FCC Falsely Declares Community Broadband An 'Ominous' Attack On Free Speech
from the bullshit-factory dept
Absent any hard data to support their claims, you may have noted that the Trump FCC often just makes up some shit.
Like that time FCC boss Ajit Pai tried to claim that net neutrality somehow aids dictators. Or that time Pai's office just made up a DDOS attack to try and downplay massive public backlash to his historically unpopular policies. There's often no real-world data that can defend blindly kissing the rings of widely-loathed telecom monopolies, so bullshit tends to be the weapon of choice when Pai's FCC embraces whatever handout to Comcast and friends is on the menu this week.
The latest case in point: during a speech at the ISP-backed and scientifically-sounding Media Institute, FCC Commissioner Mike O’Rielly took a moment to broadly declare that community owned and operated broadband providers are an "ominous" threat to free speech:
"I would be remiss if my address omitted a discussion of a lesser-known, but particularly ominous, threat to the First Amendment in the age of the Internet: state-owned and operated broadband networks."
We've long noted how community broadband networks are often an organic response to the expensive, slow, or just-plain unavailable service that's the direct product of a broken telecom market and regulatory capture. While you'll occasionally see some deployment duds if the business models aren't well crafted, studies have shown such networks (there's 750 and counting now in the States) offer cheaper, faster service than many incumbents. This direct threat to incumbent revenues is a major reason why ISP lobbyists have passed protectionist laws in more than 21 states trying to block your town's ability to even consider the option.
If you thought O'Rielly would provide hard evidence of these networks' "ominous" affront to free speech, you'd be mistaken. The closest O'Rielly gets to evidence is a 2015 white paper crafted for an ISP-funded think tank claiming that because these ISPs' TOS include routine language restricting harassment and hate speech (language every private ISP also includes in their TOS and AUP), community-run ISPs' are more likely to censor user speech:
"The closest O’Rielly gets to supporting evidence appears to be a 2015 white paper written by Professor Enrique Armijo for the ISP-funded Free State Foundation. That paper similarly alleges that standard telecom sector language intended to police “threatening, abusive or hateful” language somehow implies community-run ISPs are more likely to curtail user speech."
Of course the implication is that government-run networks must be bad because hey, it's the government. Forgotten in this false narrative is the fact that on the local level, the government is obviously you and I, and these networks are a direct, democratic response to decades of frustration at the obvious failures of the telecom market. And if you talk to folks that actually have some expertise on this subject (like I did over at Motherboard), they'll tell you that because these ISPs actually have a vested interest in the communities they serve, they're far more responsive to user complaints:
"Municipal broadband experts say the argument has no basis in fact.
"There is no history of municipal networks censoring anyone's speech,” Christopher Mitchell, a community broadband expert and Director of the Institute for Local Reliance, told Motherboard.
“In our experience, the Terms of Service from municipal ISPs have been similar to or better than those of for-profit ISPs in terms of benefiting subscribers,” he added. “And when concerns have been raised about related issues...the municipal ISPs have listened to public sentiments far more than any large cable or telephone company has."
O'Rielly also fails to mention that incumbent ISPs like Comcast routinely argue that absolutely everything the public demands of it (from expanding broadband to adhering to net neutrality) violate its First Amendment rights (an argument new Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh has already supported). Whereas municipally-run ISPs likely won't be allowed to tap dance around First Amendment lawsuits as government-linked entities mandated to avoid speech regulation.
But the biggest irony here is that one of the ISPs targeted by O'Rielly for non-existent free speech violations is EPB broadband in Chattanooga, which was just ranked by Consumer Reports as one of the best ISPs in the nation in terms of value, speed, and service quality. Comcast tried to unsuccessfully sue EPB out of existence. And as long as we're getting vexed about your rights, both AT&T and Comcast also lobbied legislators to pass a law in Tennessee restricting voter-approved broadband networks like these from expanding, even if voters approve it at the ballot box.
Ultimately, Chattanooga's service forced these ISPs to do the one thing they had been hoping to avoid: compete on both service speed and price. That's not to say local-government owned broadband should be the only solution embraced, but it's obviously one of several ways you can actually prod lumbering, pampered mono/duopolies to actually give a damn.
And of course that's the real problem in O'Rielly's mind: that locals would dare impede on Comcast's god-given right to buy itself a geographical monopoly over an essential service, nickel-and-diming consumers until they grew so frustrated they're forced to get into the broadband business themselves.
Of course ISPs could prevent this by simply offering better, faster, and cheaper service. But it's far easier and cheaper to try and buy laws restricting consumer rights, and to have your favorite public official mindlessly demonize something that is, at the end of the day, a legitimate, organic public response to a broadband competition and availability problem ISPs like AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast would prefer regulators ignore.
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Filed Under: ajit pai, competition, first amendment, free speech, government, mike o'rielly, muni broadband, municipal broadband
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your 1st mistake
1. make rules that are financially beneficial to said corporation
2. return to said corporation at the end of their governmental gig
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Re: your 1st mistake
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Re: Re: your 1st mistake
Quite. There's a significant difference between expecting them to act in the public's favor and make honest arguments(which I don't think anyone does at this point) and calling them out on stupid arguments and/or acting against the public's interest.
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Re: Re: mistake
so, local government works really great -- local politicians diligently and honestly obey the directions of us local citizens ??
That's nonsense.
As always, local government is usually run by numerical minorities and special interests. Municipal Broadband systems are not a proper function of governmentat all.
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Re: Re: Re: mistake
I'm not sure how a numerical minority controls a majority vote office like a mayor or city council seat. I agree that, particularly in major metropolitan areas, special interests can have major effects, but local policies are harder to sway than state or federal policies, because of the techniques play out far less effectively on smaller populations.
But I'm sure the affordable Muni Broadband lobby is the real power here, right?
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Re: Re: Re: mistake
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Have to look at it from Ajit's point of view, right?
AT&T, Verizon, Comcast, et al, believe that limiting data allowances, restricting certain (competing) traffic while zero-rating their own traffic, asking content creators to double pay for content delivery is what constitutes their "speech".
Try to force them to not limit, to not-restrict, to not-zero-rate, to not double bill content creators is a restriction of their "corporations as people" constitutional right to free-speech.
The corporations are delusional in thinking that, but they figure they have enough money to make their thinking legit through less than moral, less than legal means.
Watching as Ajit parrots these clames, ridiculous as they are, seems to paint a picture of where those corporate dollars are going.
It also makes one wonder where the eyes of the "oversight" teams/committees are if "it" (corruption) is as blatant as it appears to be.
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Telling standards
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Re: Telling standards
The first problem I see with the above is that only the government is prohibited from interfering with speech. There could be other charges, disturbing the peace for example, against the 'real person'.
The idea is to set up an in court confrontation, person vs person when one person is an actual human being and the other the fiction of a corporate person with free speech rights, who would necessarily be a no show.
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Re: Re:
Ohhh yeah - like Steve King
Land O’Lakes, Purina Pull Support for Iowa Congressman Steve King Over Racial Remarks
https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-10-30/land-o-lakes-pulls-financial-support-for-i owa-congressman-steve-king
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Re: Re: Re:
Nah, Steve King was a white supremacist piece of shit way before Trump ran for office.
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Re:
"As such it will be quite popular in stand-up comedy circles."
Poe's Law.
"Without a winking smiley or other blatant display of humor, it is impossible to create a parody of Fundamentalism that SOMEONE won't mistake for the real thing."
More briefly summarized to "You can't parody a clown".
Stand-up comedy can make parodies of ordinary numbskull politicians simply because paraphrasing with added hyperbole creates the joke. That's a problem where trump is concerned because it you can make just about any statement of incoherent lunacy and it would be believable that it came from the screaming orange.
Similar to copyright cultists and other fanatically religious in that regard.
The main problem by now is that there's now a US president who, literally every day, makes statements which would have seen Clinton, Obama, or GWB halfway into an impeachment hearing - but the citizenry has become used to putting that off as "Donald just being Donald".
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"Trump just being Trump"
I've been reading Bob Woodward's Fear which has given new light to the old 20th century yarn that anybody can become President of the United States
Specifically, that if you are a normal person in fourth grade or higher (even if you're still ten years old) then you are capable of being a better President than the one we currently have, just by having the sense to not do crazy shit when all your advisers are telling you crazy shit is a bad idea.
Trump really is a walking natural disaster that his White House is desperately trying to contain and control, and often failing.
What's worse is that then he's given these problems that no-one else has been able to adequately solve (e.g. the North Korean nuclear program, or the ongoing tension in the Middle East) and he believes the answers are simple, clear-cut and extreme.
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One fraction appears to be attempting to establish a complete command economy with government ownership of the means of production by means of simply having the Federal Reserve buy it by printing money combined with a surveillance state.
A minority fraction with goals less publicly defined appears to be in opposition.
Both sides apparently will do anything necessary to achieve their goals with large numbers of knee jerk ignorant reactionists who spout the damnest nonsense that anyone can imagine.
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Let me guess, you just finished reading Karl Marx.
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How many Marx in a Lenin?
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It's amusing that you pretend to be above all those "ignorant" people and yet don't know 5th-grade vocabulary.
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Well - it is a given that the present FCC is corporate owned and operated so how exactly is that any better than a community run ISP?
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but isn't "free speech" increasingly viewed as a bad thing?
A few weeks ago it was conspiracy nut Alex Jones who got kicked out of a half dozen (supposedly independent) providers on the same day. This past weekend another victim of similar corporate dogpiling was the tiny Twitter alternative site Gab, the platform used by a terrorist the day before. Gab is now offline, perhaps permanently. (Yet earlier in the week, another terrorist of sorts, a fake mailbomber, used Twitter and Facebook in similar fashion, yet those platforms, which are notoriously anti-free speech, not surprisingly suffered no similar consequences.)
Both FCC bureaucrats and Techdirt writers need step out of the past and update their thinking and arguments, as "free speech" is now almost a dirty word in the tech industry, a defect to be fixed rather than an ideal to be cherished ... or so it seems.
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Re: but isn't "free speech" increasingly viewed as a bad thing?
Is the Tech industry supposed to mirror societal changes, or not? Is the Tech industry supposed to react to every micro expression from every micro group, or not? Is the Tech industry supposed to propose and practise some orthodoxy, or not? Are individual members of the Tech industry supposed to concieve their own perspective on how they will interact with the rest of the world, or not?
Update their thinking and arguments to whose norm, or not?
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Re: Re: but isn't "free speech" increasingly viewed as a bad thing?
Compounding this shift in ideologies of anti-tolerance was the decline of manufacturing related industries, located mainly in the politically-conservative midwest and deep-south states, and the growth of the tech industry which sprang up in the ideologically far-Left West Coast.
The early internet period of the 1990s seemed the peak era of free speech, as the church-based activists had largely died off yet the California hippie attitude notable for its free-speech/live-snd-let-live ideals had not yet begat the hyper sensitive "social justice" outrage mobs which emerged in the 2000s.
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I would rather have the second group than the first. At least the so-called “SJWs” are generally on the side of not tolerating racist, sexist, and generally bigoted bullshit such as the anti-Semitism of the man who shot up a synagogue this past weekend.
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Re: but isn't "free speech" increasingly viewed as a bad thing?
Free Speech, aka 1st amendment, details how the government is not allowed to interfere with your right to free speech. It says nothing about the possible repercussions of said speech and whether speaker is protected from criticisms/boycotts/dirty_looks.
If you walk down main street sucking booze and yelling profanities, more than likely you will be given a small room in the local jail in which to sleep it off followed by a court appearance for drunk and disorderly. This in no way interferes with your right to free speech.
Now if you want to explore the nebulous free speech unrelated to the 1st amendment, that people think they are entitled to but is not codified anywhere ... oh wait a sec, you're the common law guy?
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[citation needed]
Yes, let us cry tears over [checks notes] a social interaction network that allowed anti-Semitism, racism, and other such hatred to run so rampant and unchecked that an anti-Semitic soon-to-be terrorist believed he was in “good company” while using it.
I am all for discussing the ethics and morals of “deplatforming” entire SINs. But if you expect me to feel bad because Gab got the boot because it became too much of a liability for its hosting company, too bad—my pity well has run dry.
Two things you need to understand.
Moderation is not censorship. Even InfoWars, of all sites, understands this—which is why such a declaration shows up in that site’s Terms of Service. Moderation is a platform operator saying “we don’t do that here”; discretion is you saying “I won’t do that there”; censorship is someone saying “you can’t do that anywhere” alongside threats of either violence or government intervention.
“Privilege” seems to be one in your personal vocabulary—since, you know, you cannot get around the objective fact that use of a platform such as Twitter is a privilege.
You are not guaranteed the use of a SIN. You cannot force a SIN to host your speech. If you can prove either of those statements wrong, now would be the time to do so.
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Re: but isn't "free speech" increasingly viewed as a bad thing?
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Which is a greater threat to free speech?
If your ISP is owned by a corporation, they can restrict you any way they want for any reason (including everything in the above 'short list'). - See EULA they make you agree to.
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Re: Which is a greater threat to free speech?
...just like the US Postal Service, which can be accused of a lot but has hardly been involved "ominous attacks on free speech". An electronic datagram network isn't all that different.
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No news is good news!
Leftist much?
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Re: No news is good news!
Simply because it is a "rightist" website?
Do you imply that a website should be allowed to put whatever they please on the intarwebs without any pushback? How do you arrive at this conclusion?
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Re: No news is good news!
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Re: No news is good news!
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**Please note that this is saying actual facts and not alternative facts.
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That's a fact, which means those who needed that note are not likely to acknowledge its existence :)
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like a taco kit
Why are we crying about the big ISPs when we can start our own ?
boycott or bend over or start a local municipal ISP
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Indeed, just like one... except in every way that matters
boycott or bend over or start a local municipal ISP
So out of curiosity, which option did you pick? It clearly wasn't the first one, so did you bend over or are you the proud owner/co-owner of your own local ISP?
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Re: like a taco kit
What is a taco kit? Sounds tasty.
Because the vast majority of Americans don't have the capital, resources, or hardware to start their own ISP? Just a guess.
Most people can't because they have ONE choice of valid ISPs and it would be impractical to go without internet access for any length of time because most people now rely on it for work, school, finances, healthcare, etc... It's just simply not an option for the majority of people.
This is what we have been doing and what people are trying to change.
Local cities are, or trying to at least. The problem is all the incumbent ISPs have written laws that prevent any cities from building their own. Individuals wouldn't run into this problem but as stated above, most individuals don't have the capital or resources to do this. It costs hundreds of thousands of dollars to start your own ISP, and that's just for ONE city.
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Didn't a US court rule that banning $ donations was banning free speech?
therefore $==free speech
therefore limiting the $ an ISP can make is limiting there free speech
Having a municipal owned ISP would provide competition and limit monopoly (or duopoly depending on where you live) of the ISP and therefore limit the plunder it can take.
Therefore municipal ISP == limiting an ISP free speech
QED
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I'm pretty sure...
...Ajit Pai is untouchable and can do whatever he wants.
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Re: I'm pretty sure...
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Re: I'm pretty sure...
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"Untouchable" as an ethnic dig
No, but I can see how it could be so interpreted.
I meant untouchable the way some congresspersons are untouchable -- their seat is so secure they don't have to worry about what their constituent thinks, as they sure aren't going to vote for the other guy, not in quantity enough to flip the seat, at any rate.
Pai is appointed by the President meaning he we have to suffer him until 2021.
Until then he can do whatever the fuck he wants as US Chairman of the FCC and we only get to BOHICA.
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Re: "Untouchable" as an ethnic dig
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But we have always been at war with Eurasia...
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How do you Force freedom of speach..
When you are NOT LIABLE for it being on any other service...NOT YOURS.
the only power they have is your EMAIL..and they cant even stop SPAM..
Something special about Small City areas...1-10 person can handle Most of the Customer concerns..You dont need 100's, because its all distributed..and each section of it has its OWN ISP.. its own problems..
YOUR customers dont need to WAIT on HOLD for 20 minutes to report something. No automated answer machine with 4-10 options going to another 4-10 options..
IF something Breaks..1-4 people can get to it in a hurry..They are generally the ones Maintaining the Servers..
When the City/gov can Compete with the Corps..WHY NOT..
They say its unfair, because they have to PAY MORE..
Pay more?? when they can CUT every corner, EXCEPT those at the top??
Thats right, Those at the top in the City are Employees, getting paid <1/4 the PAy the corp gives the TOP earners.
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