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Secretive Funding Fuels Ongoing Net Neutrality Astroturfing Controversy

Posted by Soulskill on from the all-about-the-benjamins dept.

alphadogg writes: The contentious debate about net neutrality in the U.S. has sparked controversy over a lack of funding transparency for advocacy groups and think tanks, which critics say subverts the political process. News stories from a handful of publications in recent months have accused some think tanks and advocacy groups of "astroturfing" — quietly shilling for large broadband carriers. In a handful of cases, those criticisms appear to have some merit, although the term is so overused by people looking to discredit political opponents that it has nearly lost its original meaning. An IDG News Service investigation found that major groups opposing U.S. Federal Communications Commission reclassification and regulation of broadband as a public utility tend to be less transparent about their funding than the other side. Still, some big-name advocates of strong net neutrality rules also have limited transparency mechanisms in place.

10 of 56 comments (clear)

  1. ISPs v. Content Producers by Etherwalk · · Score: 2

    This is just ISPs v. Content Producers, each fighting over who can bribe Congress more. (Siding with content producers is basically everyone else who cares about the issue and has time or money to spend on it, which is probably less than 0.01% of everybody.)

  2. The saddest part is..... by Dega704 · · Score: 2

    Even with the misleading propaganda efforts, the public in general overwhelmingly supports Net Neutrality. If this issue were put to an actual vote, I have zero doubt that it would win by a landslide. I have yet to meet a single tech-savvy person that supports paid prioritization, even among conservatives. Sadly, that doesn't seem to matter. If it did, we would be some kind of democracy or something. Heaven forbid.

    1. Re:The saddest part is..... by AaronLS · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Joking aside, the issue here that stands in the way of free market forces prevailing is the overwhelming cost of building the infrastructure required to compete on the same footing as established companies. If we had reasonable alternative ISP's we could vote with our dollars.

      The reason telco's managing landlines were regulated so heavily is because they each get a slice of the infrastructure pie to provide their services on. Essentially a government mandated local monopoly, and thus the government dictates how much the telco can charge so that the telco cannot abuse their monopoly. This of course doesn't eliminate abuse nor guarantee that the rates are fair, but instead or the rates that the telco can convince the local officials are fair.

      The benefits of this questionable arrangement are clear when you consider that the alternative is each company build its own duplicate infrastructure, which would result in poor under utilization of that infrastructure and result in higher costs passed on to consumers. Essentially this is why some want ISP's treated like utilities.

      There are a handful of companies like Google who have the capital to build such infrastructures and bring competition to the table. Even in the presence of a true free market, companies often do not battle by providing competitive pricing, but instead find it more profitable to put money into advertising. If there are only two choices in an area, each will have a fair amount of people who are convinced by the advertising the X is better than Y, and then a fair amount of people who had a bad experience with X and so switched to Y. X and Y both charge way more than what it really costs to provide the service. They don't really have to coordinate price fixing, they simply come to the same conclusion after doing market research of what people are most likely to pay for service. Even if one has a slightly higher price than the other, the large profit margin will make up for the lost customers.

    2. Re:The saddest part is..... by sumdumass · · Score: 2

      Hi, meet me.

      I support internet fast lanes "if" they can be implemented without slowing any other connection speeds down to below what the customer actually pays for. I also support QOS prioritization of VoIP traffic.

      I also think net neutrality can be realized today by enforcement of existing laws and rules. When an ISP sells you service advertised at 10 megs or up to 10 megs, if they purposely and intentionally slow any part of it below that 10 megs, they are not delivering the goods sold to the consumer. And no, up to is not a cop out because the up to number will never be above what they limit. That means if they limit a connection to 1 meg, regardless of what they sold you, they are delivering goods of up to 1 meg. But if they sell a 4 meg connection and Youtube wants to stream at 10 megs, I have no problem with them paying to do so as long as it doesn't slow anyone else speeds to below what they purchased.

      Also, many of these ISPs get money from the governments to roll out broadband or service areas not profitable to them. Well, if they limit their service or any parts of the service to below 4 megs, it is technically not broadband and they would be in default. Also, if they manipulate packets in ways like with the bit torrent in which they injected packets to cause the connection to reset, wouldn't that be a copyright violation as well as under the fraud abuse laws? For instance, Ohio law considers it bait advertising to " Delivering offered goods or services which are unusable or impractical for the purposes represented or materially different from the offered goods or services. ".

      But more than all, I think the way the FCC is trying to create and or change law by wrangling reinterpretations and classifications without any intervention of congress (elected officials) is dangerous to freedom and directly contradictory to democracy. This should be true whether you support it or not. Get it done right and get congress or even your local state governments to pass the laws. Even at the state level, the state can extend it's jurisdiction to actions by the same company in other states so if Verizon in Indian is barred from restricting packets based on payments from any third party, Verizon in California doing so for traffic originating from or destined for Indiana would put them in violation and under jurisdiction.

    3. Re:The saddest part is..... by jd2112 · · Score: 2

      There are lots of people that genuinely oppose big government, but nobody likes Comcast. If given a choice, the people would prevent Comcast from having fast lanes, and unleash the rancor and krakken upon them simultaneously.

      This is part of the problem of the Net Neutrality debate. There are no 'Fast lanes'. There is only what we have now and pothole-ridden dirt roads.

      --
      Any insufficiently advanced magic is indistinguishable from technology.
  3. We rate the groups here by grantus · · Score: 3, Informative

    Still, some big-name advocates of strong net neutrality rules also have limited transparency mechanisms in place.

    And who exactly are they and where is your proof of their limited transparency mechanism? Do you have actual specifics or simply vague FUD?

    We rate the groups based on objective measures in this story.

    Grant Gross
    IDG News Service Washington correspondent

    --
    Grant Gross, Washington reporter, IDG News Service
    1. Re:We rate the groups here by grantus · · Score: 2

      I would never, ever say that.

      -- Grant

      --
      Grant Gross, Washington reporter, IDG News Service
    2. Re:We rate the groups here by rtb61 · · Score: 2

      Here's how to attack true grass roots campaigns, make a PR=B$ claim about funding transparency ie how can you have funding transparency with a true grass roots campaign when there is no group funding, the hundreds of thousands of individuals are independent from each other beyond seeking the same outcome. The reality is net neutrality suits every other business other major ISPs looking to become internet 'Publishers', attempting to block all content distribution that does not pay them a significant percentage of the income derived from that content. There are also the real problems of securing content to make sure the major ISPs can not simply onsell private information or trade secrets contained in digital communications. Every CTO should be passing onto to management the real problems with the loss of net neutrality and ensuring those concerns are passed onto their lobbyists to their politicians.

      --
      Chaos - everything, everywhere, everywhen
  4. Re: rediculous by Em+Adespoton · · Score: 2

    Imagine a beowulf cluster of Bennett Haseltons feeding hot grits to Natalie Portman!

    Are we done yet?

  5. Re:2nd internet? by mbone · · Score: 2

    We had that. It was called the phone system.