FCC Ignored Your Net Neutrality Comment, Unless You Made a 'Serious' Legal Argument (theverge.com) 279
An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: The FCC received a record-breaking 22 million comments chiming in on the net neutrality debate, but from the sound of it, it's ignoring the vast majority of them. In a call with reporters yesterday discussing its plan to end net neutrality, a senior FCC official said that 7.5 million of those comments were the exact same letter, which was submitted using 45,000 fake email addresses. But even ignoring the potential spam, the commission said it didn't really care about the public's opinion on net neutrality unless it was phrased in unique legal terms. The vast majority of the 22 million comments were form letters, the official said, and unless those letters introduced new facts into the record or made serious legal arguments, they didn't have much bearing on the decision. The commission didn't care about comments that were only stating opinion. The FCC has been clear all year that it's focused on "quality" over "quantity" when it comes to comments on net neutrality. In fairness to the commission, this isn't an open vote. It's a deliberative process that weighs a lot of different factors to create policy that balances the interests of many stakeholders. But it still feels brazen hearing the commission staff repeatedly discount Americans' preference for consumer protections, simply because they aren't phrased in legal terms.
whodathunkit (Score:5, Insightful)
So much for the government enacting the will of the people.
Re: whodathunkit (Score:5, Insightful)
You know, it's not really fair to expect the average citizen to be able to phrase his viewpoint in legal terms. Nor is it reasonable to expect that he would spend the money to hire a lawyer, simply to express his opinion. For example, constituents routinely make their views known to their elected representatives, using plain language. Why should the FCC require a higher standard?
I'd really like to see Pai get sued over this.
Re: whodathunkit (Score:5, Insightful)
Wouldn't matter. They made their decision already. This is just for show. After all, lots of us did make plenty of serious legal arguments, and they ignored us, too.
Re: (Score:3)
Doesn't matter well over ten million pissed of computer geeks and nerds does not matter, boy will the US government find out how much 10 million pissed off geeks and nerds matter, it took way less than that to fuck over the US election and turn it into a blame Russia joke. The US government will be feeling a whole lot of digital pain for this action, across the board.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm kind of surprised that no-one has comprehensively doxxed Pai yet.
Re: (Score:3)
Why do you think they're trying to kill net neutrality?
Your internet is about to become the equivalent of cable TV. You will have freedom to choose, within a very specific set of parameters.
A non-neutral net is not just good for the internet's gatekeepers. It's also good for an authoritarian regime.
Re: (Score:2)
They've got a clear read on the will of the people, especially people who use the internet.
They don't care, but they do know.
Re: whodathunkit (Score:5, Insightful)
Easy. If you can afford a lawyer, then you're rich enough that the FCC is interested. If you can only speak in plain language, then you're just a prole and can't possibly understand government. Government's too complicated for simple minded folks. Those who can afford lawyers, well those people understand how government works.
Re: (Score:2, Troll)
On the other hand, how much should form-letter activism count? It's just deserts for people who waste other people's time, that they end up getting ignored.
Re: (Score:2)
It's just as valid as form-letter responses from your Congressmen - the fact that somebody cared enough to copy a form letter and attach their name to it counts for more than the people who ignored the issue.
Re: (Score:2)
I'd like to see ...
oh hell. I don't want to get in trouble. but you can imagine what I'd like to see.
(we live in a world where the chilling effect silences our true thoughts online. this is one such case. what I -think- has no bearing on real action, but again, we are in a witch-hunt kind of world, now, and things you say can and WILL be used against you.)
but yeah, you can imagine how I feel about this. I'll leave it at that.
Re: (Score:2)
My initial letter was basically "since when have the telecom companies worked for the people?"
Re: (Score:2)
You know, it's not really fair to expect the average citizen to be able to phrase his viewpoint in legal terms.
True enough. But if they keep ignoring them, the average citizen will phrase the viewpoints in pitchforks and torches. Those aren't legal terms but they are readily understood.
The classic "four boxes of liberty" hasn't gone away. "There are four boxes to be used in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use them in that order." If the FCC members refuse to listen to the soap box, and the ballot box is ineffectual and deadlocked between two extreme positions that refuse the will of
It's about law... (Score:4, Insightful)
Suppose you are asked to come up with rules saying what publishers can and can't do. Should that be based on a vote of the people (risking suppression of political or religious dissent) or based on detailed critiques of the different options available to you and their consequences? Should your standards for IT security be based on a vote of your customers?
Public comment is sometimes incredibly useful and important, but it's not magic and it's not majority-wins. It's about having a group of experts with domain knowledge making policy. You can still ask Congress to change the law to override them.
Of course there's a problem with the distributed incentive to comment on the consumer side. If you don't have money riding on a regulation, you're not going to invest in comment. But if you want a comment to be meaningful, you need to either dive deep enough to make your comment be really good, or you have to hire (or get together with others to hire) someone to help you do that diving. A good lawyer can help you do that. The declaratory ruling, report, and order is a couple of hundred pages long--unless you are going to pay a professional to dig through it or spend a lot of time on it, the chance of critiquing it in a meaningful way that will make someone think about or modify their position is extremely low.
https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_pub... [fcc.gov]
Re:whodathunkit (Score:5, Insightful)
Fear the true will of the people. Usually "the people" are a bunch of semi-primitives who have no clue what the fuck they are doing or whether whatever they seem to want is even achievable. Yes, everyone would love lots of money, free booze and no work to do, but besides that I don't think "the people" (as a whole, mind you, not those of them who have neurons in other places than their own gonads) are any good at deciding anything.
Governments never enacted the will of the people; they did what they thought was best for the country and their own pockets, with priorities varying from "most for my pockets" to "most for the country", with the former being more prevalent throughout history.
All voting processes are flawed in one way or another, so you can't even argue successfully that the ruling people were "chosen by the people". Most times they aren't. They're usually chosen by a group of people with power, and then the candidate is shown as "this is the one you should all vote!" and that's it. That's a lack of choice rather than a choice, much like "mouldy bread or spoiled meat" could be considered "choice".
Re: (Score:2)
Maybe (I'm not American) but the point is that you believe the choice STARTED there, whereas I believe the choice ENDED there.
And that, right there, is the result of "the will of the people", when people are dumb as a whole. They are willing to support a candidate, no matter how inane because it is pushed by the party they support - or the other way around, they're willing to support a whole political agenda because the person pushing it is a celebrity of sorts (magnate, singer, sportsman, etc). Whether it'
Re: (Score:2)
No, the choice didn't start there, it started during the Primaries, where all of the other potential candidates were eliminated. Some of them weren't very good, some couldn't get their message out, some were outspent, and some were outmaneuvered. And by last November, there were only two left who had any realistic chance of winning, just like it's been every election since the e
Re:whodathunkit (Score:4, Informative)
In the most recent Presidential election, we were given the choice between a candidate that was absolutely unacceptable and one whom we were willing to vote for, even if we had to hold our noses as we did. Which one was which is something that I'll leave as an exercise for the reader.
I have seen some buyers remorse on the R side. The D side seems preoccupied with reliving the past and speculating what small detail could have tipped it their way - ignoring the more obvious point that if they had only run a decent candidate it would have been an easy sweep.
Pro tips for 2018:
1) >50% of the population is white. Stop hating on white people and putting down whole states as racist deplorables.
2) Almost 50% of the population is male. Constantly criticizing men won't help your cause either.
3) Economics for the 99% is >330 times more important than corner cases like transgenders in the military. Focus on broad issues of real importance.
Citations:
https://www.urbandictionary.co... [urbandictionary.com] https://townhall.com/tipsheet/... [townhall.com]
Re: (Score:2)
Of course democratic tipped media will talk about how democrats should win the next election. One learns from past mistakes. What would you expect them to talk about?
There is plenty of time for our government to talk and handle large and small issues alike. They don't run on a 24/7 media schedule to keep folks entertained, in fact its fairly boring to the average citizen -- else CSPAN would be a thing.
--
"...look over there!" - B. Simpson
Re:whodathunkit (Score:5, Insightful)
Here's the thing: IT DOES NOT MATTER. :)
What happens in the USA right now is half the country fighting the other half, each saying their rotten meat piece is better. Quite sad, really, if you ask me. Luckily, nobody asks me anyway
Re: (Score:3)
>IT DOES NOT MATTER.
Eh. I think the Democrats would have been a better choice for the average American than the Republicans in the last election, and that kind of does matter. Especially if you're transsexual, female, or non-white. Or maybe if you're expecting Trump's economic policies to benefit you (and you're not one of the 1%). Or maybe you're just worried about Trump's lack of decorum causing the US issues (up to and including starting a major war) on the international stage.
The underlying probl
Nope ... it doesn't matter! (Score:4, Interesting)
I voted for Gary Johnson this last election for exactly the reason that's becoming clear to a lot of people now....
I don't at all think the Democrats would have been a "better choice", given the fact they chose to run one of the absolutely worst possible choices for a candidate with Hillary Clinton. I mean, she was completely out of touch with what life is like for a typical American citizen. It was a unique experience for her just to try to do her own grocery shopping as a publicity stunt. And frankly? I think her husband was even trying to sabotage her campaign discreetly, because he probably had ZERO desire to get stuck living 4 years in the White House again, except as "first man" instead of the leader of the country.
To the credit of the Trump administration, they DID squash the the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership), which Obama's administration kept pushing and which would have categorically been a bad thing for America had it passed. But absolutely, Trump is playing the uninformed fool that many of us fully expected him to be if he was elected. Essentially, he's treating the whole thing just like more reality TV and making up anything he thinks sounds good as he goes along. Even so? A lot of people voted for him more to counter the last 8 years of rule by a Democrat - including trying to avoid loading up the Supreme Court with another left-leaning Justice (which would have implications lasting far longer than a Trump presidency).
Ultimately though, yeah -- it doesn't matter anymore if you vote for the Democrats or the Republicans. Either way, you're going to get a leader who has an agenda that doesn't align well with anything resembling the intentions or purposes of the United States of America as it was originally designed by its founders. Republicans keep doing anything they can to help their friends and connections in big business or banking or the stock market. Democrats keep trying to design a government that "mandates equality" with taxation and legislation ensuring every minority group you can think of gets special recognition or privileges that enable them to force the majority to bend to their whims.
I have to thank Trump for quashing the TPP (Score:3)
Thank you Trump for making a decision that cost America thousands of jobs and billions in unethical revenue and power to your country.
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, IT DOES MATTER. You really can't tell when trump tries to crush the free press and intimidate judges who is worse? When trump appoints oil execs to demolish pollution regulation? I don't care what you thought of Hillary, Trump is clearly worse.
Re: (Score:2)
But... uranium deal, emails, err... HILLARY!
You know it boils down to team loyalty, right? I honestly don't know why they bother lying or trying to misdirect your attention when they don't care and will continue to support their team (or continue to act in the same way if they are the team).
Trump could pretty much come out and say, "Yeah, my team colluded with the Russians to spike Hillary. That's the way business is done, and that's why you elected me." Then there'd be a lot more screaming than there ha
Re: (Score:2)
Coming from the outside, I see the political parties in the US as two peas in a pod. They're so similar that any differences they have are near cosmetic, and only matter if you're in-between the two very similar points of view. The leaders, on the other hand, are very different. Do you want a smart power hungry crook, or a stupid bigoted crook?
The latter is what the Americans elected. Remember, you don't get the leaders you need, but the ones you deserve.
Re: (Score:3)
Isn't that what everyone says about their rotten piece of meat?
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
So much for the government enacting the will of the people.
There's a process for the government to enact the will of the people, and it involves Congress. Not the FCC: Congress. That's how it *should* have been done, and if Obama and the Democrats cared so much about this they could have done it. It's like DACA, only not quite as bad.
Re: whodathunkit (Score:2)
What, then, is the purpose of requiring a "public comment period"?
Re: (Score:3)
Because the comment period can introduce angles they may not have thought of. Guess what a mass mailed form letter rather explicitly doesn't do.
Re: (Score:2)
This.
So much this.
If the EFF had wanted people to write letters, they could have provided all the information that a person would need to know to understand what is going on, and then a mailto link that opened up as a blank slate except for the "to" field. This would force any user who was remotely serious about writing a letter to have to take the time to compose it, in their own words, and would not basically create a set up for this situation to be all but completely certain.
Form letters do dick
Re: (Score:2)
Form letters do dick-squat. If you want people to write letters, then you inform the people, but you do *NOT* tell them or even suggest to them exactly what they ought to write because 9 out of 10 people, however well-intentioned they might have otherwise been, will just not bother trying to put it into their own words when something else already exists. You'd get less people sending letters, but you wouldn't get a situation where 90% of the letters get ignored.
Actually, form letters do worse than nothing, because they show you've got at best a lot of people whose support isn't much past filling in a blank or two & clicking send at best. It's effectively spam. If you just want numbers, it's better to just get people signing a petition; you can provide the info needed for anybody who wants to write a letter on their own as well as sign the petition.
Re: (Score:2)
You are making the assumption that the organization that needs to sort through the emails is any less lazy than the people who were too lazy to formulate their own opinion.
The better thing for EFF to have done would have been to inform people, and get them to write their own letters in their own words. Providing an email address to send to, but absolutely *NONE* of the content.
As I said elsewhere.... I've seen this sort of thing happen before, where millions of responses were received on a matter, and
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
If they can make important decisions about technology policy then sorting out mass responses should be a fairly trivial task comparatively.
That's just it. The FCC doesn't decide anything. Those with wealth & power tell the FCC what they will do. All the rest is simply Kabuki theater to distract and mollify the masses into continuing to think they have some say in what government does or does not do.
Welcome to bipartisan Big Government Cronyism.
Strat
Re: (Score:2)
Bitch at your congressperson. The FCC's remit is not the opinion of the people.
Re: (Score:2)
It's enacting the will of the people. The people who have a lot of money to throw at politician campaign fundraising. If you aren't one of those people then the government is probably not going to listen to you. And then it's probably a case of you were saying what they wanted to hear rather than them valuing your expertise.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm sure there's a dozen or more "serious legal arguments" here... so, why don't we copy-paste each one into a separate comment to the FCC so they can count the number of times they see each one.
Re: (Score:2)
Corporations are The People. You're a peon.
We the People, fund the Government.
Essentially, all taxpaying citizens represent the largest and most powerful American Corporation.
Unfortunately, the Government runs on Corruption now. Corruption is the reason the People are no longer relevant. Corruption highlights why Government must be replaced.
Re: (Score:3)
Da, comrade. I stand in bread line at American food bank. Thank you tax payer for lack of jobs to earn my own bread.
You paying for the bread doesn't make it any better. The baker making bread according to his ability makes it good. Corporations making it according to the rules of profit, targeting the price to what you make and how much of that they can get, doesn't.
Re: (Score:2)
"This goes against case law of TITLE I and II and here are the cases ..." THAT will get you listened to.
Is there any evidence to that assumption?
I am fairly certain that no matter how well articulated a letter is, or whether it brings up legal issues, it's not read.
Re: whodathunkit (Score:2)
No, the people voted for Clinton. For only the fifth time in history, the Electoral College picked the popular vote loser for president.
weighs a lot of different factors ? (Score:3, Insightful)
By 'a lot of factors' they mean the amount of money paid to the commissioners by Verizon and friends, apparently.
Re: weighs a lot of different factors ? (Score:2)
Yeah, and by "balance the interests", they mean, compare the amount of donations.
They imagine it appears honest (Score:5, Insightful)
They imagine it looks superficially honest to eliminate public comment based on a bureaucratic process. What they've overlooked is that the mob doesn't care about superficial appearances when they know you're just ignoring them... and the mob REALLY doesn't like it when you rub it in their face that you don't care about them.
I think they just told the American public to eat cake.
But of course they're doing what they want, and what the Republican party wants them to do... remove impediments to fleecing the commoners (who voted for them!) more efficiently.
So... is it time for the guillotines yet? When will the public turn on those who are betraying them? When will enough of them even realize they're being betrayed?
Re:They imagine it appears honest (Score:5, Insightful)
Three things keep these clowns in power:
* Citizens United ==> Unlimited spending by corrupt special interests to subvert the political process.
* Gerrymandering and voter suppression ==> to keep low income and non-white voters from having any representation.
* Fear mongering over hot-button social issues that have zero impact on most people's lives (abortion, gay marriage, transgender bathroom access) ==> bring out the social conservatives and get them to vote against their own economic interests.
It's a winning formula. Sad, but effective.
The Republican party sure knows how to extract wealth from the masses and hand it to their wealthy backers. A disinterested, ignorant population is easily manipulated.
Re: (Score:2)
I'm not sure that the population is as disinterested and ignorant as you believe. But when your choices are Trump or Clinton.. I'm still not 100% the alternative would have been significantly better. Less chance of a war with North Korea perhaps, but Clinton and many Democrats are just as deep in the pockets of the large corporations. In many cases the same large corporations -- nothing stops them from hedging their bet and just buying off both candidates. Its not like corporations have any political pr
Re: (Score:2)
So... is it time for the guillotines yet?
No. Mainly because it's a lot easier to vote them out of office. Oh, you can't vote them out of office? You probably wouldn't have won a revolution, then.
That's how the system is set up: to avoid a revolution by making power changes by other methods easier. It is not a perfect system, but it has solved the problem of periodic revolutions.
Re: (Score:2)
What does that even mean? If they can decide who votes and who does not, and which votes are counted and which are not, then they can select whatever outcome they want. The American vote is nullified.
The FCC can be changed by changing the president. You're not going to get many people to fight a revolution over the FCC, sorry.
Re: They imagine it appears honest (Score:2)
Actually, the Senate confirms the commissioners, so if they hate who the president nominates, they just leave the seats empty...as they did with President Obama.
Re: (Score:2)
Read between the lines (Score:3)
Drawing a bullseye around the arrow (Score:3)
Who wants to bet this justification only popped up after they looked over the comments? (and were forced to disregard all the anti-net neutrality bot opinions)
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
Discounting the spambots is not really an issue.
Its when they discount the form letters produced by organizations such as the EFF and OpenMedia. Sure, the person sending them didn't actually put a whole lot of time or effort (or apparently the only thing the FCC cares about these days -- money) into it, but unlike the bots each one of those form letters still indicates intent by the person who clicked the submit button.
So ignoring those is basically the equivalent of telling millions of people that their o
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is really that organizations like EFF and OpenMedia should not be providing form letters to send in the first place. They should give the person an address to send their remarks to, but absolutely *NONE* of the content of the email should be provided or else they are just setting up a situation where this kind of thing is going to happen.
I've seen this kind of thing happen before, where a federal organization accepts public comments on an issue, and a well-meaning person or organization tha
Re: (Score:2)
The problem is really that organizations like EFF and OpenMedia should not be providing form letters to send in the first place. They should give the person an address to send their remarks to, but absolutely *NONE* of the content of the email should be provided or else they are just setting up a situation where this kind of thing is going to happen.
I've seen this kind of thing happen before, where a federal organization accepts public comments on an issue, and a well-meaning person or organization that wants people to send letters about the matter decides to supply an example of what such a letter should look like. Laziness on the part of the end-user kicks in and everybody just copies and pastes the darn thing, maybe changing only about 10% of it, and causing the organization to ignore all of them.
So did the EFF and OpenMedia make an obvious rookie screw up, or were they following the existing standard whereby form letters were considered?
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
So did the EFF and OpenMedia make an obvious rookie screw up, or were they following the existing standard whereby form letters were considered?
It's an obvious rookie screw up, and I was outright mystified when the EFF directed me to where I could send one in via a helpful web app because it's a well-known one.
It's like they wandered in from some strange, strange alternate universe where form letters are considered and people really do get money from the Nigerian princes who randomly emailed them.
Re: (Score:3)
That's literally the f'ing point of the article! They data mined the responses, and determined that 1/3rd of them were a form letter, and a good chunk were opinion and not an actual defensible argument. I know we can't be bothered to even comprehend the summary, but come on!
I think you missed the point of my comment.
I'm not claiming they looked over the responses, determined that the vast majority didn't fit their criteria for consideration, and then threw them out.
I'm claiming they wanted to kill net neutrality, so they reviewed the responses with the aim of justifying that conclusion, and then chose to interpret and apply their standards in a way that would ignore the overwhelming public support for net neutrality shown in the comments.
FCC ignored your comment (Score:5, Insightful)
Fact is the vast majority of people oppose gov't regulation except when it's something they want regulated. But it doesn't work that way. You can't have a functioning government except when you don't. You can't have a gov't that looks out for your interests but not your neighbors (well, not unless you're very, very rich). Elections have consequences. Here's one right now.
Re: (Score:2)
Except in the case of NN, they aren't really regulating private industry. They're regulating public access to the internet. Just like they regulate what can be dumped into the public water supply for example. Sure the regulations negatively impact upstream businesses that now have to find other ways to dispose of their waste, but that's not the damned point.
The point is not regulating it leaves the system wide open for abuse by companies that don't give a shit whether you live or die as long as they get
You're splitting hairs (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I voted for Bernie since the DNC stole the nomination from him. However, I did it in a state that was a practical guaranteed win for Hillary (which she did). Had I been worried that she had any chance of losing the state, I would have voted for her. I don't think I deserve any blame for what we ended up with from that choice.
Did you vote for Bernie (Score:2, Informative)
Re: (Score:2)
My vote in the Democratic primary literally didn't matter, there was a thumb on the scale. Either way, Hillary was the DNC candidate for president, so certainly nobody "failing" to vote for her in the primary changed anything.
There were thumbs on the scale for Jeb too (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Yes, but my vote for Sanders in the PRIMARY didn't contribute to that in any way.
OTOH, had the DNC not thumbed the scale, Sanders probably could have brought out the vote in the general election.
The GOP may indeed have tried to thumb the scale for Jeb but it slipped apparently (and the results weren't close).
If you want to blame someone for Trump, blame Trump voters and the leaders of the DNC and GOP.
Re: There were thumbs on the scale for Jeb too (Score:2)
An establishment candidate will not win against a populist, and that is where the DNC blew it: Clinton versus Trump, no contest.
They got their populist, while we were denied ours.
Re: (Score:2)
You're missing it. Me voting for Hillary in the *P*R*I*M*A*R*Y* wouldn't have changed a thing. She did win that after all. My vote for Sanders didn't change anything, he didn't win.
My best hope is that the DNC has learned not to thumb the scale so next election when the GOP again offers up a rogue's gallery the Ds can pick someone who will win.
Re: (Score:2)
My best hope is that the DNC has learned not to thumb the scale so next election when the GOP again offers up a rogue's gallery the Ds can pick someone who will win.
You understand that the very reason the Democrats have "Super Delegates" [theweek.com] is explicitly to keep Democrat Voters from nominating anyone they like - the Republican primary process allowed for literally anyone to wander in, capture the hearts and minds of the common voter and "steal" the nomination from the party's preferred candidate. Remember, the GOP didn't want Trump as it's candidate, it was forced to accept it when Trump won the primaries.
The Democrats picked someone that should have won, but she choose t
Re: (Score:2)
I didn't say my vote never matters. The subject was who is to blame for the situation we have now. My vote was for not the current situation and it literally changed nothing (or we would have a very different situation now). That doesn't mean I won't vote again next time or that it will be equally ineffective.
Had the DNC wanted a candidate with momentum, they would have given him the nod or at least not the brick wall. It was actually so blatant that some of the delegates were escorted out and others held a
Re: FCC ignored your comment (Score:2)
Are you sure you are old enough to vote? Maybe you just do not understand voting in America.
In our system, one of the two major parties will win nearly every time, so you are wasting your vote when you vote for a third party.
Time to grow up and be practical.
They control the state legistatures (Score:2)
We're a two party system. And there are lots of folks in the other party who are basically Republicans with a 'D' next to their name (Dianne Feinstein, Joe Manchin & Chuck Schumer come to mind). So yeah, they control everything. They figured this shit out in the 60s when they started making Abortion & Gun Control into wedge issues to isolate the working class.
Re: (Score:2)
Before that the FTC had similar rules. Then the courts decided the FTC didn't have jurisdiction, the FCC did. The FCC then implemented net neutrality rules. There was a brief period in between when a lot of shenanigans, esp. by Verizon, were started.
Re: FCC ignored your comment (Score:2)
Why does the right always haul out the Tenth Amendment? It has no relevancy here.
Re: FCC ignored your comment (Score:2)
Sure. What if they charge less for Fox News because they own the website? Or, what if they slow down news sites in general to force customers into signing up for a cable bundle of several channels, all owned by their network, which is far more profitable than providing bandwidth?
Hold Music (Score:3)
Your call isn't important to the FCC, and they don't care if you know.
Title: FCC Ignored Your Net Neutrality Comment. (Score:5, Insightful)
The title should read:
"FCC Ignored Your Net Neutrality Comment."
The explanation is just a pretence. Remember how the FCC didn't want to investigate all those anti-net-neutrality robo-submissions? [consumerist.com]
There is simply no rational explanation other than malice under which robo-submissions with one point of view would be accepted while what appear to be genuine, but assisted, submissions with the opposite point of view would be ignored.
Dear FCC, this is your boss speaking.. (Score:2)
The people rally: "we want you to forbid the use of lead in paint in childrens toys, as thousands of children have died!"
The EPA: sorry, but you didn't use the correct legal verbiage.
or
The people rally: "we think its morally wrong that black people are only allowed to sit in the back of the bus".
The transport authority: sorry, you forgot to fill out the form in triplicate.
Making this about following procedure displays a willing tone deafness to the larger moral debate the
Restoring Internet Freedom (Score:2)
"Opinion" is the legal requirement. (Score:5, Insightful)
The fact that they now openly admit refusing to consider public "opinion" that is not legal argument is in fact a great legal argument to overturn their NN decision for not following legal requirement to consider public OPINION. Of course, they can re-run process and say they came to same conclusion while taking into account the public opinions, but at least that delays them by some years and messes them up.
They made you jump through so many hoops (Score:2)
Who has the time.
The FCC made it so difficult for me to comment.
I can see why lots of people had to resort to form letters and spam-like tactics.
It took me about 15 minutes of life just to wade through the obstacles thrown in front of me to voice my displeasure with this decision.
And I am not a lawyer so framing things in a legal jargon context is not really in my wheelhouse.
But I do have an opinion as do the many other millions who voiced their opinions and those are as valid as anything.
This is all just s
Re: (Score:2)
Seven and a half million people saying "ditto" just increases the workload and adds nothing to the argument.
But I do have an opinion as do the many other millions who voiced their opinions and those are as valid as anything.
Who cares what your opinion is, if you can't make a factual argument based on legal principles, don't waste your time.
This is like a town council meeting, and everyone in town wants to get up and read the editorial from the local newspaper into the record because it expresses their "opinion". How long must the council members sit there and listen to the same argument over and over again?
Nonsense (Score:2)
".... it still feels brazen hearing the commission staff repeatedly discount Americans' preference for consumer protections, simply because they aren't phrased in legal terms...."
You mean, they should have instead set up a whole website to let people submit opinions that they simply ignored, instead? (cf https://petitions.whitehouse.g... [whitehouse.gov])
Which is more disingenuous? Telling people you need to make a cogent POINT, and then they'll bother to read it? Or telling people they have a voice...but you actually ign
Say freakin' WHAT? (Score:3)
The FCC has been clear all year that it's focused on "quality" over "quantity" when it comes to comments on net neutrality.
That's like saying "We only count votes from quality people. The total of the vote doesn't matter."
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
That's like saying "We only count votes from quality people. The total of the vote doesn't matter."
No, it's not like that at all. It's like saying, "We are a federal regulatory agency making policy decisions, and when we hear new information we think about it, and when we hear the exact same thing said for the seven millionth time, it sheds no new light and isn't any more persuasive in legal or constitutional terms than it was the first time we heard those exact same words from the exact same form letter."
Re: (Score:2)
No, it's like saying we only count votes from people that can follow instructions and clearly punch the ballot, not dimple it or create a hanging chad.
It really is quite reasonable that the FCC reviews the comments and considers those that add something to the conversation, not treating all responses equally. I'm quite certain the majority of the non-unique comments were rambling, mis-informed statements of personal opinion which are, literally, meaningless to the discussion at hand.
Re: (Score:2)
This was a request for comments, not votes. This is pretty much exactly what I expected when I saw that I was being offered a form letter instead of a petition.
What you should be offended by is the fact that the people leading the efforts on letting the FCC know that a lot of people would prefer net neutrality chose to do it by having us all spam them. A petition or donations to help pay for sending in a very nice, very well-done legal argument in its favor would have been more effective. I was pretty mu
Fake? (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
A malformed email address is fake. An email address that bounces when an email is sent to it can be considered fake.
That 7.5 million "people" chose to send the same comment is really quite remarkable, that's one out of every three comment that added nothing to the discussion - it was 1 person expressing an idea, and seven and a half million other people said "Me Too."
The wording is confusing, it sounds like 45,000 fake email addresses sent 7.5 million identical comments:
The FCC received a record-breaking 22 million comments chiming in on the net neutrality debate, but from the sound of it, it's ignoring the vast majority of them. In a call with reporters yesterday discussing its plan to end net neutrality, a senior FCC official said that 7.5 million of those comments were the exact same letter, which was submitted using 45,000 fake email addresses.
quit trying (Score:2)
That is cheap. And count on the fact that they will push neutrality.
Im hoping that Google will jump back into fiber in cities, but use SX as a CO for them.
FCC is right (Score:4, Insightful)
Like it or not the FCC is *right* in requiring only legal (informed) comments over mass quantity of how many people feel about the issue. The fact that a lot of people have an opinion on a matter doesn't make them right or authorized to speak on the matter.
To put this is terms you may understand more...
Programmer: So you need a program to process these data items, correct?
Clueless CEO: Yes, and I know that it should take only about a week. It can't be that complicated.
Corporate seatwarmer: I agree. Definitely true.
Corporate yesman: CEO, you are brilliant.
And 7 other corporate suits, well, follow suit and agree with CEO.
Programmer: It will take 2 months to program, testing will take several weeks, training will last about a week. Maintenance will last about an additional month.
All: We voted on it programmer. You have a week to make it work perfectly.
Okay, here's a clear legal reason (Score:2)
Civil War is always an option for us!
Wow (Score:2)
The FCC received a record-breaking 22 million comments chiming in on the net neutrality debate [...] a senior FCC official said that 7.5 million of those comments were the exact same letter, which was submitted using 45,000 fake email addresses.
So 45,000 fake email addresses sent 7.5 million copies of the same letter, and the FCC didn't find that a convincing argument? I'm shocked!
One out of three comments were identical - that's quite an achievement from the "hashtag activisim" folks, a group best known for their "#BringBackOurGirls", but that isn't a convincing argument. Simple repetition renders the message meaningless.
Considering that the issue was the FCC was... (Score:2)
...overstepping its legal authority by issuing the "Net Neutrality" regulation, in direct contravention to its previously stated position, and the bill from Congress itself, no one who is not somewhat legally literate cannot offer a serious or useful opinion on it. If you think "Net Neutrality" is a good thing, you need to contact your US Representative and Senators, they're the ones that can make it happen. Zealous but clueless supporters of this regulation are barking up the completely wrong tree. And the
Re: No Surprise (Score:2)
I decline to create joinder with you.
Re: No Surprise (Score:2)
Honestly, where do you come up with this drivel? Article I. Article II. Article VI. The Thirteenth Amendment. Each of these contains rules the Federal government imposes on the states, and the American citizens within those states.
Re: (Score:2)
why? they do fuck all of nothing
Re: Republicans don't like democracy (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)