Comcast pays people to bogart my seat at FCC hearing.
I left lab early yesterday and rushed over to Harvard Law School to attend the FCC hearing. Unfortunately, I arrived to find a hallway full of angry people and a police officer blocking the stairway. Apparently, Comcast offered its local employees a full day’s pay to take up seats in the courtroom. Totally sweet deal for those folks but generally rotten deal for the (unpaid) public. By the way, this isn’t speculation. Comcast admits it as apparently this is common practice in Washington hearings.
Nuff respect to everyone pictured but this photo is too funny not to post:
Also, if you head over to the Miro blog, you can listen to a dude explaining that he is paid to take up a seat. Brutal!
The hearing generated a lot of interesting conversation around Net Neutrality and did a good job at presenting the issue as nuanced and complex. The engineering panel was worthwhile if only for getting the technical detail into the public record. Watching David Reed warmed my heart. (See: wikipedia for sexy 70s pic!) I used the same envelope analogy when I taught packet-switching to 7th graders a couple years ago:
Check this FCC Hearing flickrset for more hazy photos of talking heads projected on a big screen.
Tags: berkman, comcast, fcc, freeculture, freedom, internet, isp, law, netneutrality, network, policy, verizon
