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The New York Times Sues FCC For Net Neutrality Records (bna.com)
The New York Times Company on Thursday filed a lawsuit against the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) concerning records the newspaper alleges may shed light on possible Russian participation in a public comment period before the commission rolled back Obama-era net neutrality rules. Bloomberg reports: The plaintiffs, including Times reporter Nicholas Confessore and investigations editor Gabriel Dance, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York Sept. 20 under the Freedom of Information Act, seeking to compel the commission to hand over data. "The request at issue in this litigation involves records that will shed light on the extent to which Russian nationals and agents of the Russian government have interfered with the agency notice-and-comment process about a topic of extensive public interest: the government's decision to abandon 'net neutrality,'" the plaintiffs alleged.
What is the connection between Russians and network neutrality? I get that there were fake comments, but I thought they were forged by telecom companies or organizations that were fooled by telecom companies. Is the Russian angle just to get them release the records?
One way to gain economic dominance is to convince the other side to blunder into an economically harmful decision.
They don't. They just want to start shit and disrupt civil society, and posting fake shit online is cheap and easy to do.
It's like asking why the Anonymous Coward does what he does on Slashdot. There is no why. It's just vandalism for the information age. Terrorism for those too cowardly to actually risk anything.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Is russian collusion in the room with you now?
> I've got no reason why the New York Times thinks Russia is involved in this. It makes no sense.
Actually it makes perfect sense if someone used some Russian proxies/VPNs/etc. to comment with in order to later "uncover" the fact that Russian's commented on an open web form that invited public comment for the purpose of giving them ideas and feedback about how to proceed. Remember: this freak out was going on while comments were still open, as well.
It's about like people talking about "identity theft" on the same comment boxes, as though there weren't thousands of John Smiths and whatnot, each of which were entitled to their own opinions. My own name has a surprising number of duplicates.
Ajit Pai was determined to roll back net neutrality regardless of any outside influence (including comments from actual citizens). It was a done deal once he got appointed FCC commission chair.
I think it's just to create chaos.
I mean, if there's anything at all to the "Russians did it" in so many fields their main motivation seems to be create conflicts, not create any specific advantage.
It does seem like the one side effect of the social internet is that you can create real conflict very easily.
If I had to guess....
I would say because the free flow of information across the internet allows the general public to better educate themselves and learn information which makes it harder for Americans to mindlessly be led unlike the ones who get their information exclusively through Television (Which is owned from 1 of 5 companies which are able to control the flow of that information).
Also that Net Neutrality is actually a free market protection that allows more businesses to thrive than otherwise would and that by attacking it they are hurting US citizens ability to inform themselves and hopefully turning more of them into the brainless fox news viewing audience who are more willing to sell out themselves and their children based on policy ideas that don't reflect reality, while at the same time hurting us economically to help a few monopolies with vested interests in helping funnel money and power to the top and trying to control it all, all while also helping to cause civil unrest in the US in the process.
It would be nothing but pure win for Russia in their goals on every front and they already have a lot of moneyed interests here pushing for that same thing which makes it that much easier for them to push. For the moneyed interests, it is selling out this nation and its people for personal money and power, for Russia, it is helping those moneyed people to hurt the nation.
Think of it this way, just about everyone nominated to every position are people who wanted to weaken or destroy the sector they were put in charge of and effectively hurt and dismantle the nation allowing the rich to raid it and leave us as a bankrupt husk too weak and handcuffed to fight back, attacking Net Neutrality is just another prong in that attack.
You have some strange fantasies.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
The Russians don't necessarily care about net neutrality, but they do appear to be actively stirring wasps nest to cause discontent and conflict among the US population. The more unrest within the US internally, the less Americans worry about what Russia is doing on the other side of the world.
You forget that the Russian troll mission is merely to create discord in open societies like America. They do not care what the topic is so long as they can stimulate you to hate other Americans. Looks like they did a great job on you. Personally I am looking forward to watching the civil war on T.V. it should be entertaining.
Facts are history now plebs have politics for religion on social media.
What? Russian, again? Come on, I checked the date, and today is not April 1st.
Me? Well, I'm learning the Canadian national anthem. I just hope they'll allow someone from a shit hole country like the USA to emigrate there.
Be sure you are learning the new words (they were just changes so if you look up an old reference you will be learning the wrong lyrics).
The real issue is Trump and the Russians.
Remember, Trump has not divested himself of his businesses, something Presidents do to avoid conflict of interest situations where they may do legislation that benefits them directly. Every time Trump goes to Mar-A-Largo, the Secret Service has to spend money there, which has direct benefits to the President.
Also remember, that in general, Trump's business hasn't been doingn too well. Some make profits, but that's about it. Except in one place - Russia. Trump gets a lot of money from his Russian interests, hence the natural "friendliness" towards them.
Combined with direct benefits from business, there's a lot of interest in anywhere Trump feels particularly friendly towards.
It's like ZTE, which Trump vowed to kill until China invested half a billion dollars in a Trump hotel and give Ivanka a super hard to get trademark.