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The 28 House members who lobbied the Federal Communications Commission to drop net neutrality this week have received more than twice the amount in campaign contributions from the broadband sector than the average for all House members. According to research provided Friday by Maplight, the 28 House members received, on average, $26,832 from the "cable & satellite TV production & distribution" sector over a two-year period ending in December. According to the data, that's 2.3 times more than the House average of $11,651.
The US has long applied common carrier status to the telephone network, providing justification for universal service obligations that guarantee affordable phone service to all Americans and other rules that promote competition and consumer choice.
Some consumer advocates say that common carrier status is needed for the FCC to impose strong network neutrality rules that would force ISPs to treat all traffic equally, not degrading competing services or speeding up Web services in exchange for payment. ISPs have argued that common carrier rules would saddle them with too much regulation and would force them to spend less on network upgrades and be less innovative.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Nerdfest on Saturday May 17 2014, @04:26PM
That's a ridiculously low price for what they're buying. I would have thought it would take far more money than that to buy legislation.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 17 2014, @04:35PM
About $425 000, to be precise.
(26 832 - 11 651) * 28 = 425 068
Admin note: The post above triggered the 'Lameness filter'. For some reason I have to add some non-caps text. Are numbers considered caps by the filter?
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Saturday May 17 2014, @04:49PM
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 4, Insightful) by mhajicek on Saturday May 17 2014, @05:34PM
Time to kickstart legislation then.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 3, Insightful) by kaszz on Sunday May 18 2014, @12:30AM
You can vote but rich people will just steal the agenda of the elected.
(Score: 5, Informative) by Angry Jesus on Saturday May 17 2014, @05:20PM
> I would have thought it would take far more money than that to buy legislation.
It has always been surprisingly cheap because most of the time only one side has money to spend.
Hence Larry Lessig's MayOne SuperPAC [mayone.us] to bribe congress members for the public good.
They hit their $1M kickstarter funding in record time which got them another $1M from an anonymous donor.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Lagg on Sunday May 18 2014, @12:00AM
I've wondered for some time why people have so much trust in this. Even if one ignores the problem of using bribery to fight bribery, I've literally scoured that entire site looking for what kind of campaigns they're going to run and it's just as much vague political bullshit as all the rest of them use. No matter where I've looked, including here [mayone.us], here [mayone.us] and here [mayone.us] it's just "We'll use this money to run campaigns for key reform in key areas as long as you give us the key. We swear! This will end super pacs!". Regardless though isn't this off-topic in the first place? You got me excited thinking that some of this money would go to campaigns to force common carrier status on ISPs which then lead me to my futile search to get a straight answer out of these fucks.
Even more funny is that they acknowledge that it's a dumb and vague sounding idea. And say "Yeah, that's a feature!". If I'm wrong and am just being a big dumbass and missing some crucial information then by all means point me to it because I do want to buy into something like this. I really do. But given history and the high risk of "accounting errors" in such things I have no choice but to be suspicious.
http://lagg.me [lagg.me] 🗿
(Score: 1, Insightful) by kaalon on Saturday May 17 2014, @06:38PM
The article only mentions the direct contributions from employees of the industry. There are many, many more donors that are not directly linked to the cable guys. Being a politician is a very lucrative "business"
(Score: 1) by SpockLogic on Saturday May 17 2014, @07:24PM
That's a ridiculously low price for what they're buying. I would have thought it would take far more money than that to buy legislation.
Only goes to show that here in The US we have the best government that money can buy.
Overreacting is one thing, sticking your head up your ass hoping the problem goes away is another - edIII
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 17 2014, @07:40PM
> Only goes to show that here in The US we have the most cost-effective government that money can buy.
FTFY.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday May 17 2014, @07:55PM
No, "best" is right because the ones buying it are getting exactly what they want for as cheap as possible. They're also getting the best investment possible, since they can throw a tiny amount of money and get millions, or even billions, back on the government's purchase of junk equipment like the TSA nudie scanners.