Speaker 1: It seems people who have passed away have strong reservations
Speaker 1: about net neutrality. What is actually going on here? I'm
Speaker 1: Jonathan Strickland and this is text updaily. For some time now,
Speaker 1: the Federal Communications Commission in the United States has accepted
Speaker 1: comments submitted by US citizens on the subject of net neutrality.
Speaker 1: That's the concept that states that companies that provide Internet
Speaker 1: service should allow access to all content and apps that
Speaker 1: rely upon the Internet, regardless of their source. Further, they
Speaker 1: should do so without extending any preferential treatment to some
Speaker 1: services or hindering others. It's a hot topic issue in
Speaker 1: the United States in particular, and net neutrality advocates have
Speaker 1: been submitting comments on the subject for the last few years.
Speaker 1: According to James Harvey, who wrote about his experience on
Speaker 1: medium dot com, there have been several comments on the
Speaker 1: FCC site that are against net neutrality. There are from
Speaker 1: some suspect sources. Harvey discovered the surprising number of those
Speaker 1: comments originated from Sharpsburg, Georgia. That's a small town in
Speaker 1: my home state that in census boasted a population of
Speaker 1: threety one people. It's also a town where Harvey grew
Speaker 1: up and isn't too far from where he lives now,
Speaker 1: Harvey decided to do some investigation. He had already noticed
Speaker 1: that many of the comments against net neutrality shared the
Speaker 1: exact same wording. That led him to conclude that the
Speaker 1: comments had been added in some automatic way. He went
Speaker 1: to Sharpsburg to find out why hundreds of people, essentially
Speaker 1: the population of the town, were so against the idea
Speaker 1: of net neutrality. According to his account, Harvey discovered that
Speaker 1: most people were unaware that they had apparently left a
Speaker 1: comment on the subject in the first place. Many had
Speaker 1: no clue what net neutrality was denied, ever having written
Speaker 1: anything on the subject at all. More than a few
Speaker 1: of the people on his list no longer lived in
Speaker 1: Sharpsburg and hattan't in years, and in at least one case,
Speaker 1: the person who had supposedly emitted on the FCC site
Speaker 1: had died more than a year earlier. Harvey's suspicsions seemed
Speaker 1: well founded. Someone had apparently taken a list of people's
Speaker 1: names and addresses, most likely called from a compromised database
Speaker 1: or collection of databases, and then populated the FCC's comments
Speaker 1: section with fake public statements coming out against net neutrality
Speaker 1: using bots, in other words, using a program to automatically
Speaker 1: populate those comment fields. The current chairman of the FCC
Speaker 1: has voted against Internet service providers being grouped under Title
Speaker 1: two of the Communications Act of nineteen four That group
Speaker 1: was created originally for telephone service providers. It's also the
Speaker 1: group that gives the FCC more oversight over I s
Speaker 1: P policies. He has advocated for a strategy of light regulation,
Speaker 1: and opponents to his point of view state that this
Speaker 1: leads to large companies solidifying monopolistic holds on regions and
Speaker 1: is ultimately bad for the customer. According to Carl Bode,
Speaker 1: who wrote about his own experiences on tech Dirt, contacting
Speaker 1: the f c C about fraudulent comments is a waste
Speaker 1: of time. Mode claims that someone left a comment in
Speaker 1: his name on an FCC site that very much was
Speaker 1: in opposition to his actual views. He says that when
Speaker 1: he contacted the FCC to alert them to the fraudulent post,
Speaker 1: he was told nothing could be done. So what exactly
Speaker 1: are the two sides of this argument. Let's take the
Speaker 1: pro stance first. Net neutrality is supposed to require everyone
Speaker 1: to offer up a level playing field on the Internet,
Speaker 1: regardless of the service or device that's in use. Ideally,
Speaker 1: any person accessing the Internet should be able to use
Speaker 1: or visit any legal site or service on the Internet itself.
Speaker 1: The user's I s P would not block any legal content,
Speaker 1: nor would the I s P put some content on
Speaker 1: a fast track while purposefully throttling other content. That last
Speaker 1: bit is important. Many I s p s, such as
Speaker 1: Comcast don't just provide access to the stuff that's on
Speaker 1: the Internet. Many of them also are in the business
Speaker 1: of making that stuff too. In a world without net neutrality,
Speaker 1: such an I s P could choose to boost its
Speaker 1: own content to users while throttling competing products. Here's an example.
Speaker 1: Without net neutrality, Comcast could choose to give its customers
Speaker 1: favorable access to its own on demand video services while
Speaker 1: slowing down traffic from a competing service like Netflix or Hulu.
Speaker 1: Net neutrality advocates argue that this is an anticompetitive practice.
Speaker 1: Netflix doesn't have its own dedicated connections to customers, its
Speaker 1: traffic has to travel across I s P infrastructure. It
Speaker 1: would be unfair, say the advocates, for a service dependent
Speaker 1: upon that infrastructure to find itself impeded purposefully and Since
Speaker 1: many regions in the United States have few options when
Speaker 1: it comes to I s p s, there's not much
Speaker 1: of a customer can do should their own I s
Speaker 1: P start engaging in that type of behavior. In an
Speaker 1: ideal world, customers could cancel a contract with one I
Speaker 1: s P and higher on an another one with a
Speaker 1: more fair approach to delivering content. But if you don't
Speaker 1: have any options open to you, you're stuck with whatever
Speaker 1: your I s P wants. Opponents to net neutrality say
Speaker 1: that the increased regulation is at best unnecessary and at
Speaker 1: worst holding back companies from innovating. Specifically, the argument states
Speaker 1: that if I s p s could charge content creators
Speaker 1: fees in return for which the content creators would find
Speaker 1: their work put on fast track of the I s
Speaker 1: p S infrastructure, the I s P could then use
Speaker 1: that money to build out better networks with advanced fiber.
Speaker 1: This would lead to unprecedented data throughput and download speeds.
Speaker 1: The pro side counters with the argument that such a
Speaker 1: policy would stifle innovation because only really big companies would
Speaker 1: be able to afford those fast tracking fees. Any startups
Speaker 1: would be at an enormous disadvantage, making it very difficult
Speaker 1: to discover their services. Plus, say the net neutrality advocates
Speaker 1: i sp s have shown little interest in investing more
Speaker 1: money into infrastructure, they might find it more helpful to
Speaker 1: use that money to boost pure profit. The current FCC
Speaker 1: appears to be more sympathetic to the con side of
Speaker 1: net neutrality than the pro side. That has led some
Speaker 1: people to suggest that the FCC has no incentive to
Speaker 1: take allegations of fraud seriously or to even acknowledge opposing viewpoints.
Speaker 1: Where this will lead remains to be seen. That's all
Speaker 1: for now. To learn more about net neutrality and the
Speaker 1: tech policies that affect everybody, check out the podcast tech Stuff.
Speaker 1: The show publishes on Wednesdays and Fridays and is a
Speaker 1: much longer, more in depth look at technology. I'll see
Speaker 1: you again soon.