
How a former lobbyist became the broadband industry’s worst nightmare - tzs
http://arstechnica.com/business/2016/03/how-a-former-lobbyist-became-the-broadband-industrys-worst-nightmare/1/
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PascalsMugger
I hope his work doesn't just get undone 12 months from now by whoever Hillary
puts in there. She doesn't seem to be very tech savvy and is quite business
friendly.

~~~
specialist
As a hard core liberal, I share these types of concerns. Many of the peeps I
lobby are from the tech industry. Lots of face-palm moments.

It's a mistake to assume tech savviness. Much I love, respect, and admire most
of their policy work. Hell, I cringe at my own prior views on privacy,
intellectual property, open markets, and so forth. And I'm chin deep into this
stuff.

I've come to embrace building relationships, incrementalism, taking the long
view on big issues. My younger fire-brand self would be appalled.

So lobby, lobby, lobby. Build the trust, move the needle. Camp Wellstone and
others provide great resources and training, for those who want to step up.

As one politician, David Cobb, I greatly admire is fond of saying "Whenever I
feel the heat, I see the light!"

[http://www.wellstone.org/programs/camp-
wellstone](http://www.wellstone.org/programs/camp-wellstone)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Cobb](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Cobb)

------
davesque
It all just seems too perfect to me. Maybe he's just throwing us a few bones
to shut us up? It's just so hard for me to believe that someone who made a
career pulling favors for those people would be able to just completely cut
ties. I mean, what reason does he have to do that? The goodness of his heart?
His sense of duty? Call me jaded, but those explanations make me want to laugh
out loud when I think of all the billions of dollars in the mix.

~~~
oldmanjay
The core of the issue here is that you can never really assume you understand
a person's motivations just because your prejudices have served up a narrative
you like

~~~
davesque
You're just as equally naive to trust someone with strong industry ties just
because they do you a couple of favors in a couple of years. I'll be looking
at his entire tenure in that position before I decide that he's the industry's
worst nightmare.

------
ryao
The cable companies might have once been the underdogs, but were they ever the
good guys?

They seem to have succeeded in charging people for things that were free of
charge. I heard originally that they claimed to be commercial free TV, but at
some point, the cable channels decided to double dip with advertisements and
rather than demand reductions in costs so cable bills would decline, the cable
companies went along with it. They also enabled the rise of ESPN, which
charges a fortune for things many would rather do without.

As far as I can tell, the broadcasters are the good guys ones.

------
trengrj
Some of the agencies work has been ok but I disagree with the FCC forcing the
lock down of wifi routers [http://www.wired.com/2016/03/way-go-fcc-now-
manufacturers-lo...](http://www.wired.com/2016/03/way-go-fcc-now-
manufacturers-locking-routers/). This affects me in a different country while
the stopping of a merger between American telcos or preventing hotel wifi
blocking etc are more local concerns.

------
Shivetya
I figure it this way, he knows what really is going on because of his insider
experience and having fought to get competing systems access and market he
knows how the game works.

------
dovdov
I wonder if this report had any effect on how things are unfolding:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpbOEoRrHyU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpbOEoRrHyU)

explained here:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkjkQ-
wCZ5A](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hkjkQ-wCZ5A)

------
sdegutis
Am I the only one on HN who actively avoids every political discussion or post
as much as humanly possible? Or are there others like that out there too?

~~~
fnordfnordfnord
I was raised to think that politics and religion are not appropriate subjects
for polite company; and even that raising either topic outside narrow
situations is impolite. I have since grown to think the sentiment is wrong and
destructive. Assuming others in your cohort feel similarly, It leaves those
discussions to only those people who are willing to breach decorum, or you
simply don't have them. The results are that we tend to hear more often from
zealots than we do more moderate people, we also leave ourselves ill-equipped
to discuss contentious subjects and resolve conflict amicably, and worst of
all we make important decisions on matters that affect everyone using poor
information and without the benefit of the perspectives of our peers.

~~~
sdegutis
In the past, when I myself was undecided on these two things, I'd agreed with
you. Since then I've concluded that Catholicism is the correct religion, and
that our current political systems are completely and hopelessly broken. At
this point, there's nothing for me to change in these areas, and my job isn't
to convince anyone else of my positions on either of these. (If they want to
know more of why I believe what I believe in either area, I will gladly point
them to some resources.) So it's absolutely useless for me to discuss them
with anyone else.

------
rpgmaker
The way I see it, after Obama lost the senate he felt the need to _seem_
relevant, which ended up with him forcing Wheeler's hand on the net neutrality
issue (he publicly pressured him to support net neutrality). As a result,
Wheeler burned his bridges with his telecom friends and now he just has
nothing left to lose.

~~~
slavik81
That theory seems unnecessarily convoluted compared to the straightforward
explanation in the article.

~~~
enraged_camel
It also implies that Obama has been irrelevant, which couldn't be further from
the truth.

~~~
Mvandenbergh
Not to mention the only-in-the-valley idea that he would try and improve his
popularity with the American people as a whole through an issue that the vast
majority of people neither understand nor care about.

