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FCC Refuses To Release Text of More Than 40,000 Net Neutrality Complaints (arstechnica.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the pain-in-the-ass dept.

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: The Federal Communications Commission has denied a request to extend the deadline for filing public comments on its plan to overturn net neutrality rules, and the FCC is refusing to release the text of more than 40,000 net neutrality complaints that it has received since June 2015. The National Hispanic Media Coalition (NHMC) filed a Freedom of Information Act (FoIA) request in May of this year for tens of thousands of net neutrality complaints that Internet users filed against their ISPs. The NHMC argues that the details of these complaints are crucial for analyzing FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's proposal to overturn net neutrality rules. The coalition also asked the FCC to extend the initial comment deadline until 60 days after the commission fully complies with the FoIA request. A deadline extension would have given people more time to file public comments on the plan to eliminate net neutrality rules. Instead, the FCC yesterday denied the motion for an extension and said that it will only provide the text for a fraction of the complaints, because providing them all would be too burdensome.

8 of 64 comments (clear)

  1. Fraction of the complaints by sit1963nz · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The fraction supplied will however be carefully culled to put the best light on the FCC plan. All that time "selecting" that few leaves no time to supply everything.

    1. Re:Fraction of the complaints by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      The FCC has absolutely no intention of allowing the public any say whatsoever in this decision. They have a plan, and they intend to carry it out, and that's it.

    2. Re:Fraction of the complaints by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

      No kidding. They sure as hell didn't have a problem releasing the 58,000+ fake comments submitted by some anti-net-neutrality company's bot net. Those had personal information included, which is how they were revealed as fake. Reporters started calling the people who had supposedly made the comments, only to be met with total confusion because no one had actually submitted them.

  2. Vote with your wallets, libertardians. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Hey, don't you silly Americans say nobody needs regulations, you can vote for your wallets. You make fun of European consumer protections laws.

    Well, vote with your wallets, cancel your ISP accounts. They need you more than you need them, right?

    And most of all, enjoy your free country with it's freedom from all these burdensome regulations, where everyone if free to squeeze every penny of profit they can as they squeeze the life from the corpse of their once great country.

    Make American Great Again. Yeah right. You're living in the land of profit for free, suffering for most.

    1. Re:Vote with your wallets, libertardians. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      That's right! The Free Market will cure everything! Ditch your slimeball ISP. Oh, wait, the other local ISPs - if any - are also slimeballs. So vote with your wallet, Oh wait, you have one vote and there are 10 million customers who annoyingly aren't co-operating by doing likewise.

      No Worries! Someone will come along and address that market need for a non-slimeball ISP. Oh wait, no one did!

      No Worries! Just create your own ISP! All it takes is a few million for capital equipment and staff. Or maybe just form a company big enough for you and your friends. Doesn't matter - the cost to hook into the Internet backbone is the same high price - or maybe a little more, whether you have 100,000 customers or 10. And if you're lucky, the nearest backbone provider will be - guess what - an established slimeball ISP!

      Libertarian fantasies are great, but like Communism, they fail to allow for human nature. They expect people to be educated and rational when most will fight tooth and nail for the right to be neither, and they assume that you can become competitive in any industry with whatever small change you can dig out of your pocket as long as the damn gubmit don't get in the way.

    2. Re:Vote with your wallets, libertardians. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Libertardians want nothing less than the absolute death of society and everyone in it. If you believe otherwise, you're a total idiot.

      In this case, the Libertardian point of view isn't that the FCC is deciding policy for the million customers but that the million customers are free to choose an ISP and the ISPs are free to shape traffic as they see fit. It's not Ajit Pai choosing for anyone, but everyone free to choose for themselves. Forcing net neutrality is taking away choice, so anti-libertardian.

      Libertardians believe there should be no roads (how dare you tax me to build a road my impoverished neighbour can freely use). They believe the air should be toxic (how dare you stop my factory from pumping what ever toxic waste I want into the air, I have my right to free profits -- if my neighbour wants to breathe they can important their own damn canned air from Canada, and damn you to hell if you think you'll tax me to buy them air). Libertardians don't think their should be any policing or national defence. How dare you tax me to hire cops and soldiers. If I have something worth protecting, I'll buy my own damn gun.

      Broad concepts don't map directly. But this libertardian view that regulation is automatically bad is a grotesque cancer on society. And this issue is a great example. The pathetic American excuse for health care is another.

      The funny part I see as a non-American is that the dumbass Americans see themselves as the greatest country on Earth while the rest of the world is ignorant barbarians. The reality is that rest of the world sees America as middle-of-the-pack for a third world country in how you treat your own people and below that for the sheer ignorance if your own people.

  3. Re:Too Burdensome? by Vrekais · · Score: 3, Funny

    Yeah, I'd love for that to get brought up in court.

    Judge: "How are the comments stored?"
    FCC: "Digitally in a database system fed by an online submission website"
    Judge: "What part of rertrieveing comments from this system is burdensome?"
    FCC: "We've only got one computer than can access it."
    Judge: "How is that a burden?"
    FCC "It's in the basement, in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door that says beware of the leopard." "And it runs Windows 98"

  4. Re:Too burdensome by hackwrench · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Yes because picking and choosing what someone wants to read should not be their job.