Comcast Paid People to Pack FCC Hearing

GRASSROOTS SUPPORT? OR ASTROTURF?
[SOURCE: Portfolio.com, AUTHOR: Sam Gustin]
Comcast, the giant of the cable and broadband service industries, hired people off the street to attend this week's Federal Communications Commission hearing on Network Neutrality. Comcast spokeswoman Jennifer Khoury said that the company paid some people to arrive early and hold places in the queue for local Comcast employees who wanted to attend the hearing. Some of those placeholders, however, did more than wait in line: They filled many of the seats at the meeting, according to eyewitnesses. As a result, scores of Comcast critics and other members of the public were denied entry because the room filled up well before the beginning of the hearing. Craig Aaron, a spokesman for Free Press, one of the groups that filed the complaint against Comcast, denounced the company's tactics. "The sad thing about this is that literally hundreds of people who were not paid to stand in line, or paid by their employer to attend, were prevented from even entering the building," Aaron said. Such tactics are not unheard of at congressional hearings in Washington, D.C., but Comcast's critics said that they were inappropriate for a public hearing on a college campus.
http://www.portfolio.com/news-markets/top-5/2008/02/26/Comcast-FCC-Heari...

* Free Press Accuses Comcast of Packing FCC Hearing
http://www.broadcastingcable.com/article/CA6535646.html?rssid=193

* (Associated Press)
http://www.tvnewsday.com/articles/2008/02/27/daily.2/

* Will The FCC Save The Internet?
[SOURCE: Public Knowledge, AUTHOR: Art Brodsky]
[Commentary] At the Federal Communications Commission’s extraordinary hearing Feb. 25, FCC Chairman Kevin Martin said that companies can’t “arbitrarily block access to particular applications and services” and that any such blockage must be done in a way transparent not only to consumers but to applications developers. He said the Commission was “ready, willing and able to step in” if it found such a situation Comcast’s David Cohen maintained that his company never blocked access to any applications, that the company merely delayed some traffic in periods of network congestion. In response to Martin’s call for transparency in network management, Cohen cited a new disclosure policy on his company’s Web site. If the Commissioners were forced to negotiate a compromise on this crucial issue, there certainly is enough wiggle room there for a mealy mouthed decision finding that Comcast really didn't “block” any applications while calling for network operators like Comcast, Verizon or AT&T to be more vigilant and transparent in managing their networks. Such a decision would overlook the reality that to delay traffic is a form of blocking the use of an application or service, as consumers will go elsewhere.
http://www.publicknowledge.org/node/1409