Feb
26
Comcast hires seat-fillers at FCC
Posted by Dirk Avery at 5:53 pm under Internet.
This is hilarious. Comcast admits hiring disinterested people to fill spots at a public FCC hearing held at Harvard Law School. While Comcast spokeswoman Jennifer Khoury (pictured) admitted the company hired people to hold places in line for Comcast employees, Comcast opponents claim they also filled seats to prevent interested people from attending the hearing. Sam Gustin, of Portfolio, writes:
Craig Aaron, a spokesman for Free Press, one of the groups that filed the complaint against Comcast, [said]… “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…”
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.
Free Press campaign director Timothy Karr said…, “The only reason these people were in the room, it seemed to me, was to keep seats warm and exclude others…”
Some audience members appeared to sleep through the proceedings, according to photos taken during the hearing. Other applauded enthusiastically when Comcast executive vice president David L. Cohen delivered key points in his presentation.
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- William Blumenthal, live blog
- Live blogging: William Blumenthal, GC of FTC
- Copyright: Trojan horse to net neutrality?
Here’s the problem: Comcast takes the same approach to public debate that it has to Internet access: that it can wield substantial political and market power to shut out debate and shut up people. For too long, communications policymaking has been rigged against us. We need to send a wakeup call to phone and cable giants and their powerful lobbyists that they will no longer set the agenda. Check out this new video we just released: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RYGtNmmb2y0
The purpose of the Internet is to give power over information to everyone. The role of our elected leaders is to protect our basic right to communicate from those who want to take it away from us. Whether it’s on the Internet or at public hearings we must stand up for everyone’s right to connect.
Alice, thanks for the video link!