Comcast Hires People Off The Street To Fill Seats At FCC Hearing
from the better-to-keep-out-those-net-neutrality-hippies dept
We pretty much ignored yesterday's FCC hearing concerning Comcast's traffic shaping activities, as the whole thing seemed like a bit of grandstanding. However, it's fairly stunning to find out that Comcast has admitted to hiring people off the street to fill seats at the hearing, blocking out many Comcast critics who were turned away once the room was full. Comcast claims that they hired the people merely to act as placeholders for Comcast employees (since, apparently, Comcast employees are too important to actually show up on time and wait in line like everyone else). However, as the picture at that first link shows many of the "paid" sitters stayed throughout the event and either slept or cheered on Comcast.Thank you for reading this Techdirt post. With so many things competing for everyone’s attention these days, we really appreciate you giving us your time. We work hard every day to put quality content out there for our community.
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Filed Under: fcc, fcc hearing, traffic shaping
Companies: comcast, fcc
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I guess we can thank the Bush Administration for t
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Re:
Do you know the difference? Apparently not.
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OMG!
That's a new low, even for Comcast.
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Few People Stayed - Scores Left Out
"Some of those placeholders, however, did more than wait in line: They filled many of the seats at the meeting, according to eyewitnesses. As a result, scores of Comcast critics and other members of the public were denied entry because the room filled up well before the beginning of the hearing."
Explain to me how a few people staying in the courtroom keeps scores of critics and "other members of the public" out of the courtroom...sure if a few stay - a few critics are denied entry. It's not 3 critics to 1 random seat filler. Don't hype it up by making it sound like every critic that wanted in couldn't get in because the 2 college students shown in the picture were sleeping.
Also who is "other members of the public?" and why is it necessary to lump them in with the critics? If they're against Comcast's practices - they're critics...they don't have to be journalists or have a weblog to be called "critics."
Stupid one-sided journalism.
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Re: Few People Stayed - Scores Left Out
Comcast critics, Comcast-paid stand-ins, and other members of the public are three sepparate groups. Yes, critics and other members of the public may be, but don't have to be, the same people. However, The stand-ins are not "other members of the public" because they were paid by an interested party to be there and probably had no other motivation to attend; other members of the public at least had something to offer which was not tainted by a payoff.
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Holy fuck....
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Alberto Gonzales syndrome
And certainly their man in the middle attacks are illegal.
Why has this escaped our esteemed DAs ?
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so to put that in IT terms that you can understand
You can bet we will be seeing more of this type of DDoJ attacks...
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Comcast Blocking the Flow Again.....
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Novel idea
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Free Press mirror
Comcast may not be innocent in the whole Net Neutrality game, but using line standers is hardly reason to claim the whole hearing was a sham.
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less critics is bad?
Also, #16 hit it dead on.
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This is from the last line - Unlike Comcast, Free Press did not pay anyone to stand in line...
And THAT is the entire story. Comcast only paid those people (and we don't even know how many) to stand in line. They sat through the whole thing of their own accord. That makes them members of the general public at that point. Free Press is just upset that they didn't think of it first.
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Comcast
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Face-to-face eco-centric functionalities
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