Purcell testified before Congress during the hearings on the 1996 telecom reform act. I can remember meeting with GTE (now Verizon I think) in 1995 and their engineers asking ours, “so how does the internet work?” Our company built the first version of their SuperPages telephone index.
I learned of the various types of telecommunications providers, the LECs, RBOCs, CLECs and CAPs because our company (Epoch Internet) needed to do repeat business with all of them to provide our B2B service. Each dedicated internet connection involved our service charge and a local loop with one of the telcos. Believe it or not, it was common back then to provide 1.5 Mb bandwidth (a T1) to a business for around $2,000 monthly. The dream scenario for an ISP was to own or have access to “dark fiber” that would defray network costs normally paid to ride the telcos networks.
At any given time, there are about 20 tier 1 ISPs that comprise the internet in the US. All the regional telcos are now in that group. They exchange our traffic through peering agreements that ensure a fair trade. Some ISPs are forced to pay another if their outbound traffic is greater than their inbound. But these relationships are working today like they did back in 1996 when the public internet took off with the advent of Netscape.
The internet became what it is with surprisingly little oversight. So I’m not used to siding with regulation. Seems I’ve got more digging to do. But you can understand why I’m uncomfortable believing Facebook, Google and Diane Feinstein are siding with the people’s interests here!
I understand that. But, to be honest, Facebook, Google and Diane Feinstein no longer are siding with our interests. They were siding with their own back in 2014 when Net Neutrality was installed in order to put the brakes on the ISP’s power grab, but now they probably have had time to cut deals with them and have found ways themselves to ensure that the Big Boys like them are given a free pass while small startups are throttled. that would be my guess anyway.