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AT&T Suggests To 300K Employees To Lobby the FCC
Several readers sent in the news that AT&T's top lobbyist sent a letter to all 300,000 employees urging them to give feedback to the FCC as it gears up for rulemaking on net neutrality. He even supplied talking points approved by the PR department. The lobbyist, Jim Cicconi, suggested that employees use their personal email accounts when they weigh in with the FCC. Pro-net-neutrality group Free Press has now likened Cicconi's letter to astroturfing: "Coming from one of the company’s most senior executives, it’s hard to imagine AT&T employees thinking the memo was merely a suggestion."
This is getting blown way out of proportion and has a simple explanation:
You also have to BCC your immediate manager to remain employed.
My work here is dung.
What's the big deal? I also work in a regulated industry and recently our CEO sent out a memo suggesting employees write their Congressman about a proposed law that could seriously hurt our business. It doesn't matter where the urging comes from since it's not like the CEO can tell that you've followed his suggestion or not.
AT&T urged its employees to post on the FCC's net neutrality website. You can do the same, you have until Thursday to post.
http://openinternet.gov/
But my wife received a letter from her Employer asking her to lobby her congress/senate folks on behalf of the health care debate. She didn't feel comfortable doing it at all and told her boss so. What you do at your home should be purely divorced from your work. I'm sure there are some places where this doesn't hold, but I think most office drone jobs don't apply. I think it's pure bullshit and someone should call their sorry asses on the carpet for it. I'll vote or lobby whoever the fuck I want and however I see fit.
Hold up, wait a minute, let me put some pimpin in it
...but supposing all the employees actually respond, what do you think the FCC is going to make of several hundred thousand email from a single domain owned by a company with vested interests in the process? If they can't spot such blatant astroturfing, I'd be amazed.
HA! I just wasted some of your bandwidth with a frivolous sig!
Spoke the sheep.
Actually, subtract 1.2 million because the American family averages 4 people and you know that every AT&T employee will have their spouse and 2 kids lobby. And, if you include the bogus ones that are named for the dog, well, the numbers just keep growing.
Let's just put it this way, every letter against Net Neutrality is bogus because of this.
It's NOT me! It's the meds! I'm on 1000mg of Fukitol.
Some of us would like to preserve the illusion that our government isn't totally at the beck and call of corporate interests. This sort of astroturfing is exactly what makes people cynical, when individual citizens are roped in to parroting the lines of the place they work for.
Perhaps they won't check to see if you have done their bidding, but what if they did? What if it turns out that was a job requirement buried somewhere in that huge contract you signed when you started your job?
The current lobbying system is bad enough, we don't need to make it even worse by blurring the line between the opinions of individuals and that of corporations.
Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the Law
If you don't like it, see figure 1!!!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
Coming from one of the company's most senior executives, it's hard to imagine AT&T employees thinking the memo was merely a suggestion.
When I've worked for large companies, the further up the chain the less likely I'd be to care whatsoever what it said. That makes this even less of a suggestion, and more like a wish, that anyone may or may not fulfill (or in fact even read as this sounds like a message I would have just skipped over). It's not like a "high level exec" is going to come by the office next Monday and ask how the letter to the FCC is coming!
I don't see anything wrong with a "high level exec" or anyone else saying that if you care about the issue, contact your congressman. Who are YOU to say that all employees agree with what he wants them to say? Meanwhile he has pointed out to them just who to talk to, one way or the other.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
It doesn't matter where the urging comes from since it's not like the CEO can tell that you've followed his suggestion or not.
In many circumstances where the government asks people to comment (e.g. changes to SEC rules), all comments, along with names are made public.
So yes, they probably can tell.
I'm a Verizon employee and received an email sent to basically all different sub-companies and departments about this. They even created a theme site about it, how to take action in different ways...
Will be trying to switch job soon.
Oh noez, the koreprits are taking over everybody!!1
Businesses used to hire speakers to conduct speaking tours and preach the pro-business gospel to employees. The US once promoted one such speaker to President. This was back when the US still had an industrial base so this is probably news to our younger readers.
The fact is that business has, over time, become less presumptuous with regard to directly influencing the political thinking of its captive audience. There is nothing 'new' about this facet of 'worldorder' and claiming such is certain ignorance.
In any case this is all perfectly legal despite whatever knee-jerk anti-business reaction you've been trained to have.
This is the only sort of lobbying that should be allowed
(imnsho)
A.
...bringing you cynical quips since 1998
We need to do the last mile our selves. The FCC needs to do there job and give people the right to put our wireless router on the roof and forward local traffic. Until then its communications by the monopoly for the monopoly. We can not get a competition between ISPs until the last mile can be done without total control between 1 or 3 super providers.
After that, perhaps a work program can be set up to run backbone lines as a way to make jobs for people out of work. It's all about creating the infrastructure.
In fact, it was only a few days ago that Dilbert's company suggested the same thing.
See? Same old same old.....
Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati
-Possum Lodge Motto
This seems to be getting more and more creative...
Let AT&T censor their Internet, and we can all switch to the un-filtered Public Option. Hell, it would be way cheaper than Health Care.
now the FCC can just set a spam filter to trash ever email with the keyword "net neutrality" and go forward in implementing legislation enforcing net neutrality for all common carriers and anyone that breaks net neutrality will be find double and lose common carrier status.
Politics is Treachery, Religion is Brainwashing
When I worked at UPS we were instructed to write letters to representatives. The supervisors recited, we wrote and signed. I knew then it was skirting legality, but I was 19 at the time and didn't put up much of a fight. Fast forward ten years and I was asked to do the same thing for another company in the pharm business. That time I laughed.
Memo: Add memo from Jim to existing and new employment contract.
I meant to indicate that what you said about the beliefs they had were sometimes true, but never accurate on the part of the high-level-exec believing them! Sorry for any bother..
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
How is this any different than, say, the Sierra Club or the FSF urging their members / followers to lobby their politicos on a particular point of view? It's OK for "us" but not for "them"?
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
trouble if they do this. management telling employees what to do regarding political matters is risky. Ass soon as a few employees claim to feel pressured, their will be a lawsuit.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
Becasue when management starts applying pressure for you to be a team player people will write the email, and possible CC it to their boss.
That all sounds very frightening!!!
Until you click on the link and realize it's just a web form (the email is just to say who you are, though I didn't see the form required it). Plus they asked you to post from home, remember? So they can't even track access to the form or your email.
Honestly, how many people would even read the email much less be such a tool as to CC their immediate supervisor? That's an instant Brownnose Badge, I would say.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
From the FCC comments, this was too good not to repost here - credit to Len Grace, apparently with Cable Digital News:
The Federal Communications Commission recently led discussions on proposed Net Neutrality Rules including, broadband speeds to be adopted for those companies using federal dollars to upgrade their networks. This comes at the same time the FCC is proposing to provide the underpinnings of a governmental mandate to; serve the underserved.
This is yet another dangerous road the FCC is attempting to navigate from a top-down regulatory standpoint, and could simply derail the original efforts to have success in the broadband investment philosophy it generated.
Here are the perilous implications:
Mandating ISP speeds on the front end of legislation could impede private investment from taking on the challenges of serving sparsely populated or lower demographic areas
Creating an open and share all approach for content access will again scare off potential investors who will be suspect of reaching respectable returns on their money
The burgeoning internet advertising market will be hampered, or even stopped, from investing in the very sector the FCC is attempting to help grow and prosper
These are the important issues related to recent discussions on Net Neutrality to be addressed, but need to be considered while proposing to regulate an industry on the verge of creating just the applications and services that consumers want with internet connections. My message to the FCC is; do not blow the very opportunity to let private investment create the infrastructure, content and applications which you have incented them to accomplish, by over regulating those companies into inaction.
It continues to be evident that the best incentive would be to take a hands-off approach to regulation while providing the capital incentive for the networks to build out their infrastructures. What scares Wall Street more than anything is the prospect of heavy regulation that will stifle investment opportunities. This has a negative effect on company stocks, shareholders, and the willingness of private investment to flourish, and in essence, get the job done.
The FCC should be promoting a healthy investment and competition environment rather than a heavy-handed regulatory approach for the future of Internet access. This would create the (win-win) situation the government agency is looking for, whether it realizes the implications, or not.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Your link won't load.
the front page loads but this specific link does not.
I'm tempted to jump to the conclusion of major ISP blockage, but I just tried from a dutch proxy and it appears the page really is totally hosed.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
The Sierra Club and FSF are voluntary associations of people whose whole bases for association is a common ideology: members of those organizations pay the leaders of those organizations specifically to help them acheive particular shared ideological aims. So, advice from those leaders on steps the members can take to make the money that they pay to acheive those ends be more effective is consistent with the job those members are paying the professional staff of the organization to do. And the members of the Sierra Club and FSF aren't dependent on those organizations, generally, for their livelihood.
AT&T employees aren't, as a general rule, voluntarily paying AT&T management to help them defeat net neutrality, and are, OTOH, dependent on AT&T for their jobs, so the circumstances aren't even remotely parallel.
"Coming from one of the company’s most senior executives, it’s hard to imagine AT&T employees thinking the memo was merely a suggestion."
We get periodic emails along similar lines, couched as suggestions, in the large bank in which I am a cog. Know what happens? The vast majority of our 10s of thousands of employees just ignore them. They often get lost in the daily email noise. I suspect that the people at AT&T are no different. And surprise! no repercussions, because they /are/ just suggestions.
I don't like this in any way (it also irritates me when they do it at work), but to imply that people are somehow being coerced into actually doing as stated in the email it is its own kind of aggravating. Try to give us drones some credit, eh?
Now pardon me, I've got to go -- I almost forgot to write out my monthly check to our PAC!
So, how big is your check from AT&T, douchebag? Or are you just a generic Randroid?
You probably think FDA regulations are bad too, since "customers can just slap [vendors] down". Well, except for the dead ones.
they may as well lobby, they sure aren't working hard to extend coverage.
What scares Wall Street more than anything is the prospect of heavy regulation that will stifle investment opportunities.
You're right. Wall Street is going to have to choose between investment opportunities at AT&T and investment opportunities in content-producing corporations. Given the utter inability of the majority of Wall Street to think beyond next quarter's earning reports, I have full faith that they will choose to invest in AT&T, and once the steams, youtubes and itunes of the world close down and nobody bothers to pay for broadband anymore because there's nothing to download on it, these investors will be screaming and crying at the government for my tax money.
It used to be that establishing barriers to entry required either natural law or the participation of the government. The FCC should be promoting a healthy competition environment, but the only thing that would get the regulators assassinated faster than network neutrality regulations would be invalidating local franchise contracts and actually doing something about the monopolies.
Even with all of that, it's going to take more than some "healthy investment" to rout AT&T. It's going to take several waves of suicidal nutcases investing billions of dollars in "alternate" internet infrastructure, each round wearing down AT&T's monopoly war chest until AT&T can no longer deny the competition.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
"What you do at your home should be purely divorced from your work."
You spend 40 hours a week at work, and the money you make a work provides for all your material needs at home. I don't see how the two could possibly be divorced. I'm not sure why that would be a desirable situation in any case. You shouldn't invest a lot of time in a company like AT&T if you feel that their economic and political goals are in disagreement with what you think is right.
So if "high level exec" can send such an email to 300k employees, then a low level grunt ought to be able to do the same, with a possibly dissenting point of view and talking points.
That's not very bright. I see why you posted AC.
The exec has more ownership over the company than you, and decides how to expend company resources (like emails).
He's allowed to express his opinions using those resources, if he wants. Who cares? If he puts people off a lot of people could be compelled to act against his wishes, just out of spite.
That's the tradeoff with a lot of power comes... not so much responsibility, as the potential to anger a lot of people very quickly and screw yourself.
His choice if he goes down that road. Be thankful at times you are just a peon without the ability to actually act on your impulse of mass communication to show any lack of intelligence. Oh wait, here you are on Slashdot...
P.S. - for the causal reader, posting A.C. is an invitation to be abused, I merely take him up on his offer (and yes, obviously it is a he).
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Tall about your Freudian slip!
Beware of the Leopard.
I've witnessed some slimy handiwork at AT&T with regard to H-1B abuse.
Table-ized A.I.
Anytime a major ISP has tried something fishy they have been slapped down hard by customers.
Sort of like when Apple tied the iPhone to the ATT network. Oh man the shit storm that erupted from customer sent them packing...
Sort of like when Charter started imposing bandwidth caps on customers who had their advertised "unlimited" internet access. Yup, turned that one right around.
Sort of like when *any* cellular network charged for both incoming and outgoing SMS packets. Good thing that uproar ended that practice.
Sort of like when ISPs started redirecting failed DNS website queries to their own ad-laden search pages. God I never thought that would stop!
What you describe is how it *should* work, and believe me we would all love if it did. Unfortunately that's not how the real world always works. Fact of the matter is there just isn't enough competition in ISPs for customers to really vote with their wallets. If customers can't vote with their wallets, companies don't have consequences for their actions. ATT does something you don't like... are you going to go to another DSL provider? That still uses ATT pipes? Internet backbones are still a natural monopoly in their respective regions and I don't expect some new technology will come around to change that. As much as we hate giving the government more power here, I would rather see some decisions made by a group who is at least remotely answerable to me versus a company that is only answerable to its shareholders.
+1 Disagree
We already have cable television. It's awful. If you think that ESPN360 is really the next stage in innovation on the internet, you seriously misunderstand what makes the internet special.
The framework contains "Reasonable Network Management" language. It's more than I would compromise, and more than these companies deserve, but it's there.
Your talking points basically amount to a threat: If backbones and ISPs are not allowed to alter or degrade traffic based on their business relationship with those hosting content (or even, perhaps, the authors of the OS or the manufacturer of the hardware), they'll quit building infrastructure, allegedly because "Wall Street" wishes it so.
Weak sauce. Was that really "too good not to repost"? Unimpressed.
[A union] can just beat you when you leave work for the day
Have you ever worked for a union? I have and I don't recall getting beaten for disagreeing with the representative we elected. Did you have a different experience?
Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.
The free and open part of it is the best thing going. Please do not screw it up with regulations like the net neutrality proposal.
People have no clue what net neutrality is, and just assume it's government regulation that will make things worse. Hopefully some influential people on our side reads those comments and understands what these people really mean. Otherwise the overwhelming majority of responses are against net neutrality, which is not the kind of backing we want the big corps to have.
My webcomic
Because people have posted a bunch of fear-laden scenarios about what might happen, but have not actually come to pass?
What, like blocking users who download too much then refusing to admit it even after tools are produced to show that Comcast was generating spoofed RST packets? Oh no, that would never come to pass.
Anytime a major ISP has tried something fishy they have been slapped down hard by customers.
Last I heard, Sandvine is doing pretty good... oh wait, the people whose applications stop working aren't Sandvine's customers.
The reason this is going to happen is the same reason that health reform is happening: no matter how much FUD the opponents throw out there, their FUD can't hold a candle to the reality of how it is now. "Oh no, nobody will invest in teh terabitz intarwebs!" but hey, at least Comcast won't be able to block me from using Lotus Notes.
Sure, there are good reasons not to change the regulation on either, but the industries are trying their damnedest to make sure that everyone knows the reasons why we should. You'd think that with health care reform breathing down their necks, insurers would take a timeout on refusing coverage due to unrelated issues, but no, as far as I can tell, they're fanning the flames to ensure that they'll have the hottest funeral pyres around.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
I'd rather have an accountable but incompetent bureaucracy (government) regulate the industry than have an unaccountable greed-driven bureaucracy (corporation) self-regulate.
In my twenty-something years as an employee I have never seen this sort of corporate "suggestion". I'm in Australia. I mainly worked for Australian companies, but have worked in a subsidiary of a very large US company. I see a few concrete examples in the replies so far, but they all seem to be US residents. Does this crap happen outside of the US?
Patent litigation: A doctrine of Mutually Assured Destruction... in which everyone seems willing to push the button
Continuing with more evidence that all this and more has "come to pass":
Vonage and other VoIP providers had more than one ISP prevent customers from receiving the services they were paying for until the government stepped in.
BT replacing charities' web advertisements with their own. Charities! Why don't they just eat warm puppies fresh from the oven while they're at it? The least they could have done was replace those "punch the monkey" ads or seizure inducing "you've won!" ads.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
back in 04 we were sent letters telling us that if Bush was not elected, our business would go bankrupt.
I work for an ISP.
The general meme I have seen most places is that "Net Neutrality" is the only way to go. However, I have to ask, if your ISP promises to treat all data streams equally, how are services that need guaranteed low latency going to work?
For most internet activities, such as watching youtube videos, downloading or uploading large files, and viewing web pages, a second or two of latency is no big deal. The ISP can give you bandwidth when it has it to spare.
However, for things like online gaming, Video and audio chat, and ESPECIALLY for cloud gaming services, latency is CRITICAL. The ISP needs to allocate the highest priority to transmitting these packets without any delay. Even if it has to push back or pause requests from other applications. No, a bigger pipe is not the answer : bandwidth will always be a scarce commodity, and your ISP needs to be able to make sure that certain services always have enough.
You'd have to run a client on your machine or something to specify or sign a particular packet stream as needing low latency communications. The ISP would either meter your total "low latency" bandwidth for a month or limit how much bandwidth/second it could use up.
Doing it this way might not be network neutral, but it's THE way to make services like cloud gaming and video chat work smoothly and without problems.
+5 insightful.
Support SETI@home
I really AM a Verizon employee and they did no such thing.
More at&t FUD.
I work for AT&T and this is the first I've heard of this letter. And I'm one of those geeks that actually hangs out on the company's HR intranet site a few times a week. No one I work with has heard of this thing, and none of us really care about net neutrality in general. Personally, I've seen reasonable arguments on both sides of the divide and don't really have an opinion on the matter strong enough to share. But to state that my employer is "urging" me and all of my coworkers to vote a certain way is preposterous.
God invented whiskey so the Irish would not rule the world.
As one of the people who actually got this email, I can say with certainty that it was a suggestion. The internal communication pointed out that regulation impacts our jobs and suggested it would be good for the company to agree ... everyone at AT&T is well aware that no one's job is in any way impacted no matter what they do with the suggestion. Obviously if someone is looking to move up in the company they'll support the message, but that isn't a statement on net neutrality, thats business.
Personally, I ignored the email but talked to my coworkers about it (we're a network design group so this is spot on with what we do) and that includes management ... this is a non topic. Companies get successful because they do whats in their best interests ... if you don't like what they do, don't use their products.
I do. I recall tainted food at work being thrown out. I recall my dad coming home with his car vandalized, even though the parking lot had extreme security. Try crossing a picket line. THAT is disagreeing with the union. But it does, however agree with feeding your family. You don't cross a picket line. You don't try to raise up votes against what the union LEADERS want. Unions are pretty akin to the working socialism of Russia past, as I recall it. The "elected" make the decisions via suggesting how to vote, as a group. Teamsters et al don't work and lead, they simply leech a small contribution from every member for their magnificent insight and "protection" from those nasty employers.
Unions also allow anyone with seniority to do a great deal less than those around them without consequence. Disagreeing with your union steward on some random talking point won't get your family killed. Gathering steam in a campaign to remove the union, or go against its will might.
For an interesting fact-hunt, look up some articles on unions and their illegal doings.
No, I'm Spartacus!
I support the Slashcott and will not be reading or commenting from 2/10/14 to 2/17/14. Beta is steaming pile of dog shit
I'm posting anonymously here - if you want me to give you AT&T's official corporate opinion, I can point you to the PR department or the web site, and I'm not wearing a suit and tie and wielding a +3 Impressive Title right now. This is strictly my personal opinions, which only agree with the company's opinions when the company's right.
Our managers aren't tracking whether we've sent in our letters to the FCC. It's not even like the level of pressure we used to get for contributing to The United Way back in the day. And they really really don't want 300,000 people sending in opinions that claim to be AT&T's; they've had enough trouble with Ed Whitacre making that speech a few years ago about Google hogging the tubes that kick-started this mess.
Whether we get to remain employed is another matter entirely - Moore's Law means that equipment becomes more and more powerful, and can do more work with less management than ever, and while the telecom industry may not be diving over the cliff as aggressively as we were back in 2002 (between the Internet bust and the 9/11-caused decline in travel and therefore in 800-number call-center calling, which was a high-value cash cow) we're still pretty much used to annual layoffs.
Sure, sure, everyone thinks AT&T is _evil_. Fine. More anger because it cannot be proven. But do they not have rights to loyal employees? Or do two wrongs make a right?
People who work at AT&T should broadly agree with the company lest they help something they deplore. If they are "just there for the money", then they've sold out and they cannot claim their free opinion is worth much. Of course, those whine the loudest.
The union that "represents" my co-workers and myself make human sacrifices of those who speak less than favorably of them, many of my co-workers have been killed. I am also forced to spend 60% of my income directly to funding abortions.
Now what was that about the AT&T? I forgot.
So can someone point to a real problem that has actually occurred that "Net Neutrality" would fix?
Saying that crossing a picket line is disagreeing with the union is like saying that Timothy McWeigh bombing the Alfred P. Murrah building was "disagreeing with the government" in the sense that it went beyond "I disagree with you" (and perhaps elaborating on your point) and into the realm of going against them in actual physical action.
While I don't condone vandalism and threats I can understand why people would be pissed at your father if he was a both a union member and a scab. In fact, in quite a few countries the use of scabs to subvert legal strikes is illegal.
/Mikael
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
AT&T officers and directors should be arrested on criminal charges and it should all be broadcast on National TV (like Bernie Madoff) to make a very clear example of such illegal behavior will NOT BE TOLERATED.
Just a week ago: http://www.dilbert.com/fast/2009-10-13/
I see. That was the easy part to address. The hard part is when you and several others become vocal about an issue, instead of rolling over like sheep. Did you miss that part? If you yourself are vocal, you simply will be quietly black balled, and slowy ( or quickly) shown the door via normal means, like something illegal being placed in your locker, or a time clock "malfunction" that gets you fired, but is mysteriously corrected later. It's been quite a few years ago, but part of the reason youwon't hear about these things is that passing of time, and the full grown power of these organizations.
Just trouble your SELF to look up United Way scandals, and some other charities, and some unions. The United Way has been busted in several ways, yet people still donate heavily via.... the workplace. Unions get involved in major scandals, yet there is no replacement of the union with some new form, just a reshuffle of officers.
When workers had no rights given, and were flat abused, several got together en masse, and brought about change. Then came greed. UPS workers, part-timers pay out about 10% of their net earnings to union dues. The union hasn't done anything in over 10 years except lose some of the part timer's benefits to attrition. The base pay has not went up over 10 percent in 15 years. The job requirements have.
I can only speak to what I know, and I am not going to do your searches for you. I'm way too lazy for that.
Just so that you know:
"Scabs" just might be people with the wisdom to see that Appliance Park Ky, would go from over 30,000 factory workers, it's own zip code and post office, miles of parking lot, etc, to a wasted zip code, empty lot, and 3,000 workers, if the union didn't give reason to not send jobs to Mexico, India, and China.
What good are great benefits, if the job moves 4,000 miles away?
Scabs are such idiots. Why would you want to work a lifetime at 18 bucks an hour, and have retirement, when you can work for 28 until the plant closes? I mean, we don't have unemployment problems for over paid low skill workers in the U.S., right?
Just so you know, union dues get collection from Ford and Kroger workers just the same. When people go from 28 to 8 an hour, their union reps won't be feeling quite that pinch.
Fortunately, we have a system that combines incompetent government bureaucracy with the unaccountability of a corporation.
"Ask not what your country can do for you." --John F. Kennedy
Every major company has a Political Action Committee, or PAC and does things like this. A few times a year I receive emails and videos from the President/CEO about their standpoint on political issues. The last one we received had to do with potential changes in the way international earnings were reported for tax reasons. Most people just laugh them off or ignore them.
in quite a few countries the use of scabs to subvert legal strikes is illegal.
/Mikael
And you don't see a problem with that? You don't like the contract I offer you, so I offer it to someone else. I'll agree that you have a right to stand up and tell everyone that I'm a cruel, heartless prick, but why should you have a right to forbid me to make a contract with someone else?
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
On-topic I can’t say it is right for any company to tell others what side to take on political issues no matter what side it’s is. I have a theory: If one wants to implement a communist/socialist structure within America, one would agree that due to the existence of the Constitution and Bill of Rights, this would be a very difficult task to achieve. Kind of like trying to run Windows XP on SPARC hardware (the software cannot function on the hardware). So, if one cannot change the hardware, one can chose to run an emulator or virtualization layer. In this case I believe it is capitalism, aka business. For example, government cannot infringe on your rights, to smoke a cigarette let’s say. But a company can because your employment is mutual which “volunteers” you for anything the company wants. Therefore, a communist regime need not change this country’s fundamental laws in order to implement dictatorial control of the masses, they only need to control the corporations. Is it just me or does GE bother anyone else?? The sad irony here is that communism can use its nemesis “capitalism” against itself like a parasite uses its host.
I know *most* slashdot'ers are a mixture of young IT professional's and students alike, and the vast majority being tilted to the liberal side - and there's nothing wrong with that. The danger (and this is historically substantiated) is that the ambitious youth as a whole are vulnerable to communist ideals. Granted, like capitalism communism has it's good and bad parts. The difference is that capitalism incorporates both good and bad at the same time (check and balance) while communism starts out with good intent like "Net Neutrality", but then evolves into something nefarious. "Net Neutrality", oh sounds so fair doesn't it? I think communists like to use oxymoron’s for naming things. Like "Free Press" founder Robert McChesney is a Marxist. Sad that many of you have bought into the "business is evil" and "capitalism is evil", there has to be a villain etc... and are being fooled into doing the ground work for true communists. The sad part is by the time you all "figure it out" it'll be too late. I used to think the Germans were soooo stupid for falling for the Nazi’s and Hitler. But knowing history, it was mainly the youth and the big unions that gave power to that movement. You all forget that those German unions and students all were fighting for the same stuff you all are fighting for today: social justice, equality, freedom from big business, better jobs, unifying the country (Nationalism), environmental concerns, community service, etc... Any of this sounds familiar? I'm not saying give up on those core beliefs - after all they are the overall "good", just be careful what/whom you vote for, and recognize the hidden agendas. Ironically with all the slams I see on here about "big business" being bad for the little guy, you same individuals see nothing wrong with "big government"?? A word to the wise; governments can change and this one does a lot!
I never would have thought in today’s time aka 2009 we'd be dealing with a real Communist threat within our country. I would have never thought some of you right here right now are communists - some out spoken about it - others being stealthy and hiding under the "liberal" and "progressive" labels. I know there are modern-day communists reading this right now (of course - if this post didn't get "moderated"), and I just want to ask “historically speaking... do you honestly think this is the best model of governing for the human race??”
I’m tired about all these “pro” democracy points of view. News flash – the USA is a “Republic”. Do you think our fore-fathers played rock-paper-scissors to come up with that? Or doing think they saw a fundamental flaw in a true Democracy frame of government? Capitalism is predicated on the individual, while communism is predicated on the collective. The most important diffe
I can see potential problems with these laws but generally they serve a good purpose in that they force employers to actually negotiate with unions instead of hiring a busload of guys with baseball bats and another busload of scabs just to stick it to the unions.
Of course, maybe you're one of those guys who refer to unions as "employee cartels" and think they should be illegal because they "disturb the natural market forces for labor costs" or something (yes, I've heard people make claims like this).
/Mikael
Greylisting is to SMTP as NAT is to IPv4
As someone to whom that letter was addressed, I've definitely been treating it as a suggestion. I don't feel like the higher-ups are trying to make some kind of slave out of me... they're just panicking a little. Which is understandable.
What makes you think "net neutrality" as is being discusses, addresses either issue you mentioned?
Also, in case you hadn't noticed, both problems are resolved. That's kind of my whole point, see? Bad things will occur infrequently, but the market corrects. It's way better than a busybody oversight panel interfering ALL THE TIME.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
When and where? Seriously... I'm in a union and I've never heard of this happening in the last 20 years. The worst I ever saw was someone who stirred the pot was encourage to take a job in management (and you know who gave her the job? not the union, but the managers themselves).
For every union abuse you can cite I could easily cite another 20-30 management abuses that are far worse - because not only do they have more power, but in general - labor laws really aren't enforced in this country. Example - right to organize - look at the vast amount of organization stories from a lot of different sectors of the economy, and you'll see what I'm talking about (like Stream International or Walmart closing call centers and shops because of people organizing).
Sort of like when Apple tied the iPhone to the ATT network. Oh man the shit storm that erupted from customer sent them packing...
Actually yes, a lot of people will not go to AT&T and have bought other phones.
How does Net Neutrality fix this?
Sort of like when Charter started imposing bandwidth caps on customers who had their advertised "unlimited" internet access. Yup, turned that one right around.
Which they have every right to do and Net Neutrality rules would simply have them implement tiered pricing.
How did Net Neutrality help there?
Sort of like when *any* cellular network charged for both incoming and outgoing SMS packets. Good thing that uproar ended that practice.
Again, not something Net Neutrality will address at all.
Sort of like when ISPs started redirecting failed DNS website queries to their own ad-laden search pages. God I never thought that would stop!
Please direct me to the language in the proposals that would address this.
You, like so many otherwise seemingly technically ept Slashdot readers have come to worship "Net Neutrality" as the personal ShamWow of the internet, that will scrub clean all wrongs.
Well check again, because what they are discussing doesn't hold water and all it will do is make ISP's even more unpleasant to deal with as they pass on costs of regulation to you and create even more convoluted rules that you have to follow in an attempt to comply.
If I were a real prick I'd push for the passing of "Net Neutrality" rules just so I could laugh my ass off when you all realized just why the term "Devil's Bargain" is so timeless. But I have to use the internet too, and I feel some wierd compulsion to save people like yourselves from your own lack of understanding, so I try my best to show at least some of you the way, and get you to wake up to the reality of what you are attempting to bring about.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Maybe I am "one of those guys", but I don't see the difference between giving the bats to the "you can't picket here" crowd vs the "you can't work here crowd".
I had not heard the term "employee cartel" before, but it is a very apt term. You say the laws force employers to negotiate, but what is the point of negotiating when the choices are "do as we say" or "die". That is not negotiation. It is extortion.
Unions do not interfere with the operation of the market for labor until the government passes laws to abolish the market for labor.
Aah, change is good. -- Rafiki
Yeah, but it ain't easy. -- Simba
>>Pro-net-neutrality group Free Press has now likened Cicconi's letter to astroturfing: "Coming from one of the company’s most senior executives, it’s hard to imagine AT&T employees thinking... The founder of Free Press is Robert W. McChesney who is, yes, yet another Marxist. He is a former editor of the Monthly Review. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_W._McChesney People love to hate corporations. But they also expect good jobs. Not many people here are quitting their jobs for a chance to work at the local DMV. Get a clue and write your member of Congress. Face it. If you want Euro-style socialism, you need to vote Republican. If you want Pol Pot... keep voting Democratic.
its strange how much power corporations have in influencing the government because if you visit the IRS.gov website, you will find that corporate income taxes collected by the federal government are only 1/4 the amount of individual income taxes collected! we individuals should have 4x more power and influence in the govt compared to corporations. however that is not the case and the opposite is more true, corporations are the ones strongly influencing government policies to their own business benefit at the cost of making life worse for the individual. we need to wake up and kick some serious butt.