28 senators, and the New York Attorney General, had to tell Pai to stop the FCC voting on new rules last year because of all the fraudulent comments. The fake comments were made apparent over a year ago. https://www.cnet.com/news/net-neutrality-fcc-ajit-pai-bots-s...
The FCC refused to provide records to the NY AG in order to investigate the possibility of fake comments. In other words, the NY AG was the only part of the government investigating the fake comments, and the FCC actively worked against investigating them. https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/12/10/0037222/fcc-refuses...
Pai's office issued this response to calls to delay the vote:
This is just evidence that supporters of heavy-handed Internet
regulations are becoming more desperate by the day as their effort
to defeat Chairman Pai's plan to restore Internet freedom has stalled.
The vote will proceed as scheduled on December 14.
As promised, the FCC voted to repeal Net Neutrality.
And now, 7 months later, the FCC is saying there were fraudulent comments, and maybe they should redesign their website.
> From this chart we can see that the pro-repeal comments (there are approximately 8.6 million of them) are much more likely to be exact duplicates (dark red bars) and are submitted in much larger blocks.
> On the other hand, comments in favor of net neutrality were more likely to deviate from a form letter (light green, as opposed to dark green bars) and were much more numerous in the long tail.
Right, this is a poor attempt to save face. Pai was going to repeal net neutrality no matter what, his corporate sponsors/donors/masters demanded that. Now that he's achieved his single goal, now he can pretend to care about everyone else in an attempt to influence the midterm elections.
On the one hand, there is the rhetorical question of: Why isn't he impeached for Bribery. On the other hand, he may be acting on his regulatory opinion regardless of bribes, and on that possibility, he doesn't need to heed comments anyway, since they're advisory in nature. Using fake comments as a political shield is unfortunately not a high crime or misdemeanor. Civil officers are political in nature.
Who is going to impeach him, exactly? If you haven't noticed, our government is corrupt from the top down. Everyone has their hand in the cookie car, from Trump to Pruitt (well, not anymore but for long enough he did) to Pai. The head of state sets the tone for what is acceptable.
That's just not true and it doesn't help anything. There are hundreds of thousands to millions of civil servants doing good work at mid/low levels. The top level is as dirty any anything in my lifetime by orders of magnitude.
They’re also going to drop unofficial complaints against ISPs. You’ll have to pay the $230 to make an official complaint if you think they’re doing something illegal.
What Ars is worked up about is footnote 14, which revises 47 CFR 1.717:
> 14 We also clarify rule 1.717, which addresses informal Section 208 complaints. See 47 CFR § 1.717. In addition to wording revisions that do not alter the substance of the rule, we delete the phrase “and the Commission’s disposition” from the last sentence of that rule because the Commission’s practice is not to dispose of informal complaints on substantive grounds.
Contrary to the Ars article, the FCC is not "drop[ping] unofficial complaints." The current wording suggests that each complaint will result in an investigation and a "disposition" (i.e. formal agency decision). In reality, the FCC does not necessarily start an investigation and reach a formal disposition in response to every complaint. Rather, it handles informal complaints exactly how you'd expect an agency to handle informal complaints--based on the complaints, it may or may not initiate an investigation and an enforcement action. But it is not obliged to investigate and formally dispose of each and every complaint. The wording update simply reflects that.
A "formal" complaint is not just an "official" complaint. It is a lawsuit in the FCC: https://www.law.cornell.edu/cfr/text/47/part-1/subpart-E. The telecommunications provider is required to show up and defend the lawsuit, there are motions, briefing, discovery, etc., and if a violation of the law is found, the respondent can be held liable for damages to the complainant. The filing fee reflects the fact that a formal complaint initiates court-like proceedings in the FCC.
This comment broke the HN guidelines badly by throwing extraneous flamebait into the thread. That's gross negligence, and it led to a ridiculous flamewar about fascism. Please don't post like this again.
Edit: it looks like you've been breaking the guidelines in other places too (like https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17494098). We ban accounts that do that, so please re-read the rules and use this site as intended from now on.
I'm not trying to defend this, just providing the FCC's context:
>`Complaints filed through the Consumer Complaint Center are categorized as "informal" complaints. There is no fee for filing an informal complaint.
If you are not satisfied with the response to your informal complaint, you can file a "formal" complaint. Your formal complaint must be filed within six months of the date of the response to your informal complaint. The current fee for filing a formal complaint is $225.00, but it is subject to change.
Formal complaint proceedings are similar to court proceedings. Each party must comply with specific procedural rules, appear before the FCC and file documents that address legal issues. Parties filing formal complaints usually are represented by lawyers or experts in communications law and the FCC's procedural rules. No attorneys fees may be awarded.`[0]
Question is, does this jive with similar methods of launching court-proceedings in civil-court as an example?
One thing that seems to have changed is informal complaints won't be looked at by people at the FCC but will go directly to the ISPs. Meaning the FCC won't be monitoring for any issues and only care about formal complaints
Incorrect. Under both the current and revised versions of 47 C.F.R. 1.717, the complaint goes to the FCC; the FCC forwards it to the respondent, and may order it to file a response which either states the complaint has been satisfied, or explains why the carrier cannot or will not do so:
> The Commission will forward informal complaints to the appropriate carrier for investigation and
may set a due date for the carrier to provide a written response to the informal complaint to the
Commission, with a copy to the complainant. The response will advise the Commission of the carrier’s satisfaction of the complaint or of its refusal or inability to do so.
The same has been happening with the State AG complaint process, i.e. they've become worthless and toothless. Of course the "respondent" will state the complaint has been satisfied, and by a bot-generated form response, too. Nobody is going to check, and the case will be closed. You have no recourse.
US consumers have zero rights because the sheriff is completely in bed with the people they oversee. The CFPB and the paltry legislation passed at the height of the financial crisis are some of the only remaining consumer protection left. The reason why the CFPB had to be set up with a dubious structure under the Fed and an unchecked director is precisely because only a hammer could bring about some semblance of equity. It shouldn't have to be this way to begin with. I don't know why this hasn't turned into a bigger cross-party issue, it affects everyone.
So its not just $225, its $225 + the tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars for your law team, to file a complaint to a government agency run by lobbyists of the industry it would be judging. Thats some banana republic shit.
> This is literal fascism - and I'm not just being hyperbolic.
reply
Tragic that you have enough insight to realise you might be misusing either "literal" or "fascism" and not enough to pull yourself back from the brink...
I know "fascism" has been misused to the point of meaninglessness but can we all agree there has to be at least a small amount of - I don't know - death or torture involved - before we wheel out the big guns?
Here's a summary of Mussolini's Fascist Manifesto, lifted directly from Wikipedia:
Politically, the Manifesto calls for:
Universal suffrage with a lowered voting age to 18 years, and voting and electoral office eligibility for all age 25 and up;
Proportional representation on a regional basis;
Voting for women (which was then opposed by most other European nations);
Representation at government level of newly created national councils by economic sector;
The abolition of the Italian Senate (at the time, the Senate, as the upper house of parliament, was by process elected by the wealthier citizens, but were in reality direct appointments by the king. It has been described as a sort of extended council of the crown);
The formation of a national council of experts for labor, for industry, for transportation, for the public health, for communications, etc. Selections to be made of professionals or of tradesmen with legislative powers, and elected directly to a general commission with ministerial powers.
In labor and social policy, the Manifesto calls for:
The quick enactment of a law of the state that sanctions an eight-hour workday for all workers;
A minimum wage;
The participation of workers' representatives in the functions of industry commissions;
To show the same confidence in the labor unions (that prove to be technically and morally worthy) as is given to industry executives or public servants;
Reorganization of the railways and the transport sector;
Revision of the draft law on invalidity insurance;
Reduction of the retirement age from 65 to 55.
In military affairs, the Manifesto advocates:
Creation of a short-service national militia with specifically defensive responsibilities;
Armaments factories are to be nationalized;
A peaceful but competitive foreign policy.
In finance, the Manifesto advocates:
A strong progressive tax on capital (envisaging a “partial expropriation” of concentrated wealth);
The seizure of all the possessions of the religious congregations and the abolition of all the bishoprics, which constitute an enormous liability on the Nation and on the privileges of the poor;
Revision of all contracts for military provisions;
The revision of all military contracts and the seizure of 85 percent of the profits therein.
Okay, but he came with a healthy dose of putting people in prison, murder, actions in Africa that were reprehensible. I'm not sure I get your point. Facism's official goals don't match what they did?
My point is that "fascism" is used interchangably for "oppressive government" when it's not the same thing. There are many systems of government that put people in prison, murdered, and did bad things in Africa besides fascism. What's your point?
While this is a fair point for general systems of government, in this case you have to reconcile the creator's words with his actions.
You have to take the whole story here. If I create a document that describes my system of governance as X but execute it as Y isn't it disingenuous to ignore Y?
Really I was making a point about the definition of fascism and how it's mis-applied these days. But if you want to talk about how it has been executed, history shows us when people cede so many of their natural rights to the state, even for good causes or causes that sound good, it's just a matter of time before those powers granted to the state by its people are abused by agents of the state.
My point to the second poster above (jerkstate), supporting nkozyra says, is that what the jerkstate above says about italian facism, much like soviet communism was far away from it's goals and claims. Both govts, who fought against each other during ww2 of course, murdered and oppressed and killed thousands (or was it millions in italy?) and definitely millions in the ussr. There were very few people in those countries whose lives ended up being well treated and having freedom until the govts were destroyed. The vast majority had a negative experience. By only listing the top level goals of how italian fascism would work and listing none of the horrible negatives you are making at least a confusing and misleading point. Could it have meant to be irony? Those who rightly point out the problems of US society, like jim crow repression of blacks, genocide toward native americans should also talk about how we had ideals, yet we couldn't fix slavery without a civil war, we still struggle today to deal with oppression of minorities, but we also have high ideals about how people should be treated. But if you just gave the decl. of independence and compared it to those fascist ideals, well you'd be incredibly misleading in the reality of the countries and I found your comments incredibly misleading.
Fascism doesn’t start with torture and death. The word has certainly been misused, but it is an apt description of the ideology guiding the trump administration. The most common definition includes these 14 points:
1. Powerful and Continuing Nationalism - Fascist regimes tend to make constant use of patriotic mottos, slogans, symbols, songs, and other paraphernalia. Flags are seen everywhere, as are flag symbols on clothing and in public displays.
2. Disdain for the Recognition of Human Rights - Because of fear of enemies and the need for security, the people in fascist regimes are persuaded that human rights can be ignored in certain cases because of "need." The people tend to look the other way or even approve of torture, summary executions, assassinations, long incarcerations of prisoners, etc.
3. Identification of Enemies/Scapegoats as a Unifying Cause - The people are rallied into a unifying patriotic frenzy over the need to eliminate a perceived common threat or foe: racial , ethnic or religious minorities; liberals; communists; socialists, terrorists, etc.
4. Supremacy of the Military - Even when there are widespread
domestic problems, the military is given a disproportionate amount of government funding, and the domestic agenda is neglected. Soldiers and military service are glamorized.
5. Rampant Sexism - The governments of fascist nations tend to be almost exclusively male-dominated. Under fascist regimes, traditional gender roles are made more rigid. Divorce, abortion and homosexuality are suppressed and the state is represented as the ultimate guardian of the family institution.
6. Controlled Mass Media - Sometimes to media is directly controlled by the government, but in other cases, the media is indirectly controlled by government regulation, or sympathetic media spokespeople and executives. Censorship, especially in war time, is very common.
7. Obsession with National Security - Fear is used as a motivational tool by the government over the masses.
8. Religion and Government are Intertwined - Governments in fascist nations tend to use the most common religion in the nation as a tool to manipulate public opinion. Religious rhetoric and terminology is common from government leaders, even when the major tenets of the religion are diametrically opposed to the government's policies or actions.
9. Corporate Power is Protected - The industrial and business aristocracy of a fascist nation often are the ones who put the government leaders into power, creating a mutually beneficial business/government relationship and power elite.
10. Labor Power is Suppressed - Because the organizing power of labor is the only real threat to a fascist government, labor unions are either eliminated entirely, or are severely suppressed.
11. Disdain for Intellectuals and the Arts - Fascist nations tend to promote and tolerate open hostility to higher education, and academia. It is not uncommon for professors and other academics to be censored or even arrested. Free expression in the arts and letters is openly attacked.
12. Obsession with Crime and Punishment - Under fascist regimes, the police are given almost limitless power to enforce laws. The people are often willing to overlook police abuses and even forego civil liberties in the name of patriotism. There is often a national police force with virtually unlimited power in fascist nations.
13. Rampant Cronyism and Corruption - Fascist regimes almost always are governed by groups of friends and associates who appoint each other to government positions and use governmental power and authority to protect their friends from accountability. It is not uncommon in fascist regimes for national resources and even treasures to be appropriated or even outright stolen by government leaders.
14. Fraudulent Elections - Sometimes elections in fascist nations are a complete sham. Other times elections are manipulated by smear campaigns against or even assassination of opposition candidates, use of legislation to control voting numbers or political district boundaries, and manipulation of the media. Fascist nations also typically use their judiciaries to manipulate or control elections.
I’m aware. That set of characteristics is more straightforward than other definitions I’ve come across. Umberto Eco’s definition is commonly used but requires more context. There’s actually an entire Wikipedia page devoted to different definitions: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Definitions_of_fascism
The language hyperbole is out of control and tragic. The boy keeps crying wolf, but the wolf will show and murder tens or hundreds of millions of people. Everyone forgets fascism can come from the left, too.
> literal fascism - and I'm not just being hyperbolic.
High government fees aren't really fascism. They're bureaucracy.
Industry-wise, fascism is authoritarian governmental control. [1] By that measure (and it's 100% stupid hyperbole) Net Neutrality is more "fascist" than non-NN.
If we are taking power away from the Government (elected by citizens to serve citizens) and putting that power into the hands of a few corporations, we are moving towards corporate fascism.
See also: Corporate tax breaks at a time of record profits, arguments against universal healthcare or family leave, stagnant national minimium wage, increasing barriers to unionization and weakening bargaining ability, selling public lands to private energy companies, weakening EPA regulations, the for-profit prison system, tying education directly to job training.
The definition of fascism according to webster: a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.
I don't think corporate fascism fits. Corporations would need to use force to suppress you. They would need to control religion.
Not sure why the word fascism has come back into common language. We needed a new word to describe Trump but instead we recycled this word.
==The definition of fascism according to webster: a political philosophy, movement, or regime (such as that of the Fascisti) that exalts nation and often race above the individual and that stands for a centralized autocratic government headed by a dictatorial leader, severe economic and social regimentation, and forcible suppression of opposition.==
Add "to the benefit of corporations and the extremely wealthy" at the end of this definition and you have Corporate Fascism. Who do think is donating the money to these politicians?
Corporate Fascism is exactly the new phrase needed to describe what is happening. Your argument was essentially "your phrase doesn't exist" followed by "someone needs to make up a new phrase".
Fascist corporatism is a thing in the Wikipedia article on corporatism (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporatism#Fascist_corporatis...) but I don't think that applies here, given the strong role of employers and trade unions in the description (Italy's style of fascism seems to be the backdrop for the term).
I never said they were the same. In this case, the President is using fascist techniques (nationalism, militarism, suppression of opposition, theatrics, purging the disloyal or RINO's, cult of personality) in order to implement a pro-corporate strategy (as I laid out in my initial post).
All that the fee will accomplish is that entities with deep pockets can flood the comments whenever they wish. And there will be fewer other comments to overcome.
What the heck - if you complain about an ISP in Australia it’s free for you and the ISP gets fined (a small amount even if the complaint isn’t genuine).
I am not a corporate person and I am in the “public citizenry” and I oppose so-called net neutrality. If the public citizenry is unhappy, they are invited to vote. As Obama famously said, elections have consequences.
We should be demanding policies that encourage ISP competition instead of demanding policies that would ultimately suppress it.
One does not preclude the other. We'll set policies that increase competition among ISPs aside because literally everyone says that they agree with that idea. Moving passed that, what is your specific reasoning for opposing NN, and if you don't mind, could you offer up your definition of NN in practice, just to be sure we're addressing the actual policies and not semantics.
Net neutrality would not suppress ISP competition in any way, shape, or form. Unless you count upset ISPs trying to take their ball and go home, like spoiled children.
And yes, robust ISP competition would be awesome. But there are parts of the country that realistically could not support more than one ISP. Do those people not deserve neutrality in their internet service? What do you say to them if their ISP suddenly decided to fuck with their traffic? There would never be anyone else to turn to.
I agree with you and its annoying when people say you sound like a corporate shill. I don't think it should be federal level government doing net neutrality. I worry about these studies too, because I know my "unique comment" was surrounded by at least a hundred on either side opining the same pro-net neutrality text.
The reason we think you are corporate shills is because you position makes no sense. ISPs have regional monopolies in a huge % of cases, and the consumer has no chance for free markets to work their magic and get red of bad internet practices that way. Do you not understand that? Or not care? We don't get it. explain.
I’m going to tread lightly here because I’m not intimately familiar with the full details of NN, but assuming that big bad ISP starts making life difficult for large tech companies by charging them premiums (and please correct me if this isn’t the way it works), wouldn’t that spur the giants to compete?
It does give Google incentive to try creating Google Fiber. But the incumbent ISPs already have existing infrastructure deployed that constitutes a natural monopoly. The free market is not enough to overcome the uphill battle any initiative like Google Fiber faces, and digging multiple trenches along every residential road and driveway is not the kind of competition anyone wants.
Or perhaps a more realistic scenario, when ISP customers aren’t able to access their paid services reliably and start dropping off en mass because they refuse to be held under the gun, how would the “big guns” react?
Care to elaborate? My understanding is ISPs can internally implement or not implement any QoS that makes economic sense. Also that was my lesser point. Can you address my larger point about jurisdiction for regulating ISPs?
The burden is on you to show how QoS concerns are relevant to net neutrality regulation, such as by pointing out how the net neutrality regulations could possibly have impaired an ISP's ability to handle QoS. Otherwise, pointing out that there exist different kinds of traffic on the internet with different bandwidth and latency requirements has no relevance to the regulations that were under consideration. You shouldn't imply that there's any technical motivation for being anti-net neutrality unless you're prepared to back that up with a real explanation.
I'm not going to respond to the part where you don't believe that the federal government has the power to regulate interstate commerce in non-physical goods, because that's so far into crackpot territory that nobody on either side of the net neutrality issue cares about your stance on that issue. It's hard to take you seriously when you're so against net neutrality that you also advocate for getting rid of federal wire fraud statutes.
This comment breaks the HN guidelines by name-calling ("crackpot") in the sense they ask you not to. Please don't do that. It's uncivil and usually provokes worse, as it did below.
> The Feds can regulate wire fraud--that is definitely commerce. Sorry you are very bent on misrepresenting me.
And yet, you wrote:
> I don't see how light crossing state borders is construed as commerce.
You're not convincing anyone when you pretend to be unable to understand how paying someone to carry information across state lines on your behalf is commerce.
I'm talking about the 1st amendment and the commerce clause, together and where they conflict. Sorry if I went a little abstract in a different series of comments.
Where's the first amendment come in to any of this? It sounds like you're trying to refer to first amendment rights of the ISP, but I don't see where that is at all relevant to their business of forwarding my packets. There's no speech on the part of the ISP to be restricted there, and forwarding my packets is in no way analogous to the ISP publishing anything. ISPs are extremely keen to make sure that their subscriber's data transmissions are never regarded as speech/publishing by the ISP itself, because of things like copyright infringement liability.
net neutrality doesn't suppress competition. the only thing it suppresses is the amount of information the consumer has about what the internet is actually costing them.
Ha, "restoring internet freedom" is the fakest comment of them all!
So how does this work, does Pai get a fat retainer for doing nothing from ATT after he is out?
This is why I don't believe people who have developed there political views(beliefs, ideology ?) working for special interests are good for the people when they need to start thinking about the whole forest; they can't get over their trees. Certainly not at the cabinet level, hopefully not at many levels below either. You see it with Pai, Devos, Pruit, etc. What a disaster.
28 senators, and the New York Attorney General, had to tell Pai to stop the FCC voting on new rules last year because of all the fraudulent comments. The fake comments were made apparent over a year ago. https://www.cnet.com/news/net-neutrality-fcc-ajit-pai-bots-s...
The FCC refused to provide records to the NY AG in order to investigate the possibility of fake comments. In other words, the NY AG was the only part of the government investigating the fake comments, and the FCC actively worked against investigating them. https://news.slashdot.org/story/17/12/10/0037222/fcc-refuses...
Pai's office issued this response to calls to delay the vote:
As promised, the FCC voted to repeal Net Neutrality.And now, 7 months later, the FCC is saying there were fraudulent comments, and maybe they should redesign their website.