This is truly amazing. I have been told this happens at FCC hearings, but here Comcast is caught red handed and then admits to paying random people to sit through Monday’s (Feb. 25) public hearing held by the FCC in Boston to investigate Comcast and other ISPs blocking practices. (See my previous posts on this blocking: AP Report: Comcast Blocking Certain Web Traffic and More About Comcast Internet Blocking.)

Comcast does this to prevent the actual public, people who care about these issues, from attending the hearing and providing testimony that is antithetical to the company’s practices of throttling traffic (mostly from peer-to-peer services) with ZERO TRANSPARENCY. FreePress has photos of these hired human roadblocks actually asleep during the hearing. (see video below). Wow.

Best headline on this: Comcast is Blocktastic!. See also this article from Save the Internet

Top bidders put up 2.78 billion in opening rounds of spectrum auction

FCC approves Comcast takeover by private equity firm Bain (w/ heavy ties to Mitt Romney)

FCC puts out new localism rules, Adelstein calls thems bunk

Afghan journalist sentenced to death for distributing an article deemed to have “insulted Islam”

The other day my neighbor handed me this article from NYU Sociologist Eric Klinenberg in the March/April Mother Jones magazine. Here’s the headline/byline:

Breaking the News: It’s not the Internet that’s killing newspapers. It’s the equity-chasing investors and their friends at the FCC who have put outsize profits before a free press.

This piece is excellent – it most likely stems from Klinenberg’s new book Fighting For Air: The Battle to Control America’s Media. I haven’t read it yet, but it seems to encapsulate a topic I’ve been thinking about a lot lately, which is incorporating ethnographic research and media analysis to form a basis for institutional media critique. I need to find out who else is doing this, but clearly Klinenberg is a master in this area. I heard him interviewed on Bob McChesney’s Media Matters radio program, he described the goal of book is to

turn media consolidation from an abstraction into the kind of thing we recognize as affecting our lives. No matter how many times we see those charts of media ownership that show how 5 or 6 companies dominate the system and own lots and lots of subsidiaries, a key challenge for those who care about this issue is to tell human stories about it that really resonate, especially with people who aren’t already convinced that there’s a problem. The kind of media system that we have deprives us of these stories, so we need to find a way to get them told.

Here is where qualitative approaches – ethnographic works – get at the heart of issues like media ownership and telecom policy that can seem so far removed from everyday life.

This is a model to emulate…

FCC Chairman Martin and Commissioner Tate issued a joint statement regarding the recently approved merger of AT&T and BellSouth that made AT&T the largest telecommunications conglomerate in the US. The back story is this: The merger was previously stalemated because democratic FCC commissioners Adelstein and Copps, at the bequest of consumer and advocacy groups, refused to let the merger go through without provisions for net neutrality. The merger occurred earlier this week shortly after AT&T agreed to maintain neutral network business practices for two years.

Martin and Tate:

The conditions regarding net-neutrality have very little to do with the merger at hand and very well may cause greater problems than the speculative problems they seek to address. These conditions are simply not warranted by current market conditions and may deter facilities investment. Accordingly, it gives us pause to approve last-minute remedies to address the ill-defined problem net neutrality proponents seek to resolve.

Adelstein:

A historic merger warrants historic conditions. I don’t pretend that we addressed every possible issue presented here or that it is possible, or even appropriate in this context, to try to rectify years of decisions that have undercut competition. Yet, drawing on the full record, I have tried to counter-balance the effects of this transaction by asking for meaningful conditions that protect the open and neutral character of the Internet, benefit consumers by promoting affordable broadband services, and preserve competitive choices for residential and business consumers.

Network Neutrality is an extremely complicated issue (see my previous post w/ video for one side of the argument). There are good arguments for and against regulation, but my bias leans toward protecting the historical underdog, the citizen, contra big business.

AT&T has been given the go ahead to merge with BellSouth, but only after promising to uphold net neutrality provisions for at least 24 months. This, among other consessions, such as a plan to offer low-cost, stand-alone broadband access, stems from two FCC commissioners (both democrats) refusal to approve the merger absent of such public interest addendums.

The battle for more permanent net neutrality safegards will undoubtedly take place in congress, perhaps in the coming session.

AP story in Houston Chronicle

It’s tough to stand up to your boss, yet FCC commissioner Robert McDowell did just that when he rightfully abstained from voting to determine the fate of the proposed AT&T-BellSouth merger. McDowell, who used to work for Comptel, an association with former business relationships to AT&T and the telecos, refrained from voting on the merger citing obvious conflicts of interest.

FCC chairmen Kevin Martin ordered McDowell to weigh in on the proposal despite the conflicts, yet McDowell refused. Looks like McDowell has narrowly escaped the large lump of coal he was most likely set to receive this holiday. Martin will most likely end up with the unexpected surplus.