When you're a cable company or telco and you can't actually get popular, public support for your monopolist, innovation-smothering business model, what do you do?
Apparently, the answer is "create a web of fake consumer advocacy organizations and pretend you are."
As much as I'd like to be writing a more helpful Everyday Magic diary, there's a flood of news coming out about the Net Neutrality fight, and the dirty game our collusion-driven, monopolist cable and telco firms are playing. See, a few weeks ago, I wrote a diary about how Broadband for America threatened the FCC with a slow down in innovation and deployment of broadband if cable and telco firms were reclassified. At the time, I classified Broadband for America as a trade group.
I was far too charitable. Follow me below the orange cloud to find out why.
According to Lee Fang at VICE, the industry is using these groups and paid lobbyists like John Sununu and Harold Ford, Jr. to pretend like we actually like getting fucked by our ISPs and watching the world overtake us in both the speed and availability of broadband. Bolded emphasis is mine:
To the surprise of probably no one, ISPs are enraged at the prospect of being classified as a utility and are fighting back. But the attacks are not fully transparent. Many of the organizations protesting a move toward classifying ISPs as a utility, which is the only likely option for enacting net neutrality, are funded by the ISP lobby.
Take this opinion column by former Republican Senator John Sununu and former Democratic Congressman Harold Ford in the San Francisco Chronicle. The pair argues that reclassification would lead to "chronic underinvestment" in broadband services while threatening job loss. The disclaimer running under their byline says they are honorary co-chairs of Broadband for America, which the paper describes as "a coalition of 300 internet consumer advocates, content providers, and engineers."
Well, we know that's not the case -- it's quite easy to look at the list of supporters on Broadband for America's site and see how it's dominated by cable and telco interests...but only if you've been keeping up on Net Neutrality news.
Mr. Fang continues, making sure to shatter any doubt anyone might have had about BfA:
A disclosure obtained by VICE from the National Cable and Telecom Association (NCTA), a trade group for ISPs, shows that the bulk of Broadband for America's recent 3.5 million budget is funded through a $2 million donation from NCTA. [...] It wasn't signed by any internet consumer advocates, as the Sununu-Ford letter suggests. The signatures on the letter reads like a who's who of ISP industry presidents and CEOs, including AT&T's Randall Stephenson, Cox Communications' Patrick Esser, NCTA president (and former FCC commissioner) Michael Powell, Verizon's Lowell McAdam, and Comcast's Brian Roberts.
But Technomancer, you ask, we already know this! Where's the new news about this?
Well, Broadband for America has retained the DCI Group, a firm known for and that specialized in creating fake consumer interest and advocacy groups. They've even gotten our old conservative think tank friends, The Heartland Institute involved (and funded the crap out of them), along with our corporate shill politicans-turned-lobbyists mentioned above. And they've funded/created more groups:
Another group leading the charge is the American Consumer Institute. The organization recently filed a letter with the FCC opposing reclassification, and argues that ISPs should be left alone.
[...]
Why would a self-professed consumer advocacy group not only oppose moving toward net neutrality but claim that America's broadband market—one of the slowest, most expensive in the industrialized world with fewer than three choices in many parts of the country—is so great?
Perhaps because ACI, like Broadband for America, is financed by an ISP lobby group. Annual tax returns show that a foundation controlled by lobbyists from the cell phone industry, called MyWireless.org, has contributed to ACI since 2010.
And all these groups are only the ones that we've found so far. Shit, we already know that the industry managed to get the FCC chairman's seat filled by a former cable-industry lobbyist in Mr. Wheeler, along with more former lobbyists among the rank-and-file of the FCC.
All this effort, from regulatory capture to astroturfing a web of fake consumer advocacy groups, proves one major thing.
They are scared to death of their rapacious, monopolistic practices being exposed, regulated, and ended. They will use every dirty trick in the book to fight to remain the gatekeepers of our future. They will fight to maintain control of what you see, when you see it, and how fast it gets to you.
We cannot let them win. This is far, far too important.
Tell the FCC to enact common carrier regulation. Sign petitions to ensure that telco and cable company millions can't drown out our combined voices with astroturf groups.
This isn't a fight we can afford to lose.