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Comcast Gets Hard Up At FCC Meeting
alphadogg notes a story over at portfolio.com claiming, and presenting evidence, that Comcast paid people off the street to take up room at yesterday's FCC hearing in Massachusetts. Comcast acknowledges that it paid people to hold places in line for its employees. But Save The Internet claims that people were bussed in by Comcast and then took up almost all available seats in the meeting room 90 minutes before the meeting opened, blocking scores of interested people from attending. Such tactics are not unheard of in Washington DC, but how appropriate are they in a regional meeting on a college campus?
What I want to know is how much one could get per hour as a professional "warm butt"--and what sort of requirements for participation there may or may not be. Are you contractually obligated to applaud, shout, and carry on? Or can you just sit and read a book?
In Xanadu did Kubla Khan
A stately pleasure dome decree
It was touching when Bill the Wino, whom Comcast had been promised a fifth of vodka to fill a seat, entered a rare moment of lucidity and shouted, "I will not sell my soul for liquor anymore, net neutrality for all!"
Looks like the crack R&D team at Comcast has branched out and found a way to manage congestion at FCC filings too.
A black hole is where God divided by 0
With the rising unemployment in the US, Comcast could come to the rescue! Why don't they employ all the unemployed to 'reserve' spaces for their employees? What did they really hope to achieve with this blatant show of trickery?
Yes, but you make the erroneous assumption that D.C. lobbyists are as mature as 1st graders...
"Every great cause begins as a movement, becomes a business, and eventually degenerates into a racket." -- Eric Hoffer
Yes, drive their stock up! That'll teach 'em.
I for one welcome our conference-room-encroaching net-neutrality-astroturfing chair-sleeping overlords.
Just a good thing Ballmer wasn't there, they wouldn't have been any chairs for THEM to sit on!
It's true no man is an island, but if you take a bunch of dead guys and tie 'em together, they make a good raft.
A free society doesn't depend on ethics, it depends on incentives and disincentives for certain behaviors. Predation is punished to preserve freedom.
In any case, as an amoral, agnostic nihilist, I just wanted to chime in and confirm your suspicions.
This is all part of Comcast's new Public Hearing Shaping technology.
People who say "sheeple" have about as much sophistication as an AOL user, and in fact are probably actually AOL users.