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On Sock Puppets & Industry Hacks: Reactions to Rep. Eric Massa’s Legislation – Predictable & Transparent

Phillip Dampier June 18, 2009 Data Caps, Editorial & Site News, Public Policy & Gov't 21 Comments
"This is not a rate increase, this is about fair pricing for everyone, seriously."

"This is not a rate increase, this is about fair pricing for everyone, seriously."

It’s always awful when you wake up with a bad taste in your mouth.  That’s the flavor of industry hacks and sock puppets who spent a good part of yesterday and last night on the attack against Rep. Eric Massa and your consumer interests.  Part of this battle is about engaging those who claim to represent consumers, but actually turn out to be paid by a lobbyist firm or “think tank,” usually located either in or near Washington, DC.  They are typically unwilling to disclose that involvement.  I’m not.  When called out, the typical response ranges from silence to ‘I would be saying the same things even if I didn’t get paid by them.’

Sure they would.

Consumers need to be particularly vigilant about the Say for Pay crowd of sock puppets that arrive in quotations in articles that attack common sense pro-consumer positions, or in the comments  below an online article.

Now you may be asking what in the world is a “sock puppet.”  Craig Aaron at Free Press explains:

Sock puppets, for those unfamiliar with the creatures commonly found inside the Beltway, are mouthpieces who rent out their academic or political credentials to argue pro-industry positions. These pay-to-sway professionals issue white papers, file comments with key agencies, and present themselves to the press as independent analysts. But their views have a funny way of shifting depending on who’s writing the checks. (To be clear, at Free Press we take no industry money.)

Sock puppets and astroturf groups go hand in hand.  If you remember, we’ve exposed a number of these groups that claim they are standing up for consumers, but in reality are paid to sit down and absorb their industry backer’s talking points.  The snowjob that typically follows claims that if you do the pro-consumer common sense thing, such as not allowing Internet Overcharging schemes to rip people off, you’ll destroy the Internet, America, and maybe even freedom itself.  Besides, just look at the “expert credentials” of our guy telling you that.

Your Money = Their MoneyWhen you boil it all down, sock puppets are people who feel morally fine with taking money for being willing to assume any position you want them to take.  It’s vaguely familiar to another profession that’s been around for a very long time.  One just has better office space than the other, and better business cards, too.

If you want to explore a perfect example of sock puppetry at work, with a group trying to get public taxpayer money to benefit big telephone and cable companies with few strings attached, check out Craig Aaron’s article on the subject this past January.

In Stop the Cap!‘s history, we’ve debated a representative from Nemertes Research who refuses to disclose who pays for their industry research reports that conveniently say exactly what the telecommunications industry’s positions are on the broadband issues of the day.  We’ve questioned a group that claims that “openness” or “neutrality” of the Internet is irrelevant, and called out the American Consumer Institute Center for Citizen Research (you gotta love the name — it’s a delicious consumery-sounding word salad… with special interest croutons sprinkled all over the top), who applauded Internet Overcharging as a great thing for customers, except they were packed with lobbyists to really satisfy big telecom interests.

Readers of this site should be well-qualified to engage industry propaganda and consumer misconceptions about the fairness of Internet Overcharging schemes.  You’ve gotten the information you need to effectively educate consumers and expose the sock puppetry.  The entire reason this group exists is because we realized the fight is not over, and we’d need an army prepared to combat the Re-education campaign we were promised back in April.  The battle is fully engaged now, and I’ve been happy to see many of you joining conversations on other sites where misconceptions and sock puppets prevail, and helping to educate consumers with facts, not focus group-tested propaganda.

We need many more of you to do likewise.  If your local newspaper runs an article on Rep. Massa’s bill, or our issues, take a look at the article online and look at the comments being left by readers.  Encounter misconceptions?  Help educate people.  Discover a sock puppet browbeating consumers for standing up for common sense reform of the broadband industry?  Defend the consumer’s point of view and don’t allow anyone to berate you with smug, fact-free answers.  Most are unprepared to respond with actual evidence to back their views, just a load of industry rhetoric and evidence-free claims they have expertise you don’t.

I encountered this myself last evening, when an industry sock puppet alternated between allusions that people who oppose Internet Overcharging were content thieves and pirates or were a “special interest group” that wanted someone else to pay more for their usage.  A few minutes of basic research revealed a fact he failed to disclose — he’s employed by a Washington, DC-based think tank, appropriately located on K Street in Washington.  The same group that tangled with Free Press’ Aaron, who rightfully objected to their proposal to hand $30 billion in taxpayer money over to big telecom for, essentially, anything they want.  They don’t call them “K Street” lobbyists for nothing. Stop the Cap! reader Michael was there as well, also asking for the evidence he couldn’t produce.

Here comes the Astroturf

Here comes the Astroturf

After a few rounds, the debate ended over his insistence his employer wasn’t located on K Street at all.  Wow.

Moving forward to industry hackery, which is more or less the same thing, only more direct, the opposition was predictable and transparent.

The American Cable Association, which is made up primarily of smaller, independent providers who likely are too small to even face scrutiny by this bill told Multichannel News:

“Consumption-based billing plans will give consumers the ultimate control over how much they spend each month for their Internet access. Rep. Massa’s bill would have a chilling effect on broadband operators offering these types of consumer-friendly options,” said ACA president Matthew Polka in a statement. “During his Senate confirmation Tuesday, Federal Communications Commission member Robert McDowell noted that Americans today are watching a staggering 17 billion online videos each month, a use of the Internet that he said is growing at 16% per month. With these increases coming, Internet usage payment models will allow broadband providers to better manage their networks by imposing higher costs on the heaviest users who often are the ones responsible for slowing speeds for all users on the Internet.”

ACA represents small and medium-sized cable operators. At its convention last month, ACA members made clear to reporters that consumption-based billing was definitely in their future.

Of course, when consumers empower themselves to verify these claims, we discover the manufactured “panic attack” over broadband growth and the “consumer-friendly” choice of overcharging people for their accounts, is not borne out by the staggering profits earned by the industry based on the current pricing model, especially as bandwidth costs continue their rapid decline (along with the investments many companies make to ‘better manage their networks.’)

As we’ve learned, this is much more about managing high profits and investor return, and controlling the threat of online video from eating into the cable industry’s cable TV package business.

At least the ACA is consistent.  They always leave the consumer out in the cold.

Broadband Reports, which has been around far longer than most, has years of experience in identifying what’s fact and what’s fiction.  They pick up on AT&T’s response:

AT&T, who’s conducting metered billing trials in both Beaumont Texas and Reno, Nevada, was quick to respond when asked for comment. “The Free Press Solution advocates for a radical and unprecedented government mandate that will demand that consumers have only one all-you-can-eat pricing model for Internet services,” says the carrier. “Free Press prefers that grandma – who simply wants to download their grandchildren’s online photos a few times a month – to pay for the heavy-using teenager who is downloading HD movies.”

The argument that light users (grandma) “cross subsidizes” heavier users is a familiar — and incorrect — talking point. Taken to its logical conclusion, “grandma” should be paying $3 a month for bandwidth — a service tier you’ll surely never see AT&T offer. Likewise, if AT&T was truly only interested in managing heavy users, they could target them specifically by migrating them to business class tiers or by instituting a high cap only those users would hit. Instead, these metered billing efforts are aimed at impacting all users.

Again, regardless of the ocean of carrier rhetoric on this front, the push toward metered billing isn’t about the users of today, it’s about nickel and diming the Internet video users of tomorrow. Should users begin getting TV content online and find that subscribing to AT&T U-Verse wasn’t necessary, AT&T then has a way to ensure that they can offset this lost revenue with bandwidth surcharges.

The push is primarily focused on pleasing investors, who likewise see the protectionist aspect, but also adore the idea of consumers paying more money for the same product — a product that’s getting incrementally cheaper to supply. There’s a huge push for this coming from the investment community, and as we predicted, the industry’s giants are going to spend millions on farmed data, lobbyists and public relations in order to get their way.

When weighing who actually represents consumers more fairly, Free Press or AT&T, it’s a debate that ends before it gets started.  Free Press doesn’t take a penny of industry money and advocates for consumers and wants faster, cheaper, and more competitive broadband.  AT&T -IS- industry money, which it gives to astroturf groups, wants to accept government money to construct broadband networks and, hopefully, impose Internet Overcharging schemes on them, and has a track record of opposing Net Neutrality and competition, as several communities working towards municipal broadband have come to learn.

Grandma’s wallet is safer with the Free Press.  AT&T wants to take out all of the cash for her own ‘best interests’ and then hand it back, empty.

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Mark
Mark
15 years ago

The sad thing is this is a war of attrition. They will wear the consumer advocates down. Eventually we will have no choice but to pay exhobitant rates or loose the internet. We will look around and say “how did this happen/”, with noone to blame but ourselves. The internet was formed for the free exchange of ideas. It has morphed into something used for entertainment, exchange of information and ideas, delivery of news and commentary, and a host of other vital uses. Most that want to restrict internet use (caps are certainly restricting use), have a vested interest in… Read more »

Michael Chaney
15 years ago
Reply to  Mark

I reject your defeatist reality and substitute my own! 🙂

VIVA LA REVOLUCION!!!!!

Dean S.B.
Dean S.B.
15 years ago

I have shared this article on my Facebook profile. I DO believe that this issue is MORE IMPORTANT then a LOT of people think!! If Time-Warner, AT&T, and Comcast are allowed to impose these “bandwidth caps” and Internet overcharging schemes NOW, then it will only be a matter of time before MORE Cable & Phone companies…large, medium, and small, will impose similar Internet Overcharging schemes!! If you think this Internet Overcharging scheme is a “difficult nut to crack” NOW, how difficult will it be once the practice gets more widespread in the next few years? That is WHY I say… Read more »

Michael Chaney
15 years ago

“Consumption-based billing plans will give consumers the ultimate control over how much they spend each month for their Internet access.”

HA! If I have the ultimate control over how much I spend each month, then I choose to spend the $60 a month to consume as may bits as a damn well please……just as I’ve always done!

Mark
Mark
15 years ago

Keep up the good work Phillip. I just don’t see any way out without regulation. I don’t like that either but without compitition it seems the only way. I sure would like to see an end to these monopolistic fanchise agreements. The last statement at the “focus group” run by ATT was “this IS going to happen it is inevatible”. I will keep up my personal struggle against these consumer abusers but I don’t see the critical mass we need. I need some suggestions on how to get my neighbors involved. So many don’t care or know what is going… Read more »

preventCAPS
preventCAPS
15 years ago
Reply to  Mark

I feel your pain. I am in the software development business and even all my co-workers don’t care about this as they are under the proposed useage limits. It’s a “It’s a dumb idea, but it dosn’t bother me so why fight it” mentality.

Earl Cooley III
Earl Cooley III
15 years ago

I sure wish being a sock puppet for the good guys was a paying gig; I figure I’d be fairly good at it.

BrionS
Editor
15 years ago

I think one of the things that’s been lacking in all this talk back against the consumption tiers is the notion that somehow infrequent users are subsidizing frequent users of the system. Let’s think about that for a moment (and I give credit to another reader on Stop the Cap! for getting me thinking about this)…. if we take two scenarios to their logical extremes we can more clearly see what makes sense. Scenario 1: Low-volume users are subsidizing high-volume users. If there were no high-volume users and low-volume users didn’t have to pay as much (as Time Warner claims… Read more »

BrionS
Editor
15 years ago
Reply to  BrionS

Reply to myself because I forgot to subscribe to follow-up comments. 🙂

Uncle Ken
Uncle Ken
15 years ago

Brion: A couple of comments to you comments. You mentioned Turbo and that tells me there is not the congestion they say there is. Does a turbo user gain speed at the expense of regular users? I doubt it fact is I think Turbo could be 4X or more faster if they wanted to. There is a lot of wiggle room in their plans and words. To me Turbo is a false prophet. Turbo users are not going to agree but all they are getting is faster within the TWC system not outside of it and to me that shows… Read more »

BrionS
Editor
15 years ago
Reply to  Uncle Ken

You make a good point about true consumption billing however in that same sense (and I apologize for falling to a utility analogy) you still have to pay a base rate for water and electricity even if you don’t use it. For me I think the base water bill is $17 per quarter plus any water I use. As for Turbo, I had that service until just recently and when I got it I had run several tests to make sure I was actually getting faster speeds. The short answer is yes you get faster speeds on TW’s network but… Read more »

BrionS
Editor
15 years ago

That’s why I originally got it, but if you’re not running a server (or two or three) then there’s not much of a reason (aside perhaps from BitTorrent) to have Turbo.

Plus dropping to Standard is a way of hinting to TWC that their moves against their customer’s interests are not welcomed and they will be punished with less money for it.

Smith6612
Smith6612
15 years ago
Reply to  BrionS

Might I add, if you guys have ever seen me link to FileFront on this site, that’s where I upload many of my files and use it to get game trailers and related content. They can easilly break 20Mbps+ on FiOS and on Roadrunner 99% of the time. But yes, multiple connections does help increase the speed if the bandwidth is there. A lot of servers still have the webmasters capping them at 3-4Mbps of transfer, despite the server having gigabit or even fiber connections going to them.

Uncle Ken
Uncle Ken
15 years ago

Brian I thought of the utility companies doing the same things as I wrote that so no need for you to say you forgot it…I did also. I read your entire comment and liked it very much! There is always a service fee, a connection fee, always something. Problem is between interest rates rising, gas prices going up (speculators are aiming at $5 a gallon this time), and OB spending trillions we don’t have on stupid things we are quickly headed into economy crash #2 and it will be worse. Now pile on things like TW wanting more and we… Read more »

JM
JM
15 years ago

“Turbo” anything as I see it is pointless if you are going to be capped anyway.

Continuing to publish good information about this to counter what the broadband providers (aka Internet Capping Providers) are claiming, however, is not – without that, one must accept their “data” which can be used to justify just about anything where there is monopolistic control.

Brett Glass
Brett Glass
15 years ago

This is absurd. Why is someone a “sock puppet” merely because he or she points out that people who consume more expensive resources ought to pay more? Bandwidth costs money. A lot of it, especially in rural areas. There’s nothing wrong with asking people to pay in proportion to what they use.

Rick
Rick
15 years ago

Brett….Oh just stop. Your “proportion to what they use” argument is absurd and unfounded. We all understand marginal costs and their is no real marginal cost to bandwidth. At the risk of beating a dead horse, “bandwidth has no production cost and is theoretically limitless, unlike water, gas electricity and other commodities. The cost of bandwidth is the cost of maintaining infrastructure, and current uncapped pricing models have proven to be profitable and sustainable business models. The only (albeit false) justification to apply caps and overage charges is to prop up lost revenue in other business units such as VoD… Read more »

Uncle Ken
Uncle Ken
15 years ago

Phil you still did not fix the character limit per line before wrap If PHP its easy. Rick: I certainly won’t go as far as Brett but I think a middle of ground solution could be to charge an extra $5 a month and I do not mean every year. After all my internet bill has been the same for years. Their costs to provide service may be going down but the costs they have little control over are going up just like for me and you. Think what it would be like if that energy bill make it through… Read more »

Uncle Ken
Uncle Ken
15 years ago

Phil be aware im now using Firefox so I took your advice and I love it.
Ad blocker add-on better then se-x. This is when I noticed word the
word wrap issue.

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