Slashdot Log In
Comcast Gets Hard Up At FCC Meeting
Posted by
kdawson
on Tuesday February 26, @07:04PM
from the asleep-in-the-seats dept.
from the asleep-in-the-seats dept.
alphadogg notes a story over at portfolio.com claiming, and presenting evidence, that Comcast paid people off the street to take up room at yesterday's FCC hearing in Massachusetts. Comcast acknowledges that it paid people to hold places in line for its employees. But Save The Internet claims that people were bussed in by Comcast and then took up almost all available seats in the meeting room 90 minutes before the meeting opened, blocking scores of interested people from attending. Such tactics are not unheard of in Washington DC, but how appropriate are they in a regional meeting on a college campus?
Related Stories
[+]
Your Rights Online: What Will Come of the FCC Comcast Hearing 86 comments
The FCC held its hearing on network neutrality and Comcast today at Harvard. One commentator not afraid to predict what will come of it is O'Reilly's Andy Orem, who writes: "The mere announcement of an FCC hearing on 'broadband network management practices' was a notch in the gun of network neutrality advocates. Yet to a large extent, the panelists and speakers were like petitioners who are denied access to the king and can only bring their complaints to the gardeners who decorate the paths outside his gate. What we'll end up getting is a formal endorsement of non-discrimination as a policy that Internet providers must follow, leading to continual FCC review of current practices by telecom and cable companies."
[+]
FCC Considers Taking Action Against Comcast 52 comments
Presto Vivace writes "According to CNet the Federal Communications Commission is considering taking action against cable operator Comcast modifying peer-to-peer traffic, a subject we've discussed here in the past. 'It looks like Chairman Martin, and by extension the commission, sees Comcast as going beyond simply managing its network. But even if the FCC decides that Comcast has violated Net neutrality principles, it's unclear what the agency can actually do to Comcast. The principles are not agency regulation.'"
The Fine Print: The following comments are owned by whoever posted them. We are not responsible for them in any way.
Astroturfing? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Astroturfing? (Score:5, Funny)
Judging from the photo [portfolio.com], it's not a very demanding job.
I'm in the neighborhood, and wouldn't have minded getting paid to stop by for a nap, although preferably not on Camo Dude's shoulder. And I'd have happily complained about RCN for free!
I was on campus today (Score:5, Informative)
I'm contacting some friends in the Crimson to see if they plan to cover this in tomorrow's paper.
Re:Astroturfing? (Score:5, Interesting)
What I want to know is how much one could get per hour as a professional "warm butt"--and what sort of requirements for participation there may or may not be. Are you contractually obligated to applaud, shout, and carry on? Or can you just sit and read a book?
What if you speak out against those who pay you? "I'm here because Comcast paid me to be here, however I support net neutrality."
FalconRe:Astroturfing? (Score:5, Informative)
Disclaimer: I'm all for protesting walmart although I don't think it's right to pay people to do it. And I think what comcast did was much much shadier.
Re:Astroturfing? (Score:5, Funny)
It wasn't all bad (Score:5, Funny)
Sounds like our ex-mayor (Score:4, Interesting)
just like OOXML! (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:just like OOXML! (Score:5, Insightful)
Is it any surprise? Our political and business leaders have been teaching us more and more all that the path to success is scumbaggery. Lie, chisel, and cheat; and as long as you are powerful enough to get away with it, you will be richly rewarded. Honor, ethics, and good reputation are quaintly outmoded concepts, and those who cling to such silly traditions are in a race to be the last sucker.
The problem is not that people will attempt such venality to get ahead; this has always been the case. The problem is that, increasingly IMHO, the rest of us let them get away with this crap with their reputations intact.
Comcast branching out (Score:5, Funny)
Who cares where it is located? (Score:5, Insightful)
Huh? I am all for thinking that this is dick move but to ask "how appropriate" it is seems a little ridiculous. It's a fucking college campus -- if anything, it shouldn't be permitted in "Washington, DC" (whatever that means) but if someone wants to fill a campus auditorium with highlighter toting narcoleptics, so be it.
All this shows is that Comcast is willing to play dirtier than ever to ensure that their network operates in the manner they deem necessary. Normally I couldn't care less what a private business does with its customers but when they have a permitted monopoly in as many areas as they do, they should be held accountable for the bullshit they have been pulling using pipes that my tax dollars helped fund.
Re:Who cares where it is located? (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Who cares where it is located? (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Who cares where it is located? (Score:5, Funny)
Desperation (Score:5, Interesting)
Commonplace in Washington (Score:5, Informative)
Since lines form hours ahead of time for meetings and other public discussions, its a waste of time to force the lobbyist themselves to be waiting in line for 2-3 hours, so they pay someone to hold a place. I believe it was the Colbert Report that actually did a piece on this within the last couple of months. I think there was possibly some legislation being floated that would make some judgments on this practice.
Re:Commonplace in Washington (Score:5, Informative)
I never liked doing line standings, though they usually paid well (relative to my average income back then); besides being deadly boring, there was always a sort of bitter ethical aftertaste, it's true. I think the last one I did was for one of the asbestos hearings; I'll never forget seeing the looks on the faces of what appeared to be genuine concerned citizens, showing up at what they thought was an early hour only to find themselves effectively locked out of the room by a ragged bunch of guys in rain jackets and shoes that close with velcro - who were only proxies for three-piece suits and wing tips, but whatever.
The deal (for whoever's interested in these things) is you show up at one of the Senate or House office buildings at some crazy hour, usually well before dawn or even a day or two ahead of time, and wait. The building isn't open yet, so you have to wait outside, and then march in to the hallway near the assigned hearing room, trying to preserve the order of the line as it was. Sometimes the hearing room is a ways from the open entrance; guys want to move up in line or at least not lose too many places, everybody starts walking faster and the line will break into a sprint. Kind of fun to run across the floor of the Hart building at 5am, bike cleats ringing on marble, but as things are generally a lot more locked down on the Hill these days I doubt if this happens much anymore.
So one problem, for the waiter, is that while this is basically an accepted practice the Capitol Hill police don't really fully condone it, either. I'm guessing that there's no clear regulations, let alone laws, covering these things, but once you're inside the cops will threaten to kick you out if you try to sit down, or leave a bag or other placeholder in line while you use the bathroom. If they catch you holding someone else's place in line (besides the one person who's paying you to be there, natch) they'll wait for the other guy to come back and throw you both out. Their right to do any of these things is pretty vaguely defined, but good luck trying to lodge a complaint.
Of course for important hearings where people are waiting for many hours beforehand, some bending of these rules has to happen, and so it does, but you have to defer to the cops by not doing it in front of their faces. They in turn give a little leeway; right up until an hour or so before the hearing, they only walk down the line once in 20-30 minutes, then as the time approaches they come by more and more often. By the time the lawyers and lobbyists show up it's a reasonably orderly scene. You're not really supposed to just have a sign out, airport-limo style, because somehow that is considered too blatant. So there's this funny school-dance thing that happens where a bunch of suits are walking up and down the line, looking for their guy or guys, both sides murmuring the names of various client firms. Once you find each other you switch out, and the cop who was diligently making sure you didn't hold your buddy's place for five minutes while he went to take a piss will stand there and watch and not say a damn thing.
I have a very low opinion of the Capitol Hill police, for reasons only tangentially related to the above, so excuse me if that colors my description; I'm just describing the phenomenon from the underling's perspective for anyone who cares to know about it.
Re:Commonplace in Washington (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, but you make the erroneous assumption that D.C. lobbyists are as mature as 1st graders...
Getting paid to sleep through an FCC hearing... (Score:5, Interesting)
Frankly, someone should open an investigation as to how many hundreds or thousands of $$$$ of cash were paid. I'll bet Comcast doesn't have 1099s for the people they paid, which they probably illegally did with CASH...
Comcast (Score:4, Funny)
I was in line (Score:5, Informative)
The event was run by the Berkman Center and even people who identified themselves as working for Berkman were turned away. Even a reporter who just wanted to stand in the back and take photos was hassled by the cops - I didn't stay long enough to see if they let him in. There were a lot of people who arrived around the time I did (fifteen minutes early) and insisted that someone was holding their seat, so maybe there is some truth to the part about the people holding seats for Comcast employees - but - the Harvard cops wouldn't let these people by unless they called the person holding the seat and that person came out, so unless Comcast provided their employees with the cell numbers of the seat fillers they wouldn't have gotten in anyway.
I'm so mad about this that I want to tell everyone I know to cancel their comcast service, but because of the telecom duopoly most of the people I know who have comcast would probably have to pay a lot more to switch.
New Technology (Score:5, Funny)
Re:What does this say (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Why in Massachusetts? (Score:4, Interesting)
Also, I don't know about Y!, but Google, Apple, Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo all have branch offices in that area.