quote:

98.5% of Original FCC Comments Oppose Killing Net Neutrality
by Karl Bode
Thursday Aug 31 2017 08:30 EDT

Very few consumers support the FCC's plan to kill net neutrality protections, according to a new ISP-funded study. Ars Technica directs our attention to a new study by consulting firm Emprata. The study was funded by Broadband for America, a lobbying and policy group funded by the likes of CenturyLink, AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, most wireless carriers, and Charter (Spectrum).

Unfortunately for these companies, the study clearly doesn't show what these ISPs hoped it would.

An analysis of the 21.8 million comments made to the FCC so far found that 60% were against FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's plan to repeal the Title II classification and gut net neutrality, and 39% supported the repeal plan. But it should be noted that the industry and its allies have clearly been coordinating efforts to flood the comments with fake support for the plan via the use of a bot, something the FCC has turned a blind eye to.

But remove spam, these fake bot posts, and form letters and the numbers change substantially. How substantially? The survey found that 98.5% of all human, original comments made oppose the FCC's plan. It also found that while both sides of the debate have used form letters to galvanize public comment, the majority of the comments made in support of the plan to gut the rules were form letters.

Full article: 98.5% of Original FCC Comments Oppose Killing Net Neutrality

Mine was one of that 98.5% of "human, original comments made [in opposition to] the FCC's plan."

So only 1.5% of human, original commenters appreciate and fall on the correct side of the free market vs. federal regulation debate?

Seems fishy to me.

-Rob

quote:

Originally posted by BurtonRW:
So only 1.5% of human, original commenters appreciate and fall on the correct side of the free market vs. federal regulation debate?

Seems fishy to me.

-Rob

Not at all. Most in favor of a free market have jobs and lives. While writing an original letter in support would be nice, if a form letter supports your viewpoint, it is much quicker and easier to just click and send.

I have many more times sent such a form letter with a few minor additions or modifications than I have scrapped the form letter and written my own from scratch. Sometimes (though less often), I just send the form letter with no mods. What do you want to bet that starting with a form letter and making modifications gets your effort classified as a form letter?

quote:

Originally posted by BurtonRW:
So only 1.5% of human, original commenters appreciate and fall on the correct side of the free market vs. federal regulation debate?

The free market only works when there's competition. For the majority of the broadband market in the U.S.: There is none. I, for example, have only one broadband provider. And I don't live out in the sticks or in an urban armpit.

If that broadband provider should choose to throttle, say, NetFlix, a competitor to them in content delivery, then, without network neutrality they'd be quite free to do so. As they have in the past. Or say they decide they want to force me to use their VoIP services, rather than the one I choose. They could just plain block them, as another ISP was caught doing.

All network neutrality says is that if you're paying for bandwidth, you should be able to use it as you see fit, regardless of source, destination or content.

In this day and age, connectivity is as much a necessary utility as power and water.

And, as stated above, the free market only really exists when there is real competition.

The primary points behind net neutrality are correct and necessary.

quote:

Originally posted by BurtonRW:
So only 1.5% of human, original commenters appreciate and fall on the correct side of the free market vs. federal regulation debate?

Seems fishy to me.

-Rob

Yeah, after 'correcting' the results - shock and stunned amazement - they got the answer they wanted. I'm sure those who were against the plan didn't 'coordinate efforts' either. And it's nice how the 'corrected' results somehow get called 'original'.

Not sure what to think about this anymore. Certainly in favor of free markets, but now very worried about strong political leanings of big tech companies and their willingness to suppress opposing points of view.

quote:

Originally posted by joel9507:
Yeah, after 'correcting' the results - shock and stunned amazement - they got the answer they wanted. I'm sure those who were against the plan didn't 'coordinate efforts' either.

They did. A fact which is conceded in the article.

quote:

Originally posted by joel9507:
And it's nice how the 'corrected' results somehow get called 'original'.

It is explained in the article what is meant by "correction" and "original": They eliminated all letters that appeared to be form letters, both pro and con. The remainder were those with "original" (i.e.: unique) content.

One of the reasons they dug that out like that is it was proven the ISPs were using bots to submit some of the form letters. That was also discussed in the article. As well as the fact the FCC made no effort to eliminate submission by those bots.

Even with those underhanded efforts the most the ISPs were able to garner was 39% anti-net-neutrality support.

Do y'all realize the United States of America, The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, the richest nation in the world, a nation that likes to believe itself a "technology leader," is one of the worst for broadband deployment, with some of the highest costs, in the developed world?

This is from 2014. Not much has changed, since then, relatively speaking: 3 Charts About Internet Access That Will Make Americans Embarrassed

Oh yeah: Wireless has, in the last few years, gotten much better. Guess who led that change? T-Mobile. A German-owned company.

Unfortunately, maybe, I'm biased about this. I was working for the SW Bell Telephone Company, a subsiderary of the old AT&T when the government broke them up. There were a lot of these same arguments going on about the breakup.

The 'baby bells' as they were called, were eventually forced to accommodate Local Common Carriers who had really nothing but a marketing arm and a business plan. The LCCs ordered up service at a location serviced by the local bell company. The local Bell companies had to even provide these guys a 'connection area' at no charge when they had their own switch. In short not very free market as these guys were taking a shrinking business away from the baby bells.

If you've followed any of this, you'll know that SWBT eventually bought and now goes by AT&T, the other 'baby bells' have all died off.

Net neutrality is just, in my opinion, another version of the same forces at work. NetFlix may still be around in 15-20 years, but my guess is some of the guys who currently do most of the work getting the content to the consumer are going to get absorbed by others (read that as ATT-TimeWarner) until eventually the consumer will have fewer choices and even less control over costs.

The Federal government needs to quit trying to make things 'fair', they only screw whatever they touch up. Note healthcare. Net Neutrality will likely be the same. National riprocity will be another.

quote:

Originally posted by jbcummings:
The Federal government needs to quit trying to make things 'fair', they only screw whatever they touch up.

Unlike health care, again: All network neutrality says is that you get to use the bandwidth you pay for however you like. That's it. You want to use it for streaming? Fine. VoIP? Fine. Browsing web forums (note: irrespective of content)? Fine.

Don't believe me? How about the International Business Times' take on it? What Is Net Neutrality? What Does This Mean To You?

Do you understand that, without network neutrality ISPs will be free to make whatever rules they want with respect to how you use the internet connection for which you're paying them? How many of you have used a WiFi hotspot at at hospitals or other facilities and found yourself locked out of Sigforum? How would you feel if your ISP up and decided that allowing their customers to access gun-related content made them liable and so wanted to add a "dangerous content access fee" to your monthly tab? (Far-fetched? Perhaps. Then again: Given some of the things we've seen corporations with a leftist bent do, is it really completely out-of-the-question?)

Or how about if they came up with some "technical" reason as to why allowing their customers to access the VoIP provider of their choice was "detrimental to the network" and blocked them? That was the old AT&T's reasoning behind disallowing "foreign attachments" to their network. Many nouveau conservatives and libertarians who like to point to the breakup of AT&T as government run amok weren't around when the only things you could attach to your phone line was equipment AT&T would lease to you.

The ISPs would kill to get that kind of control.

Btw: About that "foreign device attachment being a threat to the network" thing. I used to work for a distributor for a company called "Ford Industries." They made a line of telephone peripherals under the brand name Code-A-Phone. When we wanted to put a Code-A-Phone device on a customer's line the customer would have to lease from Ma Bell an interface device. AT&T leased the exact same equipment we sold, only with the AT&T logo on it and in slightly different colours, to customers without the need for that "protective" device.

quote:

Originally posted by jbcummings:
The Federal government needs to quit trying to make things 'fair', they only screw whatever they touch up. Note healthcare. Net Neutrality will likely be the same. National riprocity will be another.

So by your logic we should just do away with the FCC. If I want to put up a tower and broadcast whatever I want on whatever frequency I want I should be able to do it because it is a free market. If AT&T or Verizon doesn't like it then they can pay me to stop.

Either you are free marketier, or your not.

Fake News.

quote:

Originally posted by sjtill:
Not sure what to think about this anymore. Certainly in favor of free markets, but now very worried about strong political leanings of big tech companies and their willingness to suppress opposing points of view.

exactly my thought as well - I see it less federal oversight and management and more federal telling the providers what they can and can't do for the fee they're charging

Don't we have an ongoing thread on this subject already?

https://sigforum.com/eve/forums...0601935/m/4690035334

quote:

Originally posted by BurtonRW:
So only 1.5% of human, original commenters appreciate and fall on the correct side of the free market vs. federal regulation debate?

Seems fishy to me.

-Rob

Yep. And the rejoinder is always 'there is no competition!' Why is there no competition?

Government regulation.

One fascinating reason cable companies won’t willingly compete against each other

So the proposed solution to government regulations squashing competition is more government regulation.

No thanks.

free Markets don’t exist when there are monopolies. The government past and present has allowed the ISP big boys to become monopolies and if NN is repealed I fully expect that to get worse under this administration. If I had 3 broadband providers in my area I would say “ok there’s room for the market to dictate the interment as a commodity.” But there’s only one game in town here that is actual broadband. So sorry I’m not gonna side with Spectrum on this one where they can decide to fuck me more than they already are. My broadband internet is $100 a month because I decided not to go their their phone or cable plan. I don’t want to think about what my bill will be when they decide that my streaming TV isn’t a “priority.” These cockbag ISP will use the repeal of NN to force cord cutters back to their TV services. Remember when cellphone plans included minutes and a certain amount of text messages per month? Well I sure broadband will include all the email you want but only a few minutes of Netflix and Hulu per month. Same shit different plate.

quote:

Originally posted by smschulz:
Fake News.

Calling it "fake news" does not make it fake news. I'm surprised. I would have thought you'd have known better than that.

quote:

Originally posted by HRK:
Don't we have an ongoing thread on this subject already?

https://sigforum.com/eve/forums...0601935/m/4690035334

This is actually an older thread I referenced in the newer thread, rather than repeat what's in it. Somebody saw fit to revive it.

I imagine one of the two will now get locked.

I don't know much about the details and suspect there is an enormous amount of deception on all sides.

However, history has shown governments are universally more oppressive than corporations.

Who ran those comments - the pollsters for Hillary?

quote:

Originally posted by ensigmatic:

quote:

Originally posted by BurtonRW:
So only 1.5% of human, original commenters appreciate and fall on the correct side of the free market vs. federal regulation debate?

The free market only works when there's competition. For the majority of the broadband market in the U.S.: There is none. I, for example, have only one broadband provider. And I don't live out in the sticks or in an urban armpit.

If that broadband provider should choose to throttle, say, NetFlix, a competitor to them in content delivery, then, without network neutrality they'd be quite free to do so. As they have in the past. Or say they decide they want to force me to use their VoIP services, rather than the one I choose. They could just plain block them, as another ISP was caught doing.

All network neutrality says is that if you're paying for bandwidth, you should be able to use it as you see fit, regardless of source, destination or content.

Where's the competition now?

quote:

Originally posted by ensigmatic:
Do y'all realize the United States of America, The Land of the Free and the Home of the Brave, the richest nation in the world, a nation that likes to believe itself a "technology leader," is one of the worst for broadband deployment, with some of the highest costs, in the developed world?

You don't say? Again, where is the new competition? 2 years is plenty of time for new companies to emerge offering those of us in rural areas the same high speed internet available to major cities like NY, Chicago, Phoenix and others, right? I am a citizen of this country too, I need to have access too. Where is my 100+ mps internet? So much for NN helping me!

quote:

Originally posted by ensigmatic:
Unlike health care, again: All network neutrality says is that you get to use the bandwidth you pay for however you like. That's it. You want to use it for streaming? Fine. VoIP? Fine. Browsing web forums (note: irrespective of content)? Fine.

For now maybe. That pandora's box is now open. How many times have we seen something start off with good intentions, only to be used to rope the citizenry into some bogus feel good safety net, or to be used directly against them? More often than not in the past 25 years. Several instances have been cited already, but you fail to believe us!


Somethings not answered by your posts back to me in the other thread (I read all of your links and understand them fully): How many jobs are being created to look for violations, ensure compliance, and other such nonsense?