FCC Ignored Your Net Neutrality Comment, Unless You Made a 'Serious' Legal Argument (theverge.com)

An anonymous reader quotes a report from The Verge: The FCC received a record-breaking 22 million comments chiming in on the net neutrality debate, but from the sound of it, it's ignoring the vast majority of them. In a call with reporters yesterday discussing its plan to end net neutrality, a senior FCC official said that 7.5 million of those comments were the exact same letter, which was submitted using 45,000 fake email addresses. But even ignoring the potential spam, the commission said it didn't really care about the public's opinion on net neutrality unless it was phrased in unique legal terms. The vast majority of the 22 million comments were form letters, the official said, and unless those letters introduced new facts into the record or made serious legal arguments, they didn't have much bearing on the decision. The commission didn't care about comments that were only stating opinion. The FCC has been clear all year that it's focused on "quality" over "quantity" when it comes to comments on net neutrality. In fairness to the commission, this isn't an open vote. It's a deliberative process that weighs a lot of different factors to create policy that balances the interests of many stakeholders. But it still feels brazen hearing the commission staff repeatedly discount Americans' preference for consumer protections, simply because they aren't phrased in legal terms.

Comments

whodathunkit

[JustNiz]

So much for the government enacting the will of the people.

Re:whodathunkit

[Anonymous Coward]

Corporations are The People. You're a peon.

Re: whodathunkit

[AntronArgaiv]

You know, it's not really fair to expect the average citizen to be able to phrase his viewpoint in legal terms. Nor is it reasonable to expect that he would spend the money to hire a lawyer, simply to express his opinion. For example, constituents routinely make their views known to their elected representatives, using plain language. Why should the FCC require a higher standard?
I'd really like to see Pai get sued over this.

Re:whodathunkit

[war4peace]

Fear the true will of the people. Usually "the people" are a bunch of semi-primitives who have no clue what the fuck they are doing or whether whatever they seem to want is even achievable. Yes, everyone would love lots of money, free booze and no work to do, but besides that I don't think "the people" (as a whole, mind you, not those of them who have neurons in other places than their own gonads) are any good at deciding anything.

Governments never enacted the will of the people; they did what they thought was best for the country and their own pockets, with priorities varying from "most for my pockets" to "most for the country", with the former being more prevalent throughout history.

All voting processes are flawed in one way or another, so you can't even argue successfully that the ruling people were "chosen by the people". Most times they aren't. They're usually chosen by a group of people with power, and then the candidate is shown as "this is the one you should all vote!" and that's it. That's a lack of choice rather than a choice, much like "mouldy bread or spoiled meat" could be considered "choice".

Re:whodathunkit

[geekmux]

Corporations are The People. You're a peon.

We the People, fund the Government.

Essentially, all taxpaying citizens represent the largest and most powerful American Corporation.

Unfortunately, the Government runs on Corruption now. Corruption is the reason the People are no longer relevant. Corruption highlights why Government must be replaced.

Re: whodathunkit

[dgatwood]

Wouldn't matter. They made their decision already. This is just for show. After all, lots of us did make plenty of serious legal arguments, and they ignored us, too.

Re: whodathunkit

[tlhIngan]

You know, it's not really fair to expect the average citizen to be able to phrase his viewpoint in legal terms. Nor is it reasonable to expect that he would spend the money to hire a lawyer, simply to express his opinion. For example, constituents routinely make their views known to their elected representatives, using plain language. Why should the FCC require a higher standard?
I'd really like to see Pai get sued over this.

Easy. If you can afford a lawyer, then you're rich enough that the FCC is interested. If you can only speak in plain language, then you're just a prole and can't possibly understand government. Government's too complicated for simple minded folks. Those who can afford lawyers, well those people understand how government works.

Re:whodathunkit

[Trailer Trash]

So much for the government enacting the will of the people.

There's a process for the government to enact the will of the people, and it involves Congress. Not the FCC: Congress. That's how it *should* have been done, and if Obama and the Democrats cared so much about this they could have done it. It's like DACA, only not quite as bad.

Re: whodathunkit

[AntronArgaiv]

What, then, is the purpose of requiring a "public comment period"?

Re:whodathunkit

[techno-vampire]

In the most recent Presidential election, we were given the choice between a candidate that was absolutely unacceptable and one whom we were willing to vote for, even if we had to hold our noses as we did. Which one was which is something that I'll leave as an exercise for the reader.

Re:whodathunkit

[ravenshrike]

Bitch at your congressperson. The FCC's remit is not the opinion of the people.

Re: whodathunkit

[rtb61]

Doesn't matter well over ten million pissed of computer geeks and nerds does not matter, boy will the US government find out how much 10 million pissed off geeks and nerds matter, it took way less than that to fuck over the US election and turn it into a blame Russia joke. The US government will be feeling a whole lot of digital pain for this action, across the board.

Re:whodathunkit

[Baron_Yam]

It actually turns out that the candidate who was absolutely unacceptable and the one (enough of) you were willing to vote for were one and the same.

Re: whodathunkit

[ravenshrike]

Because the comment period can introduce angles they may not have thought of. Guess what a mass mailed form letter rather explicitly doesn't do.

Re: whodathunkit

[novakyu]

On the other hand, how much should form-letter activism count? It's just deserts for people who waste other people's time, that they end up getting ignored.

Re:whodathunkit

[war4peace]

Maybe (I'm not American) but the point is that you believe the choice STARTED there, whereas I believe the choice ENDED there.
And that, right there, is the result of "the will of the people", when people are dumb as a whole. They are willing to support a candidate, no matter how inane because it is pushed by the party they support - or the other way around, they're willing to support a whole political agenda because the person pushing it is a celebrity of sorts (magnate, singer, sportsman, etc). Whether it's the former or the latter depends on country and culture.
But very rarely, if ever, will you see the best candidate being chosen out of a pool of many (IMHO 100 is the bare minimum number) through objective train of thought and valid data analysis. THAT would be true choice: the freedom to look at objective information and filter data based on what's objectively best, ousting candidate after candidate until the best one remains, no matter the political party that stands behind him.

I know this is just utopian daydreaming and it would never happen (cue human nature), however if you want to talk choice and freedom, there they are.
What you have, politically speaking, are two colossal turds facing each other. One is blue and one is red, whatever that may mean, and they're orbited by specks of shit (the other political parties) which change allegiance according to their own largely irrelevant political agenda. It's a deadlock - and you call it "choice". Sorry, it ain't. But hey, be happy, it's "the will of the people", boo-hoo-fucking-ray!

Re:whodathunkit

[war4peace]

Here's the thing: IT DOES NOT MATTER.
What happens in the USA right now is half the country fighting the other half, each saying their rotten meat piece is better. Quite sad, really, if you ask me. Luckily, nobody asks me anyway :)

Re:whodathunkit

[Anonymous Coward]

Fuck you Republican trolls right back to Moscow in a pine box.

Re: whodathunkit

[mark-t]

This.

So much this.

If the EFF had wanted people to write letters, they could have provided all the information that a person would need to know to understand what is going on, and then a mailto link that opened up as a blank slate except for the "to" field. This would force any user who was remotely serious about writing a letter to have to take the time to compose it, in their own words, and would not basically create a set up for this situation to be all but completely certain.

Form letters do dick-squat. If you want people to write letters, then you inform the people, but you do *NOT* tell them or even suggest to them exactly what they ought to write because 9 out of 10 people, however well-intentioned they might have otherwise been, will just not bother trying to put it into their own words when something else already exists. You'd get less people sending letters, but you wouldn't get a situation where 90% of the letters get ignored.

Re: whodathunkit

[Anonymous Coward]

While a form letter opinion is pretty much junk, ignoring non form based comments that aren't written in legalese citing landmark cases and legal precedent shouldn't be required.

I think the FCC and private industries are forgetting who power government and enable societal structure to remain. When you mess with the bull, you get the horns. At some point people may be fed up and do something. If those in power continue to erode rights away gradually, playing the long game, the bulk of us will lose because it takes drastic change or dire conditions to trigger revolution.

Re:whodathunkit

[Anonymous Coward]

Da, comrade. I stand in bread line at American food bank. Thank you tax payer for lack of jobs to earn my own bread.

Re: whodathunkit

[Anonymous Coward]

Only one half cares about their rotten meat piece. I care about ideals, I don't care that much what meat piece pushes said ideals.

Re:whodathunkit

[Anonymous Coward]

Where are my mods point when I need them.

Re: whodathunkit

[Anonymous Coward]

It should be pretty trivial to find form letters and ignore those then read the rest instead of ignoring everything. It is the FCC after all. If they can make important decisions about technology policy then sorting out mass responses should be a fairly trivial task comparatively.

Re: whodathunkit

[war4peace]

Isn't that what everyone says about their rotten piece of meat?

Re: whodathunkit

[easyTree]

Why should the FCC require a higher standard?

It's an elegant way to ignore all comments with trait 'a' (disagree with the desired outcome), by selectively excluding comments with trait 'b' (not written by a lawyer). That the traits have strong presentation-correlation is 'purely accidental.'

Re:whodathunkit

[CanadianMacFan]

It's enacting the will of the people. The people who have a lot of money to throw at politician campaign fundraising. If you aren't one of those people then the government is probably not going to listen to you. And then it's probably a case of you were saying what they wanted to hear rather than them valuing your expertise.

Re: whodathunkit

[TheGratefulNet]

I'd like to see ...

oh hell. I don't want to get in trouble. but you can imagine what I'd like to see.

(we live in a world where the chilling effect silences our true thoughts online. this is one such case. what I -think- has no bearing on real action, but again, we are in a witch-hunt kind of world, now, and things you say can and WILL be used against you.)

but yeah, you can imagine how I feel about this. I'll leave it at that.

Re: whodathunkit

[Ogive17]

I wrote a letter to my Congressman. He didn't care about my view, he only cared to toe the party line. The form letter I got in return was full of political bullshit.

My initial letter was basically "since when have the telecom companies worked for the people?"

Re:whodathunkit

[liquid_schwartz]

In the most recent Presidential election, we were given the choice between a candidate that was absolutely unacceptable and one whom we were willing to vote for, even if we had to hold our noses as we did. Which one was which is something that I'll leave as an exercise for the reader.

I have seen some buyers remorse on the R side. The D side seems preoccupied with reliving the past and speculating what small detail could have tipped it their way - ignoring the more obvious point that if they had only run a decent candidate it would have been an easy sweep.

Pro tips for 2018:

1) >50% of the population is white. Stop hating on white people and putting down whole states as racist deplorables.

2) Almost 50% of the population is male. Constantly criticizing men won't help your cause either.

3) Economics for the 99% is >330 times more important than corner cases like transgenders in the military. Focus on broad issues of real importance.

Citations:

https://www.urbandictionary.co... https://townhall.com/tipsheet/...

Re: whodathunkit

[mark-t]

You are making the assumption that the organization that needs to sort through the emails is any less lazy than the people who were too lazy to formulate their own opinion.

The better thing for EFF to have done would have been to inform people, and get them to write their own letters in their own words. Providing an email address to send to, but absolutely *NONE* of the content.

As I said elsewhere.... I've seen this sort of thing happen before, where millions of responses were received on a matter, and over 90% of them were just a copy-paste of some open letter that a well-meaning person had posted publicly as an example of what sort of letter might be good. However benign that person's intentions were, they hopelessly backfired.

Re:whodathunkit

[Anonymous Coward]

Since the constitution states that a legal system not understood by the common man is not binding, and they are a legal entity are they not saying their insistence on people using legal ease in order to submit responses, isn't it unconstitutional.

Also, they didn't specify that it was required that people use legal ease, doesn't that also make a case for a constitutional appeal of their process. I.E. open them up to lawsuits?

Re: whodathunkit

[mark-t]

Just double-checked my facts on the point.. I was misrembering, and I apologize for misstating. They did not receive millions... they received just under 9,000 submissions, a response level that astonished the organization that was soliciting the responses. Very fewof these submissions were original, however, which completely offset the significance of the response.

Re:whodathunkit

[Baron_Yam]

>IT DOES NOT MATTER.

Eh. I think the Democrats would have been a better choice for the average American than the Republicans in the last election, and that kind of does matter. Especially if you're transsexual, female, or non-white. Or maybe if you're expecting Trump's economic policies to benefit you (and you're not one of the 1%). Or maybe you're just worried about Trump's lack of decorum causing the US issues (up to and including starting a major war) on the international stage.

The underlying problem is the American political system pretty much inevitably leads to polarization, and then people start voting for their team rather than the best person to represent them based on their individual stances on the issues. And then you have a situation where a significant minority of one half the population can install someone like Trump in the White House.

Re: whodathunkit

[BlueStrat]

If they can make important decisions about technology policy then sorting out mass responses should be a fairly trivial task comparatively.

That's just it. The FCC doesn't decide anything. Those with wealth & power tell the FCC what they will do. All the rest is simply Kabuki theater to distract and mollify the masses into continuing to think they have some say in what government does or does not do.

Welcome to bipartisan Big Government Cronyism.

Strat

Re:whodathunkit

[murdocj]

Yes, IT DOES MATTER. You really can't tell when trump tries to crush the free press and intimidate judges who is worse? When trump appoints oil execs to demolish pollution regulation? I don't care what you thought of Hillary, Trump is clearly worse.

Re:whodathunkit

[Anonymous Coward]

"I dont like it" gets you ignored pretty much everywhere.

"This goes against case law of TITLE I and II and here are the cases ..." THAT will get you listened to.

See the difference? We have laws. Make them obey them. Drop your 'feels' at the door. Make a good argument backed up by case law and law. They ignore it you can then use it as a talking point on all the blahgs out there.

Re: whodathunkit

[Anonymous Coward]

Talk to your government 101 is to write something unique. When you just send in a standard letter they know that you know nothing and are just sending a letter because of an outreach campaign.

Source: I get bills written.

Re:whodathunkit

[Baron_Yam]

But... uranium deal, emails, err... HILLARY!

You know it boils down to team loyalty, right? I honestly don't know why they bother lying or trying to misdirect your attention when they don't care and will continue to support their team (or continue to act in the same way if they are the team).

Trump could pretty much come out and say, "Yeah, my team colluded with the Russians to spike Hillary. That's the way business is done, and that's why you elected me." Then there'd be a lot more screaming than there has been, and you'd find most of the Republican establishment would fail to act regardless. I'm pretty sure the only reason Trump hasn't done that is because it would lessen what he perceives as his part in his victory, and his ego won't allow it.

Holding power isn't about who is right or righteous, it's about who has enough power to hold onto their power; the appearance of being right or righteous is only maintained when it helps gain or maintain required support for holding on to power.

Re:whodathunkit

[Anonymous Coward]

> You know it boils down to team loyalty, right?

Uh no. The teams don't mean what they say, so people voted for a man who seemed so truthful that he was committing political suicide. This isn't a mystery to me or anyone else (Uber driver, whatever) that I've talked to.

Re:whodathunkit

[arth1]

Da, comrade. I stand in bread line at American food bank. Thank you tax payer for lack of jobs to earn my own bread.

You paying for the bread doesn't make it any better. The baker making bread according to his ability makes it good. Corporations making it according to the rules of profit, targeting the price to what you make and how much of that they can get, doesn't.

Re:whodathunkit

[Anonymous Coward]

Unfortunately, the Government runs on Corruption now. Corruption is the reason the People are no longer relevant. Corruption highlights why Government must be replaced.

People are relevant, though it suits the powers that be for most to believe they are not. Enough people stayed home to elect almost anyone, if they could but agree. To an extent people need to wake up and do their job. Learn the issues and vote.

I'd like to see debate,reasoning, logic, science, and all the rest given a greater emphasis in school. Examine how politicians manipulate and deceive. Trump himself is worth a ton of discussion. Of course you could greatly limit his power of manipulation if you took away his supply of dead cats. He did it just today I guess. Yesterday he said basically it is a choice between a child molester and a democrat and you better vote for the molester, because the democrat would be worse. He said this, though in slightly different words. Today he tosses out rants against ungrateful fathers and the NFL protesters. In this way the child molester gets his support and Trump avoids most of the backlash.

There are plenty of valid reasons to impeach him, and plenty of reasons that make it urgent. Personally, I think he supports Moore because he needs to keep that solid vote against his removal from office. In short, Trump doesn't care if Alabama elects a child molester, as long as it helps him or rather protects him. I suppose it also could be a slippery slope theory. If Moore gets removed from the running, then to Trump's thinking that gives credibility to women accusing moore, and more generally to women accusing in general, and I believe he is at what 13?

Re: whodathunkit

[arth1]

I'm kind of surprised that no-one has comprehensively doxxed Pai yet.

Re:whodathunkit

[arth1]

Coming from the outside, I see the political parties in the US as two peas in a pod. They're so similar that any differences they have are near cosmetic, and only matter if you're in-between the two very similar points of view. The leaders, on the other hand, are very different. Do you want a smart power hungry crook, or a stupid bigoted crook?
The latter is what the Americans elected. Remember, you don't get the leaders you need, but the ones you deserve.

Re:whodathunkit

[Arzaboa]

Of course democratic tipped media will talk about how democrats should win the next election. One learns from past mistakes. What would you expect them to talk about?

There is plenty of time for our government to talk and handle large and small issues alike. They don't run on a 24/7 media schedule to keep folks entertained, in fact its fairly boring to the average citizen -- else CSPAN would be a thing.

--
"...look over there!" - B. Simpson

Re:whodathunkit

[arth1]

"This goes against case law of TITLE I and II and here are the cases ..." THAT will get you listened to.

Is there any evidence to that assumption?
I am fairly certain that no matter how well articulated a letter is, or whether it brings up legal issues, it's not read.

Re: whodathunkit

[Frobnicator]

You know, it's not really fair to expect the average citizen to be able to phrase his viewpoint in legal terms.

True enough. But if they keep ignoring them, the average citizen will phrase the viewpoints in pitchforks and torches. Those aren't legal terms but they are readily understood.

The classic "four boxes of liberty" hasn't gone away. "There are four boxes to be used in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and ammo. Please use them in that order." If the FCC members refuse to listen to the soap box, and the ballot box is ineffectual and deadlocked between two extreme positions that refuse the will of the people, they better hope the judges who review the change will listen to the will of the people. That last one is unpleasant, and sadly political assassinations in the US has entered a sharp uptick. We're now averaging one every two years, and it's been two years.

Re:whodathunkit

[MangoCats]

I'm sure there's a dozen or more "serious legal arguments" here... so, why don't we copy-paste each one into a separate comment to the FCC so they can count the number of times they see each one.

Re: whodathunkit

[MangoCats]

They've got a clear read on the will of the people, especially people who use the internet.

They don't care, but they do know.

Re: whodathunkit

[MangoCats]

It's just as valid as form-letter responses from your Congressmen - the fact that somebody cared enough to copy a form letter and attach their name to it counts for more than the people who ignored the issue.

Re:whodathunkit

[Anonymous Coward]

So much for the government enacting the will of the people.

It did. The People voted for Trump.

Re: whodathunkit

[Anonymous Coward]

"Welcome to bipartisan Big Government Cronyism."

Which is why Democrats instituted Net Neutrality and why the FCC's majority Republicans will vote to repeal it. I'm not sure which is the bigger threat to democracy in America: the myth of the liberal media or bothsiderism.

Re: whodathunkit

[Anonymous Coward]

Well, I'm sure they aren't concerned what 10M basement dwelling, mouth breathing neckbeards think about them. Considering the fact that they all, most likely, voted Democrat.

Yeah, threaten the US gov't that won't backfire...

Asshole.

Re:whodathunkit

[techno-vampire]

Maybe (I'm not American) but the point is that you believe the choice STARTED there, whereas I believe the choice ENDED there.

No, the choice didn't start there, it started during the Primaries, where all of the other potential candidates were eliminated. Some of them weren't very good, some couldn't get their message out, some were outspent, and some were outmaneuvered. And by last November, there were only two left who had any realistic chance of winning, just like it's been every election since the early '50s.

Re: whodathunkit

[Anonymous Coward]

Do they really get the horns, though?

You vote on an electronic voting machine, and they either change your vote, or just throw it out.

You show up to vote, and they use some technicality to give you a provisional ballot, so again your vote doesnâ(TM)t count.

You and hundreds of thousands of others vote against them, but theyâ(TM)ve gerrymandered the state, so your vote doesnâ(TM)t count.

You eliminate one reimagined poll tax, and they come up with another, so your vote doesnâ(TM)t count.

You vote for your candidate (twice!) and the Electoral College ignores fhe popular vote, and your vote doesnâ(TM)t count.

This only illustrates that Republicans are really good at cheating, changing the rules so they always win, and their skill at winning elections is inversely proportional to their skill at governing the country.

Re: whodathunkit

[Anonymous Coward]

Some citizens are lawyers.
Maybe it's time to petition local bar associations to do their part?
There are 3142 counties in the US, At least one complaint from each should be filed.

Re:whodathunkit

[Anonymous Coward]

Here's the thing: IT DOES NOT MATTER.

Make it matter - run for office.

Re: whodathunkit

[Anonymous Coward]

Americans are too lazy and docile to risk their lives overthrowing the government, and the Republican traitors know this.

They already fill radio and TV with their propaganda, so the Internet is next. Once you can only afford their websites, no one will know anything that is true, only the propaganda.

Now, how many Americans will hang those responsible? How many will hang those who are about to raise taxes on half of Americans?

None. Our apathy has given us the government we deserve.

Re: whodathunkit

[Anonymous Coward]

President Adams, is that you?

Of course we all know that a republic is better than a democracy in 1789, but with the rise of political parties and legalized bribery (thanks, John âoestare decisisâ Roberts) in the form of lobbying, the country is now a plutotocracy, or perhaps more accurately, a kakistocracy.

President Washington and the first Congress were not being bribed by banks and Big Pharma.

Re: whodathunkit

[PopeRatzo]

The US government will be feeling a whole lot of digital pain for this action, across the board.

Why do you think they're trying to kill net neutrality?

Your internet is about to become the equivalent of cable TV. You will have freedom to choose, within a very specific set of parameters.

A non-neutral net is not just good for the internet's gatekeepers. It's also good for an authoritarian regime.

Re: whodathunkit

[Anonymous Coward]

Oh come on. The two parties are NOT the same.

Republicans want prayer in school, guns everywhere, no abortion, no dark faces, women to be subjugated, voting for whites only, no taxes on the rich, ineffective schools, no government healthcare, no social security, no welfare, privatization of all government services, corporate welfare, no corporate taxes, corporate personhood, limitless lobbying, a massive defense budget, and endless war.

And Democrats want the opposite.

Re: whodathunkit

[Anonymous Coward]

Iâ(TM)m pretty sure that all letters opposing the FCCâ(TM)s goal of deregulation, no matter how articulate, were always going to be ignored.

Pai is a former Verizon lawyer, he was always going to eliminate Net Neutrality, no matter that it will harm the citizenry.

Re: whodathunkit

[Anonymous Coward]

You forgot the /sarc tag.

Re: whodathunkit

[Cinnamon Beige]

Form letters do dick-squat. If you want people to write letters, then you inform the people, but you do *NOT* tell them or even suggest to them exactly what they ought to write because 9 out of 10 people, however well-intentioned they might have otherwise been, will just not bother trying to put it into their own words when something else already exists. You'd get less people sending letters, but you wouldn't get a situation where 90% of the letters get ignored.

Actually, form letters do worse than nothing, because they show you've got at best a lot of people whose support isn't much past filling in a blank or two & clicking send at best. It's effectively spam. If you just want numbers, it's better to just get people signing a petition; you can provide the info needed for anybody who wants to write a letter on their own as well as sign the petition.

Re: whodathunkit

[macsimcon]

No, the people voted for Clinton. For only the fifth time in history, the Electoral College picked the popular vote loser for president.

Re: whodathunkit

[Anonymous Coward]

I'll put it to you this way.

Title II provides ISP's common carrier status. This gives them the ability to be completely ignorant of what's going on in their network and not be liable for it; without that status, they are now liable. Every Hollywood DMCA Staydown, every unsultry sex act viewed online that's illegal, every unsultry website that might break some arcane local statute, they are now criminally liable for all and in some states now obligated for it and don't think for a second munincipalities won't view these companies as a revenue source via fines. Heaven forbid browsing histories are sold with personally identifiable billing data; now we've got more criminal charges for slander and stalking children, or if they decide to sell traffic outright, then you have confidentiality issues as well. Why would a lawyers office provide any kind of consultation through the internet, ever, when its guaraunteed to them not to be private? Take the standard "We're going to update you on our terms of service by updating our website" to any competent class action lawyer that knows how to use waybackmachine, that's a complete disaster.

Then you have local and state governments wondering what happens to their 911 service. We used to have e911 but with this move, that's gone. And do understand, they make a significant change to the service they offer. For example, the first and obvious step here is you will get a choice between regular internet service for $99.99 a month "unlimited" (but really limited), or $59.99 a month for 500GB of data, or $39.99 for "unlimited" with no video or audio streaming or gaming traffic (except from our sponsors) for a landline with e-mail and web browsing only, and we're going to bundle that with your phone. The first challenge here is with such retrictions, since we're sending data via landline, is how you actually define "internet service". States AG will file anti-trust and RICO lawsuites to protect their state's and munincipalities interests and to force fair advertising and for the really limited services, those won't be able to be called "internet" and be fairly advertised. Now you have backend infrastructure being re-architected for each state or munincipality by court order onto of those rapidly consolidated companies dealing with operations issues due to disparate technologies, ERP systems, billing systems, monitoring systems, et-cetera.

And Finally, this doesn't take into account what happens when people begin really encrypting traffic heavily. Fact is, IPSEC was designed to encrypt all the traffic between all the endpoints and TLS is rapidly becoming IPSEC. You host off of AWS or Azure, and properly encyrpt your VM's, not only is AWS and Azure in the dark, but the ISP's are in the dark too; the Layer 3 data is useless and Layer 4 data is completely unreadable as you can rotate encryption mechanisms and keys for streams and it is not that computationally expensive. The application detection software on network gear depends heavily on being able to see un-encrypted traffic; you begin encrypting everything and about all they can see is the session being established then poof, in the dark. Google doesn't want the competition of ISP's selling data on what people are searching for; that's the entire reason they pushed the entire internet to adopt HTTPS, and I'm sure it's been effective. All that's left to do is to use DNSSEC and rotate DNS Servers to keep you from being tracked that way as well.

The only way this program is even remotely tenable is if crony capitalists pull off the impossible. Legally untenable doesn't even begin to explain the predicament they are now in.

Re:whodathunkit

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a pretty uninformed observer, then. The GOP is generally opposed to social progress, wants to dismantle government, and works almost entirely for corporations rather than the people. They feel that the poor and the helpless deserve their condition and the rich are the victors in life.

Say what you want about Democrats and their corporate sponsors but they vote much more often for social progress and legislation that benefits the poor or benefits all Americans equally. The GOP is simply not interested in governing anymore and only cares about sabotaging the other party's achievements and leveraging their government power to benefit their wealthy cohorts.

Republican politicians don't stand for issues that the people care about. When they are not in power they whine and cry about x, y, and z but then when they are in power they admit that they never gave a crap about x, y, and z and just want to slash and burn as much as possible while also rewriting the tax code to throw us into debt and recession while increasing wealth disparity.

I'll say it again -- one party still has some interest in governing and the other wants to dismantle government. They are not two peas in a pod.

Re: whodathunkit

[Anonymous Coward]

That's why we post crazed rants on internet forums... So the actual crazed loons will take the bait and whack the mole for us...

Re: whodathunkit

[Anonymous Coward]

People keep saying this "pitchfork and torches" thing. But should that happen, which I doubt, you'll be labelled a terrorist and brutalized by the police while the rest of people just shrug and say "you broke the law" and "you are not free of consequences".

Re: whodathunkit

[Anonymous Coward]

And both were shit, so no matter what you voted.

Re:whodathunkit

[Anonymous Coward]

So much for the government enacting the will of the people.

There's a process for the government to enact the will of the people, and it involves Congress. Not the FCC: Congress. That's how it *should* have been done, and if Obama and the Democrats cared so much about this they could have done it. It's like DACA, only not quite as bad.

Indeed, even if corruption magically disappeared, this would still be a case study in policy based on an averaging of the democratic will of a populace relatively young in 'the computer age' about 'the internet age'. The genuinely sad fact is that no matter how corrupt the FCC has been all along, they're still probably putting out better policy than what you would get from putting all of congress in a room and making them write something. OTOH, that seems like it was a phase, and the computer age isn't quite as young as it used to be, and the current tactics will probably lead to congress actually taking over as they should have long ago. I'm not all that optimistic about the near term. Democracy is always about the long term.

Re:whodathunkit

[war4peace]

You might need to change your Constitution to allow Romanians to run for presidency.

Re:whodathunkit

[war4peace]

I can't tell and here's why: there is no actual information on what Hillary might have done, had she become president. We could be in the middle of a nuclear war for all we know. Or we could all hold our hands and sing Kumbaya while flying through the heavenly portals to another dimension.
So all I can do in order to directly compare the two is look at them as candidates, up to right when elections took place. And from that data, neither was better than the other. What happened afterwards was one-sided and can't be taken into consideration.

Re:whodathunkit

[war4peace]

Remember, you don't get the leaders you need, but the ones you deserve.

True words, my friend. Valid for every group and every leader out there.

Re: whodathunkit

[Wild_dog!]

Yep.

Form letters let people have a voice even if it seems rather mundane.

Re:whodathunkit

[Anonymous Coward]

American liberty rests on four boxes:
-The soap box;
-The ballot box;
-The jury box;
-The cartridge box.
They ought to be employed in that order.

The soapbox is stopped with "free speech zones". You can no longer put up a box wherever you want to make your voice heard without police redirecting you somewhere else.
The ballot box isn't functional anymore. Gerrymandering and voter suppression have made sure that your ballot only matters if you have the right opinion.
The jury box is constantly screened for, if the legal branch suspects that you may try to go for this last step with jury nullification you will be removed from the jury, heck it is sufficient that you know about the concept for them to remove you.

If you want to keep your liberty you don't have many options left.

Re:whodathunkit

[TimothyHollins]

We the People, fund the Government.

I found the problem. If you want representation, you shouldn't fund the Government, you should fund the politicians. That's what the big boys are doing.

Look at it -
Google - taxes: $5.30. Politicians: Millions
Apple - taxes: $0 but requested $800 million in returns. Politicians: One Ireland worth of bribes.
Verizon - taxes: please, do we look like poor people? Politicians: Enough for complete ownership of one Ajit Pai and whatever lawmaker is willing to block fiber deployment to the local orphanage for hefty donations.

Re: whodathunkit

[Anonymous Coward]

"You know, it's not really fair to expect the average citizen to be able to phrase his viewpoint in legal terms." Nope, those arguments will always fail. What the Americans need is a set of new laws for the internet age. The old laws you have there are for old style landline calls, teletypewriters and similar stuff, they don't exactly cover the old new stuff. Just saying as a non-American living in a country with new laws protecting net neutrality.

Re: whodathunkit

[Anonymous Coward]

I'm kind of surprised that no-one has comprehensively doxxed Pai yet.

Hell has no street addresses.

Re: whodathunkit

[Anonymous Coward]

You dont use id at the childraep store.

Re: whodathunkit

[Anonymous Coward]

But corporations are awesome!

Look, blaming your government for the state of your shithole cuntry is like blaming the gun of the methhead for shooting you. It was only the tool of a derranged psychopath. Dont like the results? Dont let psychopaths run your government to benefit their corporations. Derp herp Dick Cheney will shoot you in the face with a Predator drone from within the safety of his mansized safe bcuz FREEDUMBS!

Re: whodathunkit

[dwillden]

Not true, it shows them by count alone that many people are concerned about the issue. Many people I know are concerned about this issue but don't feel confident enough in the details or with their ability to write a cognizant letter expressing their views on the topic. So a form letter allows them to indicate if only as a "Me Too" count, that they are concerned.

If we only allow unique individually composed letters or emails on a technical topic it allows the FCC and their corporate owners to claim that only a few geeks are concerned, as since the rank and file citizenry didn't complain they thus must be okay with it.

Form Letters have great value and should not be discounted. But they must be examined carefully to ensure each sender is unique.

Re: whodathunkit

[Anonymous Coward]

They'll just KILL YOU with a Predator Drone strike on Presidential Authority, citizen or not (nope absolutely no slippery slope in letting your Leaders kill at will).

Morans.

Re: whodathunkit

[Anonymous Coward]

The NSA is still all up in your shit whatever your laws say.

Game over man, individual liberty lost.

Re: whodathunkit

[Anonymous Coward]

Electoral College serves a purpose. You don't want the vote of some pauper in Los Angeles count the same as that of a large farm owner in Texas. They represent different amounts of land.

Re: whodathunkit

[Chris Mattern]

Why should the FCC require a higher standard?

Well, there's the odd fact that almost all the comments meeting the "higher standard" will come from ISPs. Funny coincidence, that.

Re:whodathunkit

[Anonymous Coward]

Yeah I never would have expected them to discount an emotional, knee jerk form letter by the thousands.
I have grown to believe that is what matters today.
Sorting out that garbage was probably annoying

Re:whodathunkit

[Anonymous Coward]

Coming from the outside, I see the political parties in the US as two peas in a pod. They're so similar that any differences they have are near cosmetic, and only matter if you're in-between the two very similar points of view. The leaders, on the other hand, are very different. Do you want a smart power hungry crook, or a stupid bigoted crook?
The latter is what the Americans elected. Remember, you don't get the leaders you need, but the ones you deserve.

Similar points of view? One party thinks that an extrajudicial death penalty is appropriate for any crime or crime-like activity engaged in by brown people. One party thinks that homosexuals should be tortured until they are straight or dead, while party members fuck children (And I mean the proven ones who ran impeachment hearings over lying about a blowjob, nevermind current allegations). Just because they both won't let you build a foundry in your backyard doesn't mean they are "very similar".

Re:whodathunkit

[GameboyRMH]

Take it easy on the deplorables man, ridiculous false equivalency is all they've got!

Re:whodathunkit

[Anonymous Coward]

Neither of your solutions is good.

First of all, your point 1-3 didn't actually happen much. It was mainly strawmen from the alt-right.
You can't defend yourself against lies by backpedaling on something you didn't do.

Remember that Trump still lost the majority vote. Anything that just tips the scale against Trump is insufficient. There would still be a large part of the population voting against their own interest.

The only sure way to prevent something like this from happening again and the real cost of democracy is to have an educated population.

Invest in schools and make sure that people grow up to be thinking and questioning adults rather than mindless followers and populists like Trump wouldn't have a chance.
If his followers just had stopped and thought about how Trump was supposed to bring jobs back or if immigrants really were the reason to their problems then Trump wouldn't even have passed through the preliminaries, and all the talk about Russian hacking/propaganda would have been a non-issue since the voters wouldn't have been susceptible to it anyway.

Re: whodathunkit

[Anonymous Coward]

Actually, form letters do worse than nothing, because they show you've got at best a lot of people whose support isn't much past filling in a blank or two & clicking send at best.

Not sending a form-letter means that they will interpret your silence as being overwhelmingly in favor of their actions.

Send them dog-poop in a box if you have to but anything that slightly indicates that you disagree with them must be done, otherwise it will be interpreted as support.

Re: whodathunkit

[mark-t]

That's just it. The FCC doesn't decide anything. Those with wealth & power tell the FCC what they will do.

Of course... it is much easier to form the conspiracy theory that they were always against you from the beginning than it is to assume that what essentially amounts to a signature on a petition, which is what sending a form letter basically is, is not going to count as high as the individual letters, and the difference in that significance can completely outweigh the volume of responses.

If more than 90% of the letters are basically just carbon copies of eachother, than they are basically just one letter with that number of signatures on it, like a petition. If the number of signatures on it is greater than the organization would have expected, they are not going to conclude that their expectations were necessarily wrong, they are going to conclude that the signatures don't really mean anything because it is too simple to sign something that the signers don't even necessarily strongly agree with, but are just not opposed to it strongly enough actually to refuse to sign. A letter, meanwhile, indicates a clear intent on the writer, and if even a very tiny percentage of those who had just sent the form letter had written their own, however lacking in the same elegance as the form letter it may have been, a greater level of consideration may have been given, particularly if the total number of real letters received actually exceeded their expectations.

When you have two things, a petition with 1000 signatures, and 100 individual letters on the topic, you wanna guess how significant that petition is going to be? Especially if the recipient was expecting letters and not a petition in the first place.

Re: whodathunkit

[Anonymous Coward]

He also can determine what is a "serious legal argument."

Re:whodathunkit

[arth1]

You're a pretty uninformed observer, then. The GOP is generally opposed to social progress, wants to dismantle government, and works almost entirely for corporations rather than the people. They feel that the poor and the helpless deserve their condition and the rich are the victors in life.

Say what you want about Democrats and their corporate sponsors but they vote much more often for social progress and legislation that benefits the poor or benefits all Americans equally. The GOP is simply not interested in governing anymore and only cares about sabotaging the other party's achievements and leveraging their government power to benefit their wealthy cohorts.

Yes, similar. Neither is willing to go for unalienable universal suffrage, nor complete disenfranchisement. Neither want to reduce the the presidency to a figurehead and add a prime minister, nor institute a theocracy. Neither wants to abolish privileges for religious institutions, nor put one in charge. Neither wants to allow public nudity and public sex, nor burkas and niqabs. Neither wants to reduce copyrights and patents to shorter time spans than they were originally, to reflect that the world moves faster now. Nor implement perpetual non-transferable ownership. Neither wants to switch to universal non-private-run healthcare and education. Nor switch the armed forces from mercenaries to conscription. Neither wants open borders, nor a market driven currency and abolishing the Federal Reserve..

It's a matter of perspective. If you stand right between two people, they will appear to be in very different directions, because they are to you. But if you look at it from an outside view, the proximity becomes more noticeable; the more so, the farther away you are.

I'll say it again -- one party still has some interest in governing and the other wants to dismantle government. They are not two peas in a pod.

One thinks short term profits for themselves and their cronies. The other one thinks slightly longer term profits for themselves and their cronies. I see a theme.

Re: whodathunkit

[Anonymous Coward]

Yes, what it comes down to is that companies like AT&T and Comcast who stand to make a lot more money by having net neutrality repealed paid the FCC more money than everyone else did.

Re: whodathunkit

[mark-t]

it shows them by count alone that many people are concerned about the issue

True, but without a really *LARGE* number of signatures on that petition, it's still not likely to be taken very seriously. For a nation the size of the USA, You'd need hundreds of thousands of signatures, at least, and quite possibly even millions of signatures on a petition before you could have any measure of confidence that it is an accurate cross sampling of what the entire nation actually felt on a matter, and not simply a niche group of like-minded people. But to that end, it probably would still been more effective to have sent just a single letter, and attached people's names and addresses to it as signatories for those that wished their name to be sent than to have effectively spammed the organization with emails that are basically all just carbon copies of eachother.

Re: whodathunkit

[Anonymous Coward]

You mean like how they ignored Shadow Brokers and got fucked? Those dipshits are far too complacent about cyberwarfare.

Re: whodathunkit

[Bartles]

That's not what according to his ability means. Or at least the context is entirely wrong as it applies to marxism. The baker makes good bread because if he doesn't we will buy our bread elsewhere. Under marxism, the baker makes barely adequate bread because his state grown wheat sucks when he manages to get some, and if he doesn't make barely adequate bread he gets sent to a gulag.

Re: whodathunkit

[alexgieg]

I'm kind of surprised that no-one has comprehensively doxxed Pai yet.

Here in Brazil they did that to one politician who said he was in support of breaking net neutrality. As in, the very next day all his public data, including addresses, was already circulating, and some of the private data too. The guy quickly backtracked and said he was sorry because people "misunderstood" what he meant.

And when a grassroots movement began to emerge talking about organizing mas public manifestations of the kind that paralises huge cities, the ISPs pushing for it also decided it wiser to not go for it.

So! When are the US Internet users planning to begin interrupting all road traffic in New York City, Washington DC and every major city and State capital, plus all air travel on all major airports, plus the major commercial transportation hubs? The day of the vote and the whole month after that, until the FCC backtracks, right?

Right?

Done Deal

[Anonymous Coward]

The repeal of the net neutrality rules was a done deal the day that Donald Trump was elected. The third-world goat herder appointed to head the FCC is simply doing what he had already decided he would do if he ever got the job.

Re:Done Deal

[Anonymous Coward]

Indeed. The people arguing over the roles of Congress vs the FCC or form letters vs individually crafted letters are overlooking the fact that this was a done deal that was going to happen regardless of the will of the people and that the comment period was just for show and for procedure.

The people have expressed their opinion on this issue numerous notable times before and the Republican solution was to just install FCC leadership who doesn't care what the people think.

Ajit Pai deserves to have his life ruined for what he has done and I hope somehow that retribution is able to find him.

Re:Done Deal

[billyswong]

The repeal of the net neutrality rules was a done deal the day that Donald Trump was elected. The third-world goat herder appointed to head the FCC is simply doing what he had already decided he would do if he ever got the job.

Two party system means you always have to eat half the shit. While one party system means you always have to eat all the shit. So America is still better than China. China put a huge firewall to the whole country so people are forced to use local copycat brand/version of whatever popular online service/product outside. Recently VPN was criminalized. "Net Neutrality? What is it? Does it taste good?"

Re:Done Deal

[GameboyRMH]

Hey now, there are a lot of terrible things you could say about Ajit Pai. You could call him an anti-human money grubbing corporate whore, for example. You could call him the Internet's vile arch-enemy. But let's not resort to racism.

weighs a lot of different factors ?

[Anonymous Coward]

By 'a lot of factors' they mean the amount of money paid to the commissioners by Verizon and friends, apparently.

Re: weighs a lot of different factors ?

[AntronArgaiv]

Yeah, and by "balance the interests", they mean, compare the amount of donations.

Wrong address

[Anonymous Coward]

You all should have sent those letters to your representatives.

Re:Wrong address

[Osgeld]

why? they do fuck all of nothing

They imagine it appears honest

[Baron_Yam]

They imagine it looks superficially honest to eliminate public comment based on a bureaucratic process. What they've overlooked is that the mob doesn't care about superficial appearances when they know you're just ignoring them... and the mob REALLY doesn't like it when you rub it in their face that you don't care about them.

I think they just told the American public to eat cake.

But of course they're doing what they want, and what the Republican party wants them to do... remove impediments to fleecing the commoners (who voted for them!) more efficiently.

So... is it time for the guillotines yet? When will the public turn on those who are betraying them? When will enough of them even realize they're being betrayed?

Re:They imagine it appears honest

[Anonymous Coward]

Three things keep these clowns in power:

* Citizens United ==> Unlimited spending by corrupt special interests to subvert the political process.

* Gerrymandering and voter suppression ==> to keep low income and non-white voters from having any representation.

* Fear mongering over hot-button social issues that have zero impact on most people's lives (abortion, gay marriage, transgender bathroom access) ==> bring out the social conservatives and get them to vote against their own economic interests.

It's a winning formula. Sad, but effective.

The Republican party sure knows how to extract wealth from the masses and hand it to their wealthy backers. A disinterested, ignorant population is easily manipulated.

Re:They imagine it appears honest

[Altrag]

I'm not sure that the population is as disinterested and ignorant as you believe. But when your choices are Trump or Clinton.. I'm still not 100% the alternative would have been significantly better. Less chance of a war with North Korea perhaps, but Clinton and many Democrats are just as deep in the pockets of the large corporations. In many cases the same large corporations -- nothing stops them from hedging their bet and just buying off both candidates. Its not like corporations have any political preference or morals -- they care only about profit. (And I don't blame them for that -- its their literal purpose for existing. I blame the corrupt politicians that let corporations essentially do their job for them, to the benefit of corporate profit of course, while they just sit around sucking up the bribes.)

There's plenty of polling that suggests had the Dems run Bernie Sanders instead of Clinton, he might have swung the vote. Of course much of that is after-the-fact polling when Trump's true nature became evident (and thus can't be directly taken as proof that Sanders would have won.)

And now there's reports coming out that within the DNC there was their own level of corruption in play in order to boost Clinton to the top over Sanders.

It just never stops. Its no wonder the Russians were able to produce so much propaganda and have it taken seriously -- it doesn't seem to matter how horrible the stories are, you can't just write them off as there's a good chance they're true when it comes to our public officials these days.

Re: They imagine it appears honest

[dhawton]

Options were more than Trump and Clinton no matter how much garbage the mainstream media portrays. The media showed signs of fear if the third parties this past year.

Re:They imagine it appears honest

[Anonymous Coward]

What time warp are you posting from? The DNC's shenanigans to fix in favor of Clinton were a topic of (very) public discussion over a year ago. And Trump's "true nature" was also evident way before the election. And 60-something million people voted for him anyway.

But yeah, I think this is the most insightful alt-history take of what the alternative might have looked like.

The factor most likely to draw a thoughtful look to dyed-in-the-wool Clinton supporters is: Trump would still be tweeting.

Re:They imagine it appears honest

[Anonymous Coward]

No.... They just told 4chan to eat cake,

Re:They imagine it appears honest

[Anonymous Coward]

Bernie should be president right now. Dems should have never put Clinton. That was muddy water already from Bill's infidelity. People didn't forget about that.

Sure the Russians put out some propaganda pieces on facebook, and someone busted into email accounts. How much it -really- influenced the actual election? It's pretty much impossible to gauge.

Personally, I think if the Russians hadn't spewed some message they thought might sway voters, someone else would have used the same messages and themes. I really don't think they had much effect. Hillary lost cuz she's pretty obviously corrupt and the wounds from Bill have not healed.

So now we're stuck with Drumpf. The whole Russian investigation seems like this effort to put the blame for this result on someone other than the voters that voted for that bumbling fool. Drumpf appears made of teflon, and no matter how many people around him is revealed to be a criminal, it doesn't seem to matter.

Re:They imagine it appears honest

[phantomfive]

So... is it time for the guillotines yet?

No. Mainly because it's a lot easier to vote them out of office. Oh, you can't vote them out of office? You probably wouldn't have won a revolution, then.

That's how the system is set up: to avoid a revolution by making power changes by other methods easier. It is not a perfect system, but it has solved the problem of periodic revolutions.

Re: They imagine it appears honest

[Anonymous Coward]

What does that even mean? If they can decide who votes and who does not, and which votes are counted and which are not, then they can select whatever outcome they want. The American vote is nullified.

On the other hand, Americans have more guns per capita than any nation on Earth, so an armed rebellion has a greater chance of success than zero...which is the chance that the vote has of success.

Re: They imagine it appears honest

[phantomfive]

What does that even mean? If they can decide who votes and who does not, and which votes are counted and which are not, then they can select whatever outcome they want. The American vote is nullified.

The FCC can be changed by changing the president. You're not going to get many people to fight a revolution over the FCC, sorry.

Re: They imagine it appears honest

[macsimcon]

Actually, the Senate confirms the commissioners, so if they hate who the president nominates, they just leave the seats empty...as they did with President Obama.

Re: They imagine it appears honest

[phantomfive]

So.....you think you could win a revolution over the FCC? Or are you just nitpicking?

Re:They imagine it appears honest

[Anonymous Coward]

Have you lost your marbles? Do you honestly believe that Hillary Clinton would have nominated Ajit Pai for FCC chairman and supported dismantling net neutrality? She and her party support net neutrality.

Do you think that she would have twitter wars on the Internet, let alone with insignificant people the way Trump does daily? Do you think that she would have chosen Betsy DeVos and supported unaccountable voucher programs for public education? Do you think she would need praise heaped upon her daily and have to ask why we can't use nuclear weapons with impunity? Do you think she would put the guy who sued the EPA repeatedly in charge of it, and they guy who said he wants to eliminate the Department Of Energy in charge of it?

I dislike Hillary Clinton but you're a fucking moron if you think there's any kind of equivalency between the two. Her type of corruption is much different from what you're seeing in the GOP.

Re:They imagine it appears honest

[Anonymous Coward]

And don't forget the masses of Dems crossing the lines to vote for Trump in the early open Primaries. Giving him the early momentum crucial to winning the nomination. In the early primaries before his momentum was clearly established, he lost every closed primary. But in the early open primaries he won again and again. In GA (I think it was) Hillary got three million votes less than Obama had 4 years before, and Trump won the primary there with a margin of three million votes.

The evidence is far from conclusive, but highly suspicious that Dems who saw that Hillary was being crowned by the DNC were crossing the lines to pick what they thought would be the weakest candidate the GOP could nominate. Thus ensuring a Dem win. But it backfired, Hillary was such a horrible candidate that she couldn't win even when gifted with the worst candidate from the GOP field.

Re:They imagine it appears honest

[GameboyRMH]

So... is it time for the guillotines yet? When will the public turn on those who are betraying them? When will enough of them even realize they're being betrayed?

I saw an interesting article on this the other day, from a 1%er apologist's perspective, but he raised some interesting facts and perhaps unintentionally made a good argument for something adjacent to his point:

http://fortune.com/2015/03/02/...

The reason Americans don't revolt can be summed up with a reference to the old dirty joke about "the barrel." Because the USA's economic system gives most people a day outside "the barrel" at some point in their lives, Americans as a group are apparently willing to accept a system where most people spend most or all of their lives "in the barrel." It's pretty fucked up.

Re:They imagine it appears honest

[GameboyRMH]

You're just looking at one tip of the iceberg. You might want to give this long essay a read:

http://polaris.gseis.ucla.edu/...

Conservatism in general is not just a misguided, arguably somewhat reasonable pro-business ideology. It's an ancient evil, dressed in a human skinsuit, dressed in a suit and tie, and even many conservatives are not aware of this. Our foe has thousands of years of experience vs. our <300.

Re:They imagine it appears honest

[Baron_Yam]

People are very poor judges of cost vs. reward, especially as you scale both up.

Take the lottery, for instance. We simply can't understand 'millions', and we know people do win the lottery, so it's very difficult to understand the chances of winning the pot. We think they're much better than they are, and few people consider how much even a ticket a week adds up to over time.

Or criminals. The average bank robber or corner drug dealer ends up with less than minimum wage (slightly offset by periodic offers by the state for free room and board). They're underestimating the costs of doing business while overestimating the chance of being one of the few to be extremely successful.

This is life - people are happy with rules that leave them living at a lower standard than objectively necessary for society's functioning because they imagine they will be the exception that will receive an exceptional benefit from those rules. And the really poor simply have no power at all, no say in the matter unless they're willing to revolt - and honestly, even people who are pretty poor in the West have something to lose in a revolution.

Who is left to change things? There aren't enough people with nothing to lose or idealists willing to lose what they have.

Re: They imagine it appears honest

[Altrag]

Not relevant options. Third parties in the US haven't been relevant for.. well I'm not even sure how long. Certainly not since I've been paying attention and I'm fairly . A two-party system is a pretty bad system to be sure, but the US has a hell of a long way to go before you can consider them anywhere even vaguely close to a multi-party system.

Hell, according to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/..., there's only 3 seats in all of Congress currently held by independents and less than a dozen since WW2. And even then, most of them flip-flopped between one of the two major parties and being independent.. not associated with actual third parties just got pissed off at their original party somewhere along the way.

Re:They imagine it appears honest

[Altrag]

Interesting.. though there's two things I'd bring up:
1) Trump may still be tweeting, but few people would care. We would have all forgotten about Hillary completely by now if Hannity and Trump himself didn't keep bringing her up as an attempted smokescreen over things that actually matter. Likewise if Hillary had won, Trump would have been pretty much irrelevant and gone back to talk shows or lion taming or whatever other scheme he'd probably fail at next.

2) No mention of Russian in that article. By the end of the campaign, Hillary was already calling out Russia in a way that sounded disturbingly like she was one step away from declaring war. Now maybe that was all just to promote the Trump/Russia scandal and she would have shut up after taking the Oval Office, but I'm not entirely sure about that. All-out war would maybe have been unlikely (MAD is pretty much still in effect should tensions flare up again..) but another round of proxy wars were definitely sounding plausible.

Re: They imagine it appears honest

[dhawton]

Third parties are only not relevant because people won't vote for a 3rd party because a 3rd party won't win.. but to win, people need to vote 3rd party. Doesn't make a 3rd party relevant at all, just means you're playing into the us vs them 2 party system by continuing to vote in the 2 party system.

Read between the lines

[burtosis]

'Serious' legal argument = money

Drawing a bullseye around the arrow

[quantaman]

Who wants to bet this justification only popped up after they looked over the comments? (and were forced to disregard all the anti-net neutrality bot opinions)

Re: Drawing a bullseye around the arrow

[Anonymous Coward]

That's literally the f'ing point of the article! They data mined the responses, and determined that 1/3rd of them were a form letter, and a good chunk were opinion and not an actual defensible argument. I know we can't be bothered to even comprehend the summary, but come on!

Re: Drawing a bullseye around the arrow

[quantaman]

That's literally the f'ing point of the article! They data mined the responses, and determined that 1/3rd of them were a form letter, and a good chunk were opinion and not an actual defensible argument. I know we can't be bothered to even comprehend the summary, but come on!

I think you missed the point of my comment.

I'm not claiming they looked over the responses, determined that the vast majority didn't fit their criteria for consideration, and then threw them out.

I'm claiming they wanted to kill net neutrality, so they reviewed the responses with the aim of justifying that conclusion, and then chose to interpret and apply their standards in a way that would ignore the overwhelming public support for net neutrality shown in the comments.

Re:Drawing a bullseye around the arrow

[Altrag]

Discounting the spambots is not really an issue.

Its when they discount the form letters produced by organizations such as the EFF and OpenMedia. Sure, the person sending them didn't actually put a whole lot of time or effort (or apparently the only thing the FCC cares about these days -- money) into it, but unlike the bots each one of those form letters still indicates intent by the person who clicked the submit button.

So ignoring those is basically the equivalent of telling millions of people that their opinion literally doesn't matter. Can you imagine what would happen if 2020 comes around and Trump's introduced a new law that states you can't vote without your own lawyer present? That may not be an exact comparison but its startlingly close to what the FCC is doing here by dismissing such form letters.

Re:Drawing a bullseye around the arrow

[mark-t]

The problem is really that organizations like EFF and OpenMedia should not be providing form letters to send in the first place. They should give the person an address to send their remarks to, but absolutely *NONE* of the content of the email should be provided or else they are just setting up a situation where this kind of thing is going to happen.

I've seen this kind of thing happen before, where a federal organization accepts public comments on an issue, and a well-meaning person or organization that wants people to send letters about the matter decides to supply an example of what such a letter should look like. Laziness on the part of the end-user kicks in and everybody just copies and pastes the darn thing, maybe changing only about 10% of it, and causing the organization to ignore all of them.

Re:Drawing a bullseye around the arrow

[quantaman]

The problem is really that organizations like EFF and OpenMedia should not be providing form letters to send in the first place. They should give the person an address to send their remarks to, but absolutely *NONE* of the content of the email should be provided or else they are just setting up a situation where this kind of thing is going to happen.

I've seen this kind of thing happen before, where a federal organization accepts public comments on an issue, and a well-meaning person or organization that wants people to send letters about the matter decides to supply an example of what such a letter should look like. Laziness on the part of the end-user kicks in and everybody just copies and pastes the darn thing, maybe changing only about 10% of it, and causing the organization to ignore all of them.

So did the EFF and OpenMedia make an obvious rookie screw up, or were they following the existing standard whereby form letters were considered?

Re:Drawing a bullseye around the arrow

[mark-t]

I'm not sure what "existing standard" you are talking about. It's common practice for comments that are obviously form letters to be ignored.

Re: Drawing a bullseye around the arrow

[Anonymous Coward]

Read Reddit. Full of submissions that say: "save yer interwebs right to download my little pony from the retardlicans!"

Easy to ignore.

Re: Drawing a bullseye around the arrow

[Anonymous Coward]

They did. When our groups organize a get in touch with your government campaign we provide talking points and tell people to write something themselves. Form letters are acknowledged but largely ignored even by small time elected representatives.

Re:Drawing a bullseye around the arrow

[Cinnamon Beige]

So did the EFF and OpenMedia make an obvious rookie screw up, or were they following the existing standard whereby form letters were considered?

It's an obvious rookie screw up, and I was outright mystified when the EFF directed me to where I could send one in via a helpful web app because it's a well-known one.

It's like they wandered in from some strange, strange alternate universe where form letters are considered and people really do get money from the Nigerian princes who randomly emailed them.

Re:Drawing a bullseye around the arrow

[Anonymous Coward]

Dude, the problem is that Ajit Pai doesn't care what the feedback is, not that the EFF set up a form letter. You could have had every person write in their own words and he would still say that it's the same opinion just expressed differently, and not an "interesting legal argument" of some kind.

You need to look past the obvious and realize that this whole charade has been just for show. If he received only positive robot feedback then that's a great headline, and if he received tons of negative feedback then he just dismisses it and does what he wants anyway.

Re:Drawing a bullseye around the arrow

[Anonymous Coward]

The problem is really that organizations like EFF and OpenMedia should not be providing form letters to send in the first place. They should give the person an address to send their remarks to, but absolutely *NONE* of the content of the email should be provided or else they are just setting up a situation where this kind of thing is going to happen.

Yeah, so they send one letter. And that gets discarded as a minority opinion.

Re: Drawing a bullseye around the arrow

[dwillden]

Sure, insult your allies in this fight. That's always a smart way to lose a battle.

We need to work together across the political divide to fight this. There is extensive opposition to eliminating Net neutrality on both sides. But we can't work together they can divide us with petty political differences and ram this through.

Conservatives and Libertarians would like to see the regulations eliminated, but many/most recognize that the free market can only prevent abuses if it really exists and in much of the country there is not a free market thanks to the protected monopolies that the Cable companies have. Thus until we can kill those protected monopolies it is recognized that we need net neutrality rules to be kept in place. Our reasons for keeping it might not exactly align with yours but if we both want to keep the rules in place, why are you attacking us? They may have been Republicans, but the goal is the same: to protect the Internet. So stop insulting your allies. (ones who might have a bit(a very small bit) more pull with the party in power.

Re:Drawing a bullseye around the arrow

[dwillden]

Disagree. Many who are concerned about this don't feel confident in their understanding or ability to express their understanding of the technical and functional issues of these rules and the impact revoking them will have. A form letter allows those people to say "Me Too" far more eloquently than they could have. And without having a form to submit, they would likely just not submit any statement allowing the FCC to say they were not opposed to the change.

Such form letters allow the usually silent majority to speak up because they can do it quickly and without having to spend hours trying to compose a letter on a topic they might not feel fully comfortable addressing due to lack of in-depth knowledge of the topic.

Every one of those form letters needs to be counted as a statement on the topic. Discount the spambots and non-unique senders. But each letter from a unique individual needs to be counted.

Re:Drawing a bullseye around the arrow

[mark-t]

Such form letters allow the usually silent majority to speak up because they can do it quickly and without having to spend hours trying to compose a letter on a topic they might not feel fully comfortable addressing due to lack of in-depth knowledge of the topic.

In principle, yes... but if they were asking for public comment, then they were expecting public comment, not a public petition, which is actually just one person or one group's comment, with the support of some large number of people that they found who happened to be willing to sign it, because in practice, a mere signature on a petition does not in any way offer credibility that the signer genuinely wanted whatever the petition was, it only offers evidence that they didn't *not* want it badly enough to refuse to sign. The signer's actual opinion may have been far closer to indifference, while an individual letter says that the writer was deeply concerned about the topic. The number of signatures that you need on a petition vs the number of letters that you need to express the same level of concern is different by multiple orders of magnitude. Why is surprising that the FCC is essentially ignoring what they never asked for in the first place?

I don't side with the FCC's decision for a second, but I can't say I'm surprised by it. I didn't know about the form letters by EFF and OpenMedia before, but if I had, I would have stated something about it then.

Re:Drawing a bullseye around the arrow

[mark-t]

Because, quite simply, there weren't enough signatures on just that one letter to warrant giving it the same level of merit that even a fraction of that number of individual letters would have had.

Every individual letter received on a subject is generally going to be worth no less than *HUNDREDS* of such signatures. They asked for opinions, and most of what they got was essentially just a petition. I don't side with the FCC's final decision here for a second, but why is it in any way surprising that they ignored the people who essentially just signed such a petition when that's not what they asked for?

Re:Drawing a bullseye around the arrow

[Altrag]

A public petition _is_ a form of public comment. By your argument we shouldn't hold protests either because the people who care enough to do so will just set up a meeting with those in charge and argue their point directly and succinctly. Or for another analogy, we should can class action lawsuits because if you don't have the time and money to bring your case against a billion dollar corporation, its obviously because you don't care enough right?

Or to put it another way:
- Large company with vested interest in making these kind of changes: Usually have direct access to the decision makers, and can afford an army of lawyers to draft up letters for anything they can't deal with in person.

- Everyone who gets screwed: No direct access to decision makers, and definitely not enough money to hire lawyers.

Petitions are there to fill the gap between those two extremes, as there's precious little else playing around in the middle ground. Even your vote is basically just a petition (especially in the US where the electoral college can happily ignore you and pick whatever candidate they want.) Should we also ignore any voters who didn't draft a personal, in-depth level of intent?

Re:Drawing a bullseye around the arrow

[Altrag]

Maybe.. though I'd say closer to dozens than hundreds. Even taking the larger number though, we're talking about petitions that among them have several _million_ signatures. Do you really think there's tens of thousands of people on the other side who wrote personalized letters along the lines of "I don't pay enough for my internet and I'm sick of free speech so please screw me over some more cause.. freedom?!"?

that's not what they asked for?

Because apparently by your logic, and theirs, "what they asked for" amounts to "things that agree with us." Even ignoring the petitions I'd be extremely surprised to find that there were more people in favor of killing the internet than saving it, never mind by any sort of a significant margin. Shockingly, they don't bother releasing those numbers. They just tell you they're going to ignore you if you didn't happen to have the time and knowledge (and apparently a fucking lawyer) to draft a "legal" document stating your opinion.

Re:Drawing a bullseye around the arrow

[mark-t]

Because apparently by your logic, and theirs, "what they asked for" amounts to "things that agree with us."

That's an assumption that may very well be true, but there's no reason to assume that when an entirely plausible reason exists for ignoring what essentially amounts to spam unless you make the presumption that was their agenda the whole time, which, if anybody had actually believed, would have meant that nobody would have written letters at all.

Clearly there is a demographic that was willing to give them the benefit of the doubt.

That said, it's also fairly obvious that is still the direction they were leaning toward, and it would have fallen to the respondents to convince them otherwise. But discounting the ignored letters, there simply wasn't a sufficient response to merit such reconsideration. If nobody had made up a form letter for people to send, and if even just a tenth of those people who may have otherwise submitted the form letter would have instead written their own, we may very well have seen a very different outcome by now.

We'll never know for sure... but it's not rational to conclude that they were never really interested in people's views simply because of how things turned out because a very reasonable explanation exists for why it has happened, and this is quite far from the first time this sort of thing has happened, where mass mailings of a form letter completely backfired on the people who bothered to send one.

FCC ignored your comment

[rsilvergun]

unless you asked for NN to be abolished. I have no idea why anyone is surprised. We put a political party in charge that is against the government regulating private enterprise. They never made any secret of this, ever. It's a central plank of their party. They control the House, Senate, presidency and soon the Judiciary. They control the State and local legislatures. They control literally all of government except a few parts of NY & CA.

Fact is the vast majority of people oppose gov't regulation except when it's something they want regulated. But it doesn't work that way. You can't have a functioning government except when you don't. You can't have a gov't that looks out for your interests but not your neighbors (well, not unless you're very, very rich). Elections have consequences. Here's one right now.

Re:FCC ignored your comment

[Anonymous Coward]

Elections have consequences. Here's one right now.

If you were 18 or over last November and didn't vote for Hillary, then this is your fault -- especially if you didn't vote, or if you voted for a 3rd party.

Re:FCC ignored your comment

[Anonymous Coward]

or if you voted for a 3rd party.

Fuck you, Hillary was already guaranteed to win my state. Remember, the term "swing state" exists for a reason.

Re:FCC ignored your comment

[QuesarVII]

Like it or not, that's not the way it works with our electoral voting system.

I voted for Bernie since the DNC stole the nomination from him. However, I did it in a state that was a practical guaranteed win for Hillary (which she did). Had I been worried that she had any chance of losing the state, I would have voted for her. I don't think I deserve any blame for what we ended up with from that choice.

Re: FCC ignored your comment

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry.. you don't understand voting if you blame people for not voting a specific way. Votes do not belong to certain candidates. I vote for freedom... If I didn't vote Johnson, I'd have voted for Keninston, then Castle. Hillary and Trump aren't worth voting for. Just because a third party person voted third party doesn't mean they'd have voted a specific way otherwise. Greens didn't steal from Democrats, libertarians didn't steal from Republicans or Democrats. The vote doesn't belong to any party, it belongs and is placed by the people. Self governance and freedom are two points that must be fought for by the candidate to win my vote. Hillary supports neither, she'd never get my vote in a billion years. Trump has his own flaws, he'd get it the year before Hillary but no sooner.

Aka, enough with the blame game.

Re:FCC ignored your comment

[JoeMerritt]

"They control literally all of government except a few parts of NY & CA."

should say:

"They control much of government except NY, CA, CO, CT, DE, HI, IL, MD, MA, NV, NJ, NM, OR, RI, VT, and WA."

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...

Doesn't sound as sensational though, after all we'd expect a two party system in first past the post voting, and we'd further expect those two parties to fluctuate between being in charge cyclically, as they have.

As for the meat of the article - saying opinions weren't weighed heavily when making a legal decision is exactly what they should be doing. We should not be ruled by opinions, but by fact and logical application of the law.

I believe internet service is in the same category as water/electric/sewer. In practice in the US you have no real option. If you want cable internet you have one provider, one DSL provider, one electricty provider, one sewer provider. I can't decline electric/cable internet/sewer service from my current provider and pay a different company, they don't exist. Any monopoly should be heavily incentivized to reorganize (legislatively if necessary) in such a manner that there is healthy competition. Failure to do so is on both parties.

Re:FCC ignored your comment

[Altrag]

Except in the case of NN, they aren't really regulating private industry. They're regulating public access to the internet. Just like they regulate what can be dumped into the public water supply for example. Sure the regulations negatively impact upstream businesses that now have to find other ways to dispose of their waste, but that's not the damned point.

The point is not regulating it leaves the system wide open for abuse by companies that don't give a shit whether you live or die as long as they get paid. Sure the internet isn't as life-and-death as poisoned drinking water, but its still a pretty damned significant public good in the modern world.

Re:FCC ignored your comment

[Anonymous Coward]

OK let me open that although I abhor this legislation... our current president is meeting another campaign promise he made which can't be said by the previous administration.

Having said that... have any of you comprehended that net neutrality as a policy (as it wasn't "law" it was just a policy) only started in February of 2015? How did we survive before that year? We must protect the children!

Sure this is a victory for the content providers.. but when was it not? When did you notice that your streaming of the latest videos from youtube got "better" in 2015? I didn't notice it myself.. maybe I'm in a different demographic/provider combo.

The only truly sad part.. is the OPs reference that the FCC isn't listening to the comments. Hell yes I threw out a thesis statement to the FCC but for some reason they never responded.

This and ONLY this is a core part of the problem... and a contention as the FCC cannot create law they can only affect policy. To add to this.. the FCC is attempting to decry and surreptitiously overlook and ignore the 10th Amendment. Maybe our only response.. is this amendment as the FCC can't overrule the constitution.. but it will only work if we contact our state senators and congress.. and voice our dismay. I'm already crafting an email as I type in another browser tab...

This isn't about Democrat or Republican though some will decry it so... this is about our constitution and its guidelines that can restrict the enaction of policy based on the needs of big business at the loss of the people =P

Peace out.

Re:FCC ignored your comment

[Anonymous Coward]

Allowing a business to charge based on the quantity or type of service the consumer (a person or other company) uses is a bad thing?

Re: FCC ignored your comment

[Anonymous Coward]

And here it still doesnâ(TM)t matter. The electoral collage votes for the president. It the people. If you went off of popular vote Hillary would have actually won. Also some people seem to forget that members of the electoral collage are not bound by their constituents but can vote what ever way they want. Voting in the us has been an illusion for many years.

Re: FCC ignored your comment

[Anonymous Coward]

You are mostly right, but Roberts, Kennedy, Alito, Thomas, and Gorsuch are all Republican appointees. So all three branches have an R majority.

Re: FCC ignored your comment

[Anonymous Coward]

When the same business then serves as a gatekeeper with the ability to block open discourse and there aren't free market providers that don't, yes, it's bad.

Re: FCC ignored your comment

[Anonymous Coward]

Only because minority party people in guaranteed states didn't vote. No one knows how a true popular vote would have turned out.

Re:FCC ignored your comment

[Actually, I do RTFA]

have any of you comprehended that net neutrality as a policy (as it wasn't "law" it was just a policy) only started in February of 2015? How did we survive before that year?

Before that the FTC had similar rules. Then the courts decided the FTC didn't have jurisdiction, the FCC did. The FCC then implemented net neutrality rules. There was a brief period in between when a lot of shenanigans, esp. by Verizon, were started.

Re:FCC ignored your comment

[Anonymous Coward]

I have no idea why anyone is surprised.

I don't think anyone is surprised. We're just outraged.

Re:FCC ignored your comment

[Anonymous Coward]

You can't have a gov't that looks out for your interests but not your neighbors (well, not unless you're very, very rich). Elections have consequences. Here's one right now.

The Republican-appointed FCC chairman did this, yes. And the Democrats rather heavily supported SOPA and have been trying to get it past under our noses ever since, except worse (think TPP's many nasty provisions that have nothing to do with trade).

I'd do a lot more research to refute this, but to be honest, I doubt you'll read it. Your blind adherence to the narrative is to your own detriment. Neither party is innocent or good here, and we'd "merely" have draconian Internet regulation and probable censorship in the name of copyright enforcement if Hillary was elected. This kind of rigid, party-centric thinking is what's going to be our undoing.

Re: FCC ignored your comment

[macsimcon]

Are you sure you are old enough to vote? Maybe you just do not understand voting in America.

In our system, one of the two major parties will win nearly every time, so you are wasting your vote when you vote for a third party.

Time to grow up and be practical.

Re: FCC ignored your comment

[macsimcon]

Why does the right always haul out the Tenth Amendment? It has no relevancy here.

Re: FCC ignored your comment

[macsimcon]

Sure. What if they charge less for Fox News because they own the website? Or, what if they slow down news sites in general to force customers into signing up for a cable bundle of several channels, all owned by their network, which is far more profitable than providing bandwidth?

Re:FCC ignored your comment

[misnohmer]

Is this government removing other related regulations, like the land easements that allow Telco's to plow through my property and lay they fiber there rent free? It is my understanding that they were granted those because they were a public utility, therefore regulated for the benefit of the public.If the FCC and the current political party get they wants want to deregulate the Telcos, great, let the Comcasts of the world negotiate with each individual property owner how much rent they want for running cables through their land. They want to charge more to carry traffic from EFF, no problem, I want to charge them unregulated rent for their fibers going through my property, or come dig it out and take it with you (it's only $10 per month for the first 6 months, regular rates apply after that, subject to change without notice).

I suspect than unfortunately that is no the case here. The government will deregulate what traffic the telcos carry and how much they charge, but they will continue to protect the Telco effective monopoly with regulation forcing me to allow them to use my land for their business. Oh yes, legally it's not a monopoly because there is more than one Telco, so I guess my argument is not legally sound.

Re: FCC ignored your comment

[djinn6]

By that logic, everyone should've voted Trump. After all, if you voted for someone who didn't win, it's a wasted vote!

Republicans don't like democracy

[Anonymous Coward]

.. and Trump less so.

Public opinion, facts, science - these things don't agree with Republican ideology so get left by the wayside.

The Democrats are no angels, but the Republican party should go die a terrible death somewhere and be replaced with fiscal conservatives who are also, simultaneously, adults with three digit IQs.

Don't even get me started on the obvious corruption involved in this and many other government decisions, again primarily butchering the US body politic at the hands of the Republican party.

Re: Republicans don't like democracy

[dhawton]

We're not a democracy.

Re: Republicans don't like democracy

[FudRucker]

the usa started out as a federal republic but as since degenerated in to a corporate fascist kleptocracy

Hold Music

[freeze128]

You know when you're on hold with a company's support line, and a reassuring voice tells you that "Your call is important to us", and you mutter under your breath "Yeah, right" because you know that they really don't care, but they have to make it look like they do?

Your call isn't important to the FCC, and they don't care if you know.

Re:Hold Music

[ScentCone]

Your call isn't important to the FCC, and they don't care if you know.

Because if your call is you reading from the same form letter that seven million other people have read to them over the phone, your call isn't shining ANY new light on the situation. How are you not getting this?

Re:Hold Music

[djinn6]

A single drop of water can't hurt you, but a billion drops of water will. Quantity has a quality all its own.

No Suprise?

[Anonymous Coward]

Legalese and methods of law have often been used to confuse the People into giving their rights away. A good example is the 14th amendment's "united states citizen", which initialized the position. Prior to the 14th the federal citizenship didn't exist. upon accepting and acknowledging federal citizenship, one becomes subject to the jurisdiction of the federal government.

Title: FCC Ignored Your Net Neutrality Comment.

[whoever57]

The title should read:
"FCC Ignored Your Net Neutrality Comment."

The explanation is just a pretence. Remember how the FCC didn't want to investigate all those anti-net-neutrality robo-submissions?

There is simply no rational explanation other than malice under which robo-submissions with one point of view would be accepted while what appear to be genuine, but assisted, submissions with the opposite point of view would be ignored.

Re:Title: FCC Ignored Your Net Neutrality Comment.

[Anonymous Coward]

While the progressives are spinning up outrage, the law is very clear about the comments, and the FCC followed it. The campaign to get you to send comments was merely an effort to get you upset.

The comments period is specifically to get new information. If you do not provide new information or contest some data they used to make the decision, the agencies can not and may not use your letter. Robot-letters, in particular,, are useless as they're very easy to dismiss. Read the first one, toss the rest, no useful information. Reword the robot ether, the. You've spent $10 of bureaucrat time putting it in the same bin as the robo-letters. With a crank letter citing random parts of the law and made up data, then you burn several hours of bureaucrat time debunking it. Cite relevant parts of the law or sourced data? Then your argument gets presented to the board with either a concurrence and change, concurrence no change (very rare) or a counter argument to your point.

Re:Title: FCC Ignored Your Net Neutrality Comment.

[Anonymous Coward]

There's no point to investigating robo submissions, this isn't any sort of vote, nor does the number of comments mean a damned thing. The only thing that matters is whether or not you could convince them.

Sadly, I think the only argument that would convince them is $$$. This was a really dumb decision.

No Surprise

[rea1l1]

It is certainly not the first time confusing legalese & methodology of law was utilized to defy the will of the People, often in such a way as to encourage the ignorant into surrendering their rights to government. See the United States (Federal) Citizen first initialized in the 14th amendment. Prior to the 14th, the Federal Government had no method to direct the average man or woman, but by accepting & acknowledging the position of the federal citizen (initially created for freed slaves), federal jurisdiction is accepted in many cases. Prior to the 14th, only State Citizens existed.

Citizen != united states citizen

Re: No Surprise

[AntronArgaiv]

I decline to create joinder with you.

Re: No Surprise

[macsimcon]

Honestly, where do you come up with this drivel? Article I. Article II. Article VI. The Thirteenth Amendment. Each of these contains rules the Federal government imposes on the states, and the American citizens within those states.

Dear FCC, this is your boss speaking..

[mrwireless]

Imagine if this happened..

The people rally: "we want you to forbid the use of lead in paint in childrens toys, as thousands of children have died!"
The EPA: sorry, but you didn't use the correct legal verbiage.

or

The people rally: "we think its morally wrong that black people are only allowed to sit in the back of the bus".
The transport authority: sorry, you forgot to fill out the form in triplicate.

Making this about following procedure displays a willing tone deafness to the larger moral debate the American people are trying to have. If the FCC takes the american people seriously, the very least they should do is offer a sincere response to the implicit but very real message they have been served. Optimally, they would understand that with an overwhelming response like this, you should interpret the situation as if it were a democracy.

This is like a clerk (FCC) telling the CEO (the people) that he doesn't feel obliged to take her wishes seriously, as the regular procedure is that orders come from middle management.

Re:Dear FCC, this is your boss speaking..

[Anonymous Coward]

It isn't a just matter of deafness. It might be possible to argue that the FCC Commissioners are acting in bad faith. By setting a standard of legal argument they have suborned the interests of the the citizens they are sworn to protect. Maybe AG Sessions should start another investigation. (Smile)

Re: Dear FCC, this is your boss speaking..

[macsimcon]

Maybe Congress should exercise its oversight authority over the FCC? You know, because that is part of their job and all.

Quid pro quo... Whom does the FCC serve?

[fustakrakich]

Will corruption ever be a serious election issue?

Personally

[ASCIIxTended]

Personally I would rather not have the FCC involved with the Internet at all. Next thing you know they'll be taking over the DNS system, then will come 'licenses' for websites and email addresses. The FCC licenses for TV and AM/FM radio can be a significant amount of money, for which they really do nothing.

It's a deliberative process that weighs a lot of..

[Anonymous Coward]

donations and favor bank deposits.

Boycott the Internet?

[Anonymous Coward]

If FCC removed Net Neutrality, would you still want to use the internet?
Would boycotting the internet be an option ?
What about a short internet boycott (like a day) as a protest ?

Re:Boycott the Internet?

[Anonymous Coward]

How about sue the first ISP that discriminates with you for tortuous interference. How about encourage your neighbors to do the same. One jury overturned = bad jury. Fifty juries overturned = bad judge.

Restoring Internet Freedom

[bugs2squash]

Now all they need to do is pick a sarcastic name for the declaration

it is obvious now

[FudRucker]

since Trump took office how the govt has been reconfigured to be lackys for the corporate vulture capitalists, and that dirty snake in the grass Soros spammed the FCC trying to act like he is for the little people when he is just another rich pig like trump, Soros basically destroyed any chance the little people had by filling the FCC inboxes with bot spam,

Did you vote for Bernie

[rsilvergun]

In the primary? If not you screwed up. I don't care what your reasons were, you done screwed up.

Re:Did you vote for Bernie

[Anonymous Coward]

Nope, the Dems forced Hillary down everyone's throats and we flat rejected that. I hate Trump. Yeah worse than Hillary, but that doesn't mean I'm going to vote for what repulses me. Instead I voted for the only canidate still in the race saying the things I wanted hear. Sorry that wasn't your chosen bitch.

Re:Did you vote for Bernie

[sjames]

My vote in the Democratic primary literally didn't matter, there was a thumb on the scale. Either way, Hillary was the DNC candidate for president, so certainly nobody "failing" to vote for her in the primary changed anything.

Re:Did you vote for Bernie

[Anonymous Coward]

Sorry you have to deal with the consequences of your action. Again, this is partly your fault. But at least you have principles, amiright?

Re:Did you vote for Bernie

[Anonymous Coward]

My vote in the Democratic primary literally didn't matter, there was a thumb on the scale. Either way, Hillary was the DNC candidate for president, so certainly nobody "failing" to vote for her in the primary changed anything.

Your vote matters. Sure there may have been a thumb on the scale, but enough support and Bernie would have won it and more support for Hillary might have helped her momentum. Even in non swing states, it is possible to change the usual result.

The electoral college is a huge thumb on the scale in favor of republicans. It is basically the original gerrymandering. Trump would still have lost if more people got out and voted for Hillary.

Sure it wasn't fair the way the press swooned for Trump. Sure Hillary was a poor candidate. Sure the what decades they have spent ginning up hate against her isn't fair. Sure it is not fair to blame a wife for defending her husband. Sure the Russian involvement and Comey's involvement wasn't fair.

It is not as if the unfairness doesn't matter. No, it just makes it even more important for everyone to get informed and get out and vote, so the victory isn't by a tiny margin, but rather an overwhelming margin.

So now the FCC is taking the comments, flushing them, and using it to help businesses screw over the internet, and cause incalculable damage long term to our country. All that proves is elections have consequences. The good thing is if we can elect some decent people, at all levels of government the damaged can be undone. That doesn't mean just federal elections in 18 and 20, but every election at every level for every office.

The problem is that with the power they gained, it becomes harder and harder to undo what they did. They now control a lot of the media. Their people are going to be in control of who gets their content delivered fast and timely and who doesn't. Perhaps we will get free fox news streaming and feeds from Sinclair media. Who knows. Most likely they will be more subtle about it. You can bet your personal information and browsing habits will end up sold, if it hasn't already. At some point you just have to stop caring and keep up the good fight.

Freedom is not won and done. It is a continuous process that must be continuously fought for, but the most important thing is to get informed and vote.

Re:Did you vote for Bernie

[sjames]

You're missing it. Me voting for Hillary in the *P*R*I*M*A*R*Y* wouldn't have changed a thing. She did win that after all. My vote for Sanders didn't change anything, he didn't win.

My best hope is that the DNC has learned not to thumb the scale so next election when the GOP again offers up a rogue's gallery the Ds can pick someone who will win.

Re:Did you vote for Bernie

[Anonymous Coward]

You're missing it. Me voting for Hillary in the *P*R*I*M*A*R*Y* wouldn't have changed a thing. She did win that after all. My vote for Sanders didn't change anything, he didn't win.

My best hope is that the DNC has learned not to thumb the scale so next election when the GOP again offers up a rogue's gallery the Ds can pick someone who will win.

I saw it. I stated. "Your vote matters. Sure there may have been a thumb on the scale, but enough support and Bernie would have won it and more support for Hillary might have helped her momentum. Even in non swing states, it is possible to change the usual result."

Basically half the problem is people are certain their vote doesn't matter, one way or another, and don't vote, when the reality is if everyone or just a lot of the people who believed their vote didn't matter voted, then it would matter.

The biggest thing the DNC had were the super delegates and such. I'm okay with removing them, though they might have stopped trump on the other side. If we are going to have primaries and such, then we need a better voting system, involving multiple rounds to get people voted off the island, or ranked voting or something like that, since otherwise you get the this one is not like the others problem.

Re:Did you vote for Bernie

[sjames]

I didn't say my vote never matters. The subject was who is to blame for the situation we have now. My vote was for not the current situation and it literally changed nothing (or we would have a very different situation now). That doesn't mean I won't vote again next time or that it will be equally ineffective.

Had the DNC wanted a candidate with momentum, they would have given him the nod or at least not the brick wall. It was actually so blatant that some of the delegates were escorted out and others held a "fart in" in protest.

She won the primary and she was running against perhaps the most repulsive opponent possible without resorting to a convicted serial killer. If she had a chance, that was it for sure.

Re:Did you vote for Bernie

[kenh]

My best hope is that the DNC has learned not to thumb the scale so next election when the GOP again offers up a rogue's gallery the Ds can pick someone who will win.

You understand that the very reason the Democrats have "Super Delegates" is explicitly to keep Democrat Voters from nominating anyone they like - the Republican primary process allowed for literally anyone to wander in, capture the hearts and minds of the common voter and "steal" the nomination from the party's preferred candidate. Remember, the GOP didn't want Trump as it's candidate, it was forced to accept it when Trump won the primaries.

The Democrats picked someone that should have won, but she choose to ignore several staunchly democrat states and take the voters there for granted, costing her just enough votes to lose the election. Instead of campaigning in PA, MI, WI, etc. HRC repeatedly went back to CA to milk ever more campaign funds from rich Hollywood types... Now she has a fat bank account, but she lost the election.

Re:Did you vote for Bernie

[sjames]

In fact, I do know that. Nevertheless, I hope that they have learned that actually using that ability can cost them everything. That if they would like to win the general election, they will pick the person the rank and file like.

Government of the people

[Anonymous Coward]

So much for "government of the people, by the people, for the people".

"Opinion" is the legal requirement.

[mutantSushi]

It's BS and flies in the face of actual function of FCC. FCC is not a court whose edicts are purely resolutions of existing law. They decide policy which is ultimately an expression of opinions and choices. Anybody who has purely legal opinion can express it by bringing the matter to court and judging FCC policy based on purely legal matters. Pure public "opinion" is precisely what the FCC is legally supposed to take into account. No federal agency required to consider public opinion has ever claimed this interpretation AFAIK. (and if FCC believes this is legal requirement, would it not overturn all past federal regulations which illegally took into consideration public opinions which are not strict legal arguments?) Never mind that FCC has not enunciated a clear objective standard to discern "legal argument" from non-legal "opinion". There just isn't such a sharp distinction when one considers the philosophical fundamentals of judicial process. Courts consider opinions ALL THE TIME which are not strict functions of law, even if the latter is prioritized.

The fact that they now openly admit refusing to consider public "opinion" that is not legal argument is in fact a great legal argument to overturn their NN decision for not following legal requirement to consider public OPINION. Of course, they can re-run process and say they came to same conclusion while taking into account the public opinions, but at least that delays them by some years and messes them up.

they should have to take it one way or the other

[Anonymous Coward]

if the comments are to get the views of the public they should count the number of non unique ones

If they are only looking at legal opinions, ONE valid argument should be enough!

They made you jump through so many hoops

[Wild_dog!]

Who has the time.
The FCC made it so difficult for me to comment.
I can see why lots of people had to resort to form letters and spam-like tactics.

It took me about 15 minutes of life just to wade through the obstacles thrown in front of me to voice my displeasure with this decision.

And I am not a lawyer so framing things in a legal jargon context is not really in my wheelhouse.

But I do have an opinion as do the many other millions who voiced their opinions and those are as valid as anything.

This is all just smoke and mirrors, but if people remain angry enough about this sort of thing, then vote congress out and get a new congress which will actually pass legislation that betters things for the citizens over corporate interests in gouging every last waning cent our of a declining middle class.

Business can really invest when people just continue to lose ground and find themselves having to choose whether any service is worth their while.
A downward spiral on society does nobody any good.

Re:They made you jump through so many hoops

[kenh]

Seven and a half million people saying "ditto" just increases the workload and adds nothing to the argument.

But I do have an opinion as do the many other millions who voiced their opinions and those are as valid as anything.

Who cares what your opinion is, if you can't make a factual argument based on legal principles, don't waste your time.

This is like a town council meeting, and everyone in town wants to get up and read the editorial from the local newspaper into the record because it expresses their "opinion". How long must the council members sit there and listen to the same argument over and over again?

Re:They made you jump through so many hoops

[Wild_dog!]

"Seven and a half million people saying "ditto" just increases the workload and adds nothing to the argument."

Perhaps you miss the point of public comment. It is a chance for people to voice how they feel about the proposed changes.
And it isn't an argument. It is expression of support or not.

"Who cares what your opinion is, if you can't make a factual argument based on legal principles, don't waste your time."
Opinions and commentary is what they are asking for that is why it is important.

What do you mean about factual argument or legal principles exactly? Public commentary is virtually never about legal principles.

This is public commentary about a policy change. It is about what people want and how they feel about the policy change that they are expressing. This simply is not about having a novel approach to an argument. Certainly some may choose to elaborate extensively on the ins and outs of the legality largely out of ignorance, but if some people take a more succinct approach like "This sucks" they have every right to do so and it is a synopsis of their desire on the proposal. Why? Because these things affect our lives and it is important to acknowledge how people feel.

How many actual factual / legal arguments can be made anyhow? 2-3.... 5 possibly??? No matter how many factual/legal arguments there are.... each will be repeated hundreds of thousands to millions of times saying fundamentally the same thing. But public commentary simply is not about that. It is about registering whether one agrees or not. A tally of the sentiment of the population if it were. Thus it doesn't matter if people wish to jump ahead and put forth something which expresses their viewpoint such as a chain letter. That doesn't invalidate the fact that they chose to express themselves in such a way. How many people didn't express themselves at all because they found the process too tedious to do.

Ditto does add to the equation when individuals in the millions choose to say "Ditto".

"How long must the council members sit there and listen to the same argument over and over again?"

As long as it takes. That is part of their job... Otherwise why are they there? Why even bother with a public meeting? Why even listen to constituencies if the politician or policy maker doesn't need input by the citizens.
Why... because it matters and peoples voices should be heard.

The FCC is a joke; we'd be better off ending it

[Anonymous Coward]

As much as I'm for net neutrality in the sense that packets should all be treated equal I'm against the FCC's existence. If you censor or manipulate packets in some way than you aren't actually providing internet access and that should constitute fraud if you advertise it as such.

The problem with the FCC is it is another bureaucratic organization that doesn't listen to the demands or needs of the population. It's deceptive and manipulative. It has routinely manipulated people into thinking it's not doing evil even when it was. What we get from the FCC and organizations like it are locked down routers and public relations stunts that make it appear as though people just don't understand what the FCC and its ilk are doing. But the reality is they know exactly what they are doing and are manipulating the public into thinking certain opponents are just crazy. Well, we still don't have source code for any MODERN 802.11ac wifi chips. hmm I wonder why???? The FCC outlawed it and undermined our efforts to get code released and then told the public "we didn't mandate lock down", no, no you just rewrote some things and the effect is all the same.

Our government acts as though it is doing something for us. All the while they're working against us and for a select elite. Even the wording of this slashdot post and that of the officials implies they DON'T LISTEN TO ANYBODY BUT SPECIAL INTERESTS AND THE ELITE!

The number of schemes that have been devised to deprive us of our assets and resources in the name of "safety" or other emotional fear boggles my mind. A right to protest is meaningless if governments can just ignore the people and the people do nothing in response. The amount of deception that the public buys into is just ming boggling.

What I propose is the elimination of the FCC and other government organizations at all levels. There is no point funding organizations that don't benefit us and only trickle the smallest amount of money back such that we end up being dependent on them when we otherwise could all benefit from independence of our wealth and being able to make our own decisions on where its best spent. I'm not claiming that there is no good from protocols. I like protocols. It's just government has done nothing to prove it can be trusted and everything to demonstrate it can't. The government and our corporate masters can't be trusted to form protocols.

In the process of government doing good the vast majority of our resources have been stolen from us and redistributed to others. Whether it's to house the impoverished or to benefit an elite it needs to end. I get the argument for health care for all. Great idea- but it doesn't work well or at least sanely from a cost analysis perspective. Sure you get some minimal level of care- but not the care you should have gotten from what you paid. What we end up with when we pass these government programs is an increasing cost to our collective financial well being. The people who ultimately actually end up benefiting are not those such programs have been proposed for.

This goes back a long ways. From copy"right" being a LIMITED monopoly to promote the arts and sciences for the public benefit (ie 7 years! not 120 years for which it has been extended to) to the modern wealth redistribution schemes involving everything from mandatory car insurance, health insurance, wars, and even social security. Some good or necessary, but not when implemented by force or threat of violence. Every time the government implements a "safety" law like sex offender lists (made up mostly of people committing crimes for which there were NO actual victims, ie pissing in a garbage can at 2am that happens to be near a playground is one of the common causes of college students ending up on these lists and having there lives ruined) and the war on drugs someone else benefits (ie the prison industrial complex). They use fear and pummel the idea that these wealth redistribution schemes will ensure everybody has a good standard of living. The reality is often the oppos

Numbers legally matter due to democracy

[cmcqueen1975]

The numbers of comments should legally matter, because USA is allegedly a representational democracy. It is supposed to be a "government of the people, by the people, for the people". So if millions of people express their opinion, then that is legally relevant.

Nonsense

[argStyopa]

".... it still feels brazen hearing the commission staff repeatedly discount Americans' preference for consumer protections, simply because they aren't phrased in legal terms...."

You mean, they should have instead set up a whole website to let people submit opinions that they simply ignored, instead? (cf https://petitions.whitehouse.g...)

Which is more disingenuous? Telling people you need to make a cogent POINT, and then they'll bother to read it? Or telling people they have a voice...but you actually ignore it completely?

Loser hand-wringing

[Anonymous Coward]

" In fairness to the commission"

Oh for Pete's sake! This is why they win and you lose. Even when they act appallingly you wring your hands and make excuses for them. So they keep swinging a piece of wood against your head and you keep excusing their behavior. It's why they win and you lose. It's survival of the fittest and you are a weak and pathetic specimen. Ajit Pai is a piece of shit but he's smarter than you and that's why he wins.

Say freakin' WHAT?

[buss_error]

The FCC has been clear all year that it's focused on "quality" over "quantity" when it comes to comments on net neutrality.

That's like saying "We only count votes from quality people. The total of the vote doesn't matter."

Re:Say freakin' WHAT?

[ScentCone]

That's like saying "We only count votes from quality people. The total of the vote doesn't matter."

No, it's not like that at all. It's like saying, "We are a federal regulatory agency making policy decisions, and when we hear new information we think about it, and when we hear the exact same thing said for the seven millionth time, it sheds no new light and isn't any more persuasive in legal or constitutional terms than it was the first time we heard those exact same words from the exact same form letter."

Re:Say freakin' WHAT?

[Anonymous Coward]

The total vote count doesn't matter. It isn't an election. There was no voting. They asked for COMMENTS and are focusing on what those comments said.

Re:Say freakin' WHAT?

[kenh]

No, it's like saying we only count votes from people that can follow instructions and clearly punch the ballot, not dimple it or create a hanging chad.

It really is quite reasonable that the FCC reviews the comments and considers those that add something to the conversation, not treating all responses equally. I'm quite certain the majority of the non-unique comments were rambling, mis-informed statements of personal opinion which are, literally, meaningless to the discussion at hand.

Re:Say freakin' WHAT?

[Cinnamon Beige]

This was a request for comments, not votes. This is pretty much exactly what I expected when I saw that I was being offered a form letter instead of a petition.

What you should be offended by is the fact that the people leading the efforts on letting the FCC know that a lot of people would prefer net neutrality chose to do it by having us all spam them. A petition or donations to help pay for sending in a very nice, very well-done legal argument in its favor would have been more effective. I was pretty much expecting this result when I saw it was a form letter instead.

i.d. the free

[Anonymous Coward]

The bottom line is we've become dependent on the internet for everything that was "their goal" and now they have us.

All systems go
Security clause
Passing of laws
Reality
Silence, in the air
Silence, in the air
Acceptance
Information from birth
Animals are first
Then man
Silent weapons for a quiet war
ID
Not free
For me
You can't escape

Killing Joke
Implant

\o/

[easyTree]

this isn't an open vote. It's a deliberative process that weighs a lot of different factors to create policy that balances the interests of big business

Medical analogy

[Anonymous Coward]

May they and theirs all die of a cancer the doctors just refuse to treat -- "I'm sorry, but you really haven't stated your symptoms in medical terms"

Re:Medical analogy

[Anonymous Coward]

Maybe they shouldn't have walked into the doctor's office with a printout of the wiki article, said "These are my symptoms", then left?

There were thumbs on the scale for Jeb too

[rsilvergun]

but Trump still won. He won because people came out for him.

Re:There were thumbs on the scale for Jeb too

[sjames]

Yes, but my vote for Sanders in the PRIMARY didn't contribute to that in any way.

OTOH, had the DNC not thumbed the scale, Sanders probably could have brought out the vote in the general election.

The GOP may indeed have tried to thumb the scale for Jeb but it slipped apparently (and the results weren't close).

If you want to blame someone for Trump, blame Trump voters and the leaders of the DNC and GOP.

Re: There were thumbs on the scale for Jeb too

[macsimcon]

An establishment candidate will not win against a populist, and that is where the DNC blew it: Clinton versus Trump, no contest.

They got their populist, while we were denied ours.

They control the state legistatures

[rsilvergun]

the House, the Senate, etc. There were a couple votes away from a constitutional convention and don't think they didn't notice that.

We're a two party system. And there are lots of folks in the other party who are basically Republicans with a 'D' next to their name (Dianne Feinstein, Joe Manchin & Chuck Schumer come to mind). So yeah, they control everything. They figured this shit out in the 60s when they started making Abortion & Gun Control into wedge issues to isolate the working class.

You're splitting hairs

[rsilvergun]

in a desperate attempt to find a way to get what you want without accepting the consequences. Trying to eat your cake and have it to. I've got a buddy who's a type-1 diabetic with right wing parents he idolizes who does the same thing. He desperately needs socialism because his illness means he can't hold a job. At the very least he need socialized medicine or he plain dies. He knows this, he's smart. But he's emotional, and doesn't want to go against those right wing parents of his (who kinda turn a blind eye to the whole 'socialized medicine is keeping our son alive' thing). So if you press him on his solution to health care he says he wants to force the insurance companies to sell him it at a price he can afford even if it's at a loss, and the government will make up the difference. Basically socialism by way of a private company getting 20% of the gross cost for literally no reason. I've pointed this out to him a few times and he conceded the point but didn't change his politics. That's your problem in a nutshell. Either we take care of everybody or we take care of nobody. When it comes to basic services, utilities and rights there can be no half measures. Anything less just gets picked apart over a few decades by greedy assholes.

Re:You're splitting hairs

[Anonymous Coward]

Basically socialism by way of a private company getting 20% of the gross cost for literally no reason.

This was always the problem with the ACA. Socialized medicine would be an improvement over the waste here.

FCC Ignore Soros' Net Neutrality Comments

[Anonymous Coward]

Fixed the headline for you. Everyone knows Soros had a HUGE bot net for submitting comments. It was exposed some time ago. This is what happens when BILLIONAIRES use their resources to spam - real comments and concerns from ordinary citizens get ignored in the mix. Don't like it? Don't use Soros's bots to do your dirty work.

Fake?

[Luthair]

Wonder how they consider the emails fake? A lot of political activism often involves form letters so its hardly surprising that they recieved a lot of duplicates.

Re:Fake?

[kenh]

A malformed email address is fake. An email address that bounces when an email is sent to it can be considered fake.

That 7.5 million "people" chose to send the same comment is really quite remarkable, that's one out of every three comment that added nothing to the discussion - it was 1 person expressing an idea, and seven and a half million other people said "Me Too."

The wording is confusing, it sounds like 45,000 fake email addresses sent 7.5 million identical comments:

The FCC received a record-breaking 22 million comments chiming in on the net neutrality debate, but from the sound of it, it's ignoring the vast majority of them. In a call with reporters yesterday discussing its plan to end net neutrality, a senior FCC official said that 7.5 million of those comments were the exact same letter, which was submitted using 45,000 fake email addresses.

Re:Fake?

[Luthair]

Agreeing is hardly "adding nothing"

Nope ... it doesn't matter!

[King_TJ]

I voted for Gary Johnson this last election for exactly the reason that's becoming clear to a lot of people now....

I don't at all think the Democrats would have been a "better choice", given the fact they chose to run one of the absolutely worst possible choices for a candidate with Hillary Clinton. I mean, she was completely out of touch with what life is like for a typical American citizen. It was a unique experience for her just to try to do her own grocery shopping as a publicity stunt. And frankly? I think her husband was even trying to sabotage her campaign discreetly, because he probably had ZERO desire to get stuck living 4 years in the White House again, except as "first man" instead of the leader of the country.

To the credit of the Trump administration, they DID squash the the TPP (Trans-Pacific Partnership), which Obama's administration kept pushing and which would have categorically been a bad thing for America had it passed. But absolutely, Trump is playing the uninformed fool that many of us fully expected him to be if he was elected. Essentially, he's treating the whole thing just like more reality TV and making up anything he thinks sounds good as he goes along. Even so? A lot of people voted for him more to counter the last 8 years of rule by a Democrat - including trying to avoid loading up the Supreme Court with another left-leaning Justice (which would have implications lasting far longer than a Trump presidency).

Ultimately though, yeah -- it doesn't matter anymore if you vote for the Democrats or the Republicans. Either way, you're going to get a leader who has an agenda that doesn't align well with anything resembling the intentions or purposes of the United States of America as it was originally designed by its founders. Republicans keep doing anything they can to help their friends and connections in big business or banking or the stock market. Democrats keep trying to design a government that "mandates equality" with taxation and legislation ensuring every minority group you can think of gets special recognition or privileges that enable them to force the majority to bend to their whims.

Re: Nope ... it doesn't matter!

[Anonymous Coward]

THIS, this right here is the problem: Americans are so ignorant that they believe Clinton and Trump are equivalent.

Would Clinton have told over 1,300 lies so far? Would she have talked about muzzling the press? Would she have Putinâ(TM)s dick in her mouth? Would she have appointed a right-wing ideologue to the Court who looks to empower the powerful even more than John Roberts? Would she have handled Houston and Puerto Rico ineptly? Would she be warmongering with North Korea? Would she spend one third of her administration golfing? Would she be killing the ACA? Would she be raising taxes on the middle class?

God DAMMIT people, you cannot afford to be so gullible!

Re:Nope ... it doesn't matter!

[Anonymous Coward]

I don't think that she was as out of touch as you and others believe. Sure they are rich now after their political careers, but they didn't come from old money and weren't rich before Bill's presidency. They did live like normal human beings with good jobs up until a point, so she's much less out of touch than Trump and many of his cabinet picks.

Re: Nope ... it doesn't matter!

[Anonymous Coward]

Only 1300 lies, she'd be far higher. She loves the press and they love and tried to anoint her as they did with Obama. But remember it was Obama that jailed reporters for not giving up sources. Trump has talked but has not acted against the media, (other than tweets and limiting access to some press conferences.) Clinton's history of dealing with the Russians is far longer and more damaging.

That Conservative justice is the number one reason Trump got my vote. Far better keeping the court balanced with a slight conservative tilt as it currently stands than Hillary tipping it far to the left.
What will be interesting is when Kennedy and Ginsburg step down. Trump is not a hardline conservative by any means. He'll likely replace Kennedy with another conservative instead of the wishy washy Kennedy. But I can honestly see him finding a moderate or even liberal justice to replace Ginsburg to keep the court closely balanced. He could also choose another conservative and swing it hard to the right, but there is a benefit to a balanced yet slightly conservative court.
A conservative court is better by far if only to slow radical changes in jurisprudence that we may later regret.

How were Houston or Puerto Rico ineptly handled. Houston was handled very smoothly, as soon as resources could be committed safely they were. As to Puerto Rico stop listening to the San Juan Mayor's speeches about people starving as she's standing in front of pallets of food, proving her lies as she made them. Even the HuffPo had multiple articles about how hard we were working on the recovery but that it was going very slowly because of the degree of devastation. The electrical grid was in bad condition before the storm and was demolished by the storm. Roads across the island were unpassable and it takes time to clear such damage and debris. We sent ships to provide power and fresh water to port cities. The Comfort is there to support the devastated medical community but few patients were transferred there by local medical services even though it is there and waiting. Puerto Rico was handled and is being handled very effectively.

Yes she'd be handling NK about the same, just as her hubby did in the 90's, Kim Jong Un is a megalomaniac and laughs and takes advantage of efforts to negotiate peacefully. He took advantage of Obama because of this. Trump isn't a great diplomat by any means but he's not the fool the prior President was when it comes to foreign relations. He's even gotten China on board with strict sanctions, The golfing is far exaggerated and not that different than President Obama. Trump isn't killing the ACA, congress is or will shortly. Taxes will go down on the middle class and again at this point it's congress that's doing that not Trump.

You really need to read a broader spectrum of news. Just the WaPo and NYTimes is not giving you an accurate picture. You need to read those and other liberal rags but you also need to read conservative and independent media.

You are the gullible one.

Re: Nope ... it doesn't matter!

[Anonymous Coward]

> I mean, she was completely out of touch with what life is like for a typical American citizen.

Sure thing. Keep throwing shade fir a pussy grabber because your small cock is threatened. Go on. No one can tell. Really it's FINE.

Re: Nope ... it doesn't matter!

[Anonymous Coward]

You're a fucking idiot.

Re:Nope ... it doesn't matter!

[GameboyRMH]

I mean, she was completely out of touch with what life is like for a typical American citizen. It was a unique experience for her just to try to do her own grocery shopping as a publicity stunt.

Oh that would've been much worse than electing a hectomillionaire / possible billionaire who lives in a golden palace atop a skyscraper, flies around in a personalized large passenger jet, and has probably never been in a grocery store, even as a publicity stunt! Close call there!

Re:Nope ... it doesn't matter!

[Anonymous Coward]

It's alright in another few years whites will be a minority as well, and we can bitch, moan and whine to out hearts content with all the legal backing that other minorities enjoy.

Re:Nope ... it doesn't matter!

[Anonymous Coward]

Ultimately though, yeah -- it doesn't matter anymore if you vote for the Democrats or the Republicans. Either way, you're going to get a leader who has an agenda that doesn't align well with anything resembling the intentions or purposes of the United States of America as it was originally designed by its founders. Republicans keep doing anything they can to help their friends and connections in big business or banking or the stock market. Democrats keep trying to design a government that "mandates equality" with taxation and legislation ensuring every minority group you can think of gets special recognition or privileges that enable them to force the majority to bend to their whims.

Otherwise known as the old established corruption (Republicans), and the new corruption (Democrats).

This mess is why we can't get reform of the legal system. The old established corruption doesn't want things to change, and the legal professionals make huge campaign contributions to the new corruption. The land of the lawsuit continues - and everybody that isn't part of the corruption gets screwed. Net neutrality, health care, copyright and patent, and so many other issues are all going the wrong way because we can't reform the government and the legal system. There are massive ethics problems throughout law and every level of government in the USA, and the Bill of Rights get treated like toilet paper.

quit trying

[WindBourne]

Seriously, 1-web, along with SpaceX, will be offering 1GB up/down with ~25 ms latency for $50/month.
That is cheap. And count on the fact that they will push neutrality.
Im hoping that Google will jump back into fiber in cities, but use SX as a CO for them.

FCC is right

[Tolvor]

Like it or not the FCC is *right* in requiring only legal (informed) comments over mass quantity of how many people feel about the issue. The fact that a lot of people have an opinion on a matter doesn't make them right or authorized to speak on the matter.

To put this is terms you may understand more...

Programmer: So you need a program to process these data items, correct?
Clueless CEO: Yes, and I know that it should take only about a week. It can't be that complicated.
Corporate seatwarmer: I agree. Definitely true.
Corporate yesman: CEO, you are brilliant.
And 7 other corporate suits, well, follow suit and agree with CEO.
Programmer: It will take 2 months to program, testing will take several weeks, training will last about a week. Maintenance will last about an additional month.
All: We voted on it programmer. You have a week to make it work perfectly.

Re:FCC is right

[Anonymous Coward]

Like it or not the FCC is *right* in requiring only legal (informed) comments over mass quantity of how many people feel about the issue. The fact that a lot of people have an opinion on a matter doesn't make them right or authorized to speak on the matter.

To put this is terms you may understand more...

Programmer: So you need a program to process these data items, correct?
Clueless CEO: Yes, and I know that it should take only about a week. It can't be that complicated.
Corporate seatwarmer: I agree. Definitely true.
Corporate yesman: CEO, you are brilliant.
And 7 other corporate suits, well, follow suit and agree with CEO.
Programmer: It will take 2 months to program, testing will take several weeks, training will last about a week. Maintenance will last about an additional month.
All: We voted on it programmer. You have a week to make it work perfectly.

You seem to be confusing business with democracy.

Other countries

[Anonymous Coward]

My country is noticing the impending shit-fight in the USA. This leads to the question of who owns the USA end of our undersea cables? At the moment, no-one is asking, can this price-gouging be extended to data crossing US borders, which thanks to the NSA interference and the abundance of US territories, affects many international cables?

It's about law...

[SeattleLawGuy]

Suppose you are asked to come up with rules saying what publishers can and can't do. Should that be based on a vote of the people (risking suppression of political or religious dissent) or based on detailed critiques of the different options available to you and their consequences? Should your standards for IT security be based on a vote of your customers?

Public comment is sometimes incredibly useful and important, but it's not magic and it's not majority-wins. It's about having a group of experts with domain knowledge making policy. You can still ask Congress to change the law to override them.

Of course there's a problem with the distributed incentive to comment on the consumer side. If you don't have money riding on a regulation, you're not going to invest in comment. But if you want a comment to be meaningful, you need to either dive deep enough to make your comment be really good, or you have to hire (or get together with others to hire) someone to help you do that diving. A good lawyer can help you do that. The declaratory ruling, report, and order is a couple of hundred pages long--unless you are going to pay a professional to dig through it or spend a lot of time on it, the chance of critiquing it in a meaningful way that will make someone think about or modify their position is extremely low.

https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_pub...

Holy Hell, The Ferengi Print

[Anonymous Coward]

Wouldn't matter. They made their decision already. This is just for show. After all, lots of us did make plenty of serious legal arguments, and they ignored us, too.

Indeed-

https://ecfsapi.fcc.gov/file/7522219498.pdf
http://apps.fcc.gov/ecfs/document/view?id=7522219498 (previous url)

To be fair though, Wheeler ignored me for his entire leadership term. Their ignoring of me started a bit before that IIRC. Honestly at this point I think the best bet to facilitate any likelyhood of mainstream availability of reasonably priced ISP plans that allow one to operate an IRC server from home may well be this Pai/transparency thing. I laughed out loud as I think a comment on PBS NewsHour last night summed up the impact as "consumers will now have to pay more attention to the fine print". OMG, your internet service contract's 'fine print'. Holy hell.

Okay, here's a clear legal reason

[Khyber]

Civil War is always an option for us!

Re:Okay, here's a clear legal reason

[Anonymous Coward]

Beginning to look like the only option to save what is beginning to take shape.

Regardless of corporations, having a place to begin a business, or do whatever the hell you want with little to no overhead cost is a boon to humanity. The rise of crypto-currencies, the rise of better data tools, the rise of interconnectedness and knowledge is changing us.

I believe there are few things that can get us up off our pasty asses with a gun in our hands and our blood boiling, this issue is one of them. This may very well be the first shot fired in a civil war.

Re: Okay, here's a clear legal reason

[macsimcon]

It is not a boon to those corporations bribing our politicians, and so I can see a situation in which it costs $2,000 a month for a fixed number of unique visitors. Those large companies can afford it, but the little guy cannot, so he never gets off the ground.

Re:It's about law^H^H^HFree Speech

[Anonymous Coward]

Suppose you are asked to come up with rules saying what publishers can and can't do.

IANAL, but I vaguely recall reading somewhere once that the FCC's jurisdictional claim over the internet had something to do (in a legally codified, quotable by subsection sort of way) with Free Speech. I wonder if they enact regulation that makes it apparent that the Internet is not actually a vehicle of Free Speech it might in fact negate their jurisdictive authority over it. What a bad joke/mess.

Jeffrey Tucker @ FEE: internet socialism is dead!

[Anonymous Coward]

At long last, internet socialism is put in the dustbin of history:

https://fee.org/articles/goodbye-net-neutrality-hello-competition/

Wow

[kenh]

The FCC received a record-breaking 22 million comments chiming in on the net neutrality debate [...] a senior FCC official said that 7.5 million of those comments were the exact same letter, which was submitted using 45,000 fake email addresses.

So 45,000 fake email addresses sent 7.5 million copies of the same letter, and the FCC didn't find that a convincing argument? I'm shocked!

One out of three comments were identical - that's quite an achievement from the "hashtag activisim" folks, a group best known for their "#BringBackOurGirls", but that isn't a convincing argument. Simple repetition renders the message meaningless.

Considering that the issue was the FCC was...

[MSTCrow5429]

...overstepping its legal authority by issuing the "Net Neutrality" regulation, in direct contravention to its previously stated position, and the bill from Congress itself, no one who is not somewhat legally literate cannot offer a serious or useful opinion on it. If you think "Net Neutrality" is a good thing, you need to contact your US Representative and Senators, they're the ones that can make it happen. Zealous but clueless supporters of this regulation are barking up the completely wrong tree. And then beyond being ignorant of the law, you have people that don't even know basic civics...

Re: The FCC is a joke; we'd be better off ending i

[macsimcon]

Will the ISPs no longer enjoy common carrier protection? And if that is so, does that give them the right to install a certificate on my device so they can inspect all my HTTPS traffic? If they are now ultimately liable for everything on their network, they might have that right.

And now I wonder if this is all nothing but a ruse to eliminate the security of encrypted packets.

Nah, that is just crazy. I mean, what government agency could possibly want visibility into all data, everywhere?

I have to thank Trump for quashing the TPP

[HannethCom]

The only county that would have benefited from the TPP was the US. It would have given you the power to enact your draconian laws on all the other countries. It also would have forced us to use your joke of a patent system.
Thank you Trump for making a decision that cost America thousands of jobs and billions in unethical revenue and power to your country.

Re:I have to thank Trump for quashing the TPP

[djinn6]

The only county that would have benefited from the TPP was the US.

Nope. Japan is still pushing TPP after American withdraw:

"We have finally come to an agreement on the rules of free and fair trade. We hope to utilize that agreed framework. Unfortunately, the U.S. has declared withdrawal from the TPP. Since we have come thus far, we would like to capitalize upon the result of our long years of efforts," Abe said in Japanese. "Japan must now take on a leadership role and move the discussions forward."

Re:I have to thank Trump for quashing the TPP

[Anonymous Coward]

Agreed, as someone from Singapore, the TPP deal was a major turn off for me.

This is probably the only thing I agree with Trump on.

Actually, I should agree with everything else Trump is doing, cos it will help the rest of the world get better, by learning to ignore US. Too long the US had "influence" and "power" over most of the world. It's about time that the rest of us get to do things that we want, get the government policies we want.

Re: Jeffrey Tucker @ FEE: internet socialism is de

[Anonymous Coward]

Thank Chrust I dont live in your thirdworld shithole. The competition over your Cancer treatment will be awesome for you tho Im sure!

Only the lawyers win

[skovnymfe]

Only the lawyers win when the government ignores the citizens in favor of legalese. Good luck USA, you dumb fucks. You deserve what you get. Ha-ha.

Re: legal terms

[mcfedr]

> But it still feels brazen hearing the commission staff repeatedly discount Americans' preference for consumer protections, simply because they aren't phrased in legal terms. Lets face it, its nothing to do with legal terms or not, its about following the money, and the money says end NN.

As a Army vet.

[Anonymous Coward]

I no longer believe in America.
We have never been so doomed.
Nothing is higher than the cost of stupidity.

Democracy corrects itself.

[robert.piskule]

I read a post from someone who said "Democracy will correct itself". Here's how I see that happening. AT&T (potentially) buys CNN. CNN provides a subsidiary website, AT&T News. AT&T decides you can get all your news from AT&T News, and you don't need Fox News, or Briebart. Fox News complains about Net Nuetrality, and thus the problem is solved. I really want to work on making this happen.

Dear FCC:

[Anonymous Coward]

While we are a nation of laws and this decision has to follow the law, your choice here does not come from the law. It is a political matter of balancing interests of stakeholders. The previous NN proceeding demonstrated that the FCC has sufficient legal wiggle room to go either way. This makes the project one of balancing the majority rights of the public versus the minority rights of the carriers. Unless the public asks for something not supported by the law, it makes no sense to just wave off the public's outcry for lack of a legal argument. Somehow this side of the stakeholders has to be factored in.

It would seem to me that this flaw in your process should be sufficient to raise a challenge in court to get us back to a fair process.

Oh lord, you don't vote Hilary

[rsilvergun]

in the primary, you vote Sanders, and bring your friends too. The DNC hasn't learned a damn thing because they're stuffed with corporate democrats who are just like republicans but don't want to oppress homosexuals and women (as much). On the economy they're the same bastards as the repubs.

Your primary vote matters. Yes, the scales were tipped, but there are limits to how far you can tip them and in a primary with so few people voting your vote counts for a lot more. Multiple right wing Dems just got primaried recently. It can work. But not if folks like yourself throw up your hands and give up at the first sign of trouble.

Re:Oh lord, you don't vote Hilary

[sjames]

Apparently you missed my numerous mentions that I DID vote for Sanders in the primary and that I intend to vote in the next primary as well, in hopes that it won't be rendered ineffective by a thumb on the scale.

I said (and I stand by it) that my LAST primary vote didn't change anything. Something I can only know in retrospect, so voting still matters in the future.

Net Bias: Antitrust & common-carrier violation

[redelm]

IANAL, but there are at least two violations of Federal law likely to flow from allowing net biasing:

First, most ISPs qualify under Sherman Antitrust as monopolies since they have "pricing power" in their markets. Net biasing allows illegal extension of that monopoly into other services.

Second, biasing traffic implies control and approval. ISPs are jeopardizing their common carrier immunity which is founded on an inability to control.

It would have been nice had the FCC announced what sort of comments they wanted. But in fact, they probably wanted none and just need a checkbox before proceeding corruptly. It is fortunate the much-reviled DJT got elected one year ago in that the Press was jolted awake from their 8+ years of sleep and syncopancy.

Trump is Simply Incompetent

[Anonymous Coward]

We've discussed Trump's many failings here on /. However there is one that I thought should have disqualified him in the primaries.

He's incompetent. Trump is getting nothing done. He's keeps jetting around the world, getting his ego massaged by world leaders who've clued in that sucking up to Trump is good for their political relations with him. However that's merely a stop-gap, intended to keep international relations and trade agreements from going into the toilet. These are slightly desperate defensive measures.

Thus, we are paying him to fill up the White House and eat many fine dinners and drink good wine. And that's pretty much it. There will be no accomplishments worth remembering after the Trump Administration is over. No wall. No ACA repeal/replacement. No tax reform. No nothing!

He's already wasted his entire first year in office and that is the time for signature initiatives to get done. Where are his signature initiative? All he has is a trail of failures following him around that he refuses to take responsibility for.

TTP

[FeelGood314]

TTP will likely go through. Canada is pushing to drop all the American Copy right and patient stupidity. Since Japan desperately wants it and Canada is now the second largest country in the TTP it will likely go through. With out the American provisions I see it as a pretty good trade deal. As a Canadian, who's country has lost most of the NAFTA disputes, I still see the dispute resolution system as a good thing. Canada really did deserve to lose those disputes. Now if we could only get softwood lumber included...

Untapped power

[Anonymous Coward]

This is all about the money. The average person has power, just usually doesn't choose to use it. How long would you think the new policy would stay in effect if consumers banded together and stopped clicking and purchasing on the Internet? When profits fall because of less than optimal decisions, pressure is usually applied by the folks losing the revenue to force changes that restore said revenue. People just need to get upset enough to get off the dime and do something about it.

The Baptist and the bootlegger -- and the FCC

[eric_harris_76]

Not just now, of course. The Grant administration was notoriously corrupt, as was Tammany Hall. Teapot Dome. Transcontinental railroad. If someone isn't a millionaire when they enter the Congress, they sure are when they leave.

The more things government controls, the greater the opportunities for corruption.

Guess who likes so-called "Net Neutrality"? It's not just do-gooders.

Another instance of "the Baptist and the bootlegger".. Do-gooders and do-badders can end up as allies, unbeknownst to the do-gooders. Far too often, the bad guys have a better understanding of the issues involved and the actual consequences. And after the dust settles and the bad consequences arise, the do-gooders want more legislation. And the do-badders quietly help the new legislation along. https://duckduckgocom/?q=bapti...

Sue the FCC

[Anonymous Coward]

Starting today, you cannot send more than 3 letters per year to anyone who has not paid a fee to the post office to allow receipt of more than 3 letters per sender.
The fee to increase the rate of letters received per sender is to be set by the post office at the time of the increase request.

Make sense?

This is what the repeal of net neutrality rules means for you.

They limit the rate of messages to and from sites that don't pay the ISP's a fee that the ISP can set at the negotiating table.

The FCC has said they don't care what we want. They don't care if we want net neutrality to remain in effect...
I thought the FCC worked for us. We the people. For the people....
This is the first step in decreasing the effect that our opinion, our wants, and our needs has on a government agency.
Net neutrality doesn't stifle innovation, it ensures it.
Repealing net neutrality stifles innovation by preventing people from jumping into web innovation as a whole...
Can't offord to pay the fees for each ISP that you want to be able to reach you at full speed? You get a bicycle on the freeway.

If net neutrality is repealed, we as a people need to sue the FCC as a class.
We need to sue them for acting on behalf of COMPANIES.
We the people OWN the FCC.
We the people are the employers of the FCC.
We the people tell the FCC what to do.

The constitution doesn't start with "We the companies."

I wonder what would happen...

[Anonymous Coward]

I wonder what would happen if I only treated patients when they used appropriate medical terminology during the interview.

Probably either have no patients or be sued for malpractice when I didn't render medically necessary care.

The Super Delegates can't ignore a landslide

[rsilvergun]

they know they'll just lose in the General. Go vote.