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

[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

[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

[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]

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".

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.

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.

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.

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.

"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.

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: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."

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.

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...