Technology policy is complicated. Far too complicated for your average Republican House member, who has been really preoccupied anyway for the last month not having a clue how healthcare policy works. So you won't be surprised that House leadership leaned on an outside group to get talking points about net neutrality and the FCC so they don't sound stupid to their constituents. You also probably won't be surprised by who they got those talking points from—the lobby group representing Comcast, Cox Communications, Charter, and other cable industry companies.
Over the last few weeks, as the FCC was preparing to begin dismantling net neutrality rules, House lawmakers received an email from GOP leadership educating them on how to best defend the agency's extremely unpopular decision. Included in that e-mail was an attached list of talking points (pdf) making all manner of disingenuous claims about the net neutrality debate. [...]
Usually, Congress members cover their tracks well enough to obfuscate the fact they let lobbyists and campaign contributions do the thinking for them. But the Intercept noticed that metadata attached to the talking points clearly indicate they originated with the cable industry's biggest lobbying organization, the National Cable and Telecommunications Association (NCTA) [...]
As such, you'll surely be shocked to learn that many of the talking points included in the packet weren't remotely true, including one claiming net neutrality is somehow "anti-consumer," another regurgitating the repeatedly-debunked claim that net neutrality killed network investment, and several repeating the industry's favorite claim that net neutrality protections aren't necessary, because the broadband industry never does anything wrong. [...]
Here on planet Earth, we've watched as large ISPs used usage caps to hurt streaming competitors, block users from using certain services unless they pay for more expensive data plans, intentionally congest their networks to drive up interconnection costs, throttle entire classifications of traffic then lie about it, and even group up to block competing mobile apps and services they didn't want to compete with. Anybody that thinks it's hyperbole to state that ISPs will use their size, leverage and the lack of broadband competition to engage in a rotating crop of anti-competitive behaviors simply has not been paying attention.
It almost is enough to make you wonder if the NCTA might not also be behind the anti-net neutrality astroturfing of the FCC’s comment system leading up to their meeting to begin the process of undoing the open internet. Hundreds of thousands of identical comments coming from people who swear they did not write them had to be coordinated by somebody. The NCTA has had so much practice doing that for Republican lawmakers that it wouldn’t be a stretch for them.
from Daily Kos http://ift.tt/2qsSDCx
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