Dead People Hate Net Neutrality

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:03):
It seems people who have passed away have strong reservations
about net neutrality. What is actually going on here? I'm
Jonathan Strickland and this is text updaily. For some time now,
the Federal Communications Commission in the United States has accepted
comments submitted by US citizens on the subject of net neutrality.

(00:24):
That's the concept that states that companies that provide Internet
service should allow access to all content and apps that
rely upon the Internet, regardless of their source. Further, they
should do so without extending any preferential treatment to some
services or hindering others. It's a hot topic issue in
the United States in particular, and net neutrality advocates have

(00:45):
been submitting comments on the subject for the last few years.
According to James Harvey, who wrote about his experience on
medium dot com, there have been several comments on the
FCC site that are against net neutrality. There are from
some suspect sources. Harvey discovered the surprising number of those
comments originated from Sharpsburg, Georgia. That's a small town in

(01:06):
my home state that in census boasted a population of
threety one people. It's also a town where Harvey grew
up and isn't too far from where he lives now,
Harvey decided to do some investigation. He had already noticed
that many of the comments against net neutrality shared the
exact same wording. That led him to conclude that the

(01:28):
comments had been added in some automatic way. He went
to Sharpsburg to find out why hundreds of people, essentially
the population of the town, were so against the idea
of net neutrality. According to his account, Harvey discovered that
most people were unaware that they had apparently left a
comment on the subject in the first place. Many had
no clue what net neutrality was denied, ever having written

(01:50):
anything on the subject at all. More than a few
of the people on his list no longer lived in
Sharpsburg and hattan't in years, and in at least one case,
the person who had supposedly emitted on the FCC site
had died more than a year earlier. Harvey's suspicsions seemed
well founded. Someone had apparently taken a list of people's
names and addresses, most likely called from a compromised database

(02:13):
or collection of databases, and then populated the FCC's comments
section with fake public statements coming out against net neutrality
using bots, in other words, using a program to automatically
populate those comment fields. The current chairman of the FCC
has voted against Internet service providers being grouped under Title
two of the Communications Act of nineteen four That group

(02:37):
was created originally for telephone service providers. It's also the
group that gives the FCC more oversight over I s
P policies. He has advocated for a strategy of light regulation,
and opponents to his point of view state that this
leads to large companies solidifying monopolistic holds on regions and
is ultimately bad for the customer. According to Carl Bode,

(02:59):
who wrote about his own experiences on tech Dirt, contacting
the f c C about fraudulent comments is a waste
of time. Mode claims that someone left a comment in
his name on an FCC site that very much was
in opposition to his actual views. He says that when
he contacted the FCC to alert them to the fraudulent post,
he was told nothing could be done. So what exactly

(03:20):
are the two sides of this argument. Let's take the
pro stance first. Net neutrality is supposed to require everyone
to offer up a level playing field on the Internet,
regardless of the service or device that's in use. Ideally,
any person accessing the Internet should be able to use
or visit any legal site or service on the Internet itself.

(03:41):
The user's I s P would not block any legal content,
nor would the I s P put some content on
a fast track while purposefully throttling other content. That last
bit is important. Many I s p s, such as
Comcast don't just provide access to the stuff that's on
the Internet. Many of them also are in the business
of making that stuff too. In a world without net neutrality,

(04:05):
such an I s P could choose to boost its
own content to users while throttling competing products. Here's an example.
Without net neutrality, Comcast could choose to give its customers
favorable access to its own on demand video services while
slowing down traffic from a competing service like Netflix or Hulu.

(04:25):
Net neutrality advocates argue that this is an anticompetitive practice.
Netflix doesn't have its own dedicated connections to customers, its
traffic has to travel across I s P infrastructure. It
would be unfair, say the advocates, for a service dependent
upon that infrastructure to find itself impeded purposefully and Since
many regions in the United States have few options when

(04:47):
it comes to I s p s, there's not much
of a customer can do should their own I s
P start engaging in that type of behavior. In an
ideal world, customers could cancel a contract with one I
s P and higher on an another one with a
more fair approach to delivering content. But if you don't
have any options open to you, you're stuck with whatever
your I s P wants. Opponents to net neutrality say

(05:10):
that the increased regulation is at best unnecessary and at
worst holding back companies from innovating. Specifically, the argument states
that if I s p s could charge content creators
fees in return for which the content creators would find
their work put on fast track of the I s
p S infrastructure, the I s P could then use
that money to build out better networks with advanced fiber.

(05:31):
This would lead to unprecedented data throughput and download speeds.
The pro side counters with the argument that such a
policy would stifle innovation because only really big companies would
be able to afford those fast tracking fees. Any startups
would be at an enormous disadvantage, making it very difficult
to discover their services. Plus, say the net neutrality advocates

(05:53):
i sp s have shown little interest in investing more
money into infrastructure, they might find it more helpful to
use that money to boost pure profit. The current FCC
appears to be more sympathetic to the con side of
net neutrality than the pro side. That has led some
people to suggest that the FCC has no incentive to
take allegations of fraud seriously or to even acknowledge opposing viewpoints.

(06:15):
Where this will lead remains to be seen. That's all
for now. To learn more about net neutrality and the
tech policies that affect everybody, check out the podcast tech Stuff.
The show publishes on Wednesdays and Fridays and is a
much longer, more in depth look at technology. I'll see
you again soon.