[Editor’s Note: Our current software does not require users to confirm their e-mail address before submitting comments on this site, although the individual purporting to be Rep. Ty Harrell did use a correct e-mail address for the representative.  On the chance that the comments expressed on this site are from the representative, our reply should be taken with that understanding.]

Someone signing their name Rep. Ty Harrell and using his e-mail address left the following general comment on two articles on our site regarding the North Carolina legislation HB 1252, which is essentially a custom written bill by and for the cable and telephone industry in an effort to impede municipal broadband network development inside the state.  Today, the legislation will be taken up by the Public Utilities Committee for review.  StoptheCap! is calling on all North Carolina citizens to do their best to attend this meeting and be prepared to protest this legislation in the strongest possible terms, and demand that representatives vote “no” on it.  At this time, only telephone calls should be made to your elected representatives.  It’s too late for e-mail.  This is the link for information about the group assembling for today’s Committee meeting in Raleigh.  Here is information about the earlier Call to Action.

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Be sure and check those credit card and debit card statements every month.  While perusing mine, I discovered two fraudulent charges I never authorized, and the bank is closing the card number down and charging them back:

04-25-2009 STUFF FOR MINIONS 561-459-1883 FLUS $30.99
05-05-2009 CCWEBCREATIVE 785-527-9676 NYUS $13.29

“Stuff for Minions” claims to be a pet supply store with a suspiciously bland catalog and website. The name doesn’t exactly match either. Calling the number takes you nowhere. “CC Web Creative” is permanently forwarded to a voicemail box with a NYC accented woman prompting you to e-mail them instead. Yeah, like that is going to happen. The website is a generic web template slightly modified with contact information that is hardly detailed.

Stuff for Minions hit more folks early on, and usually for around $30. The CC Web Creative charge is more recent and is probably now popping up on credit card and debit card statements only this week.

What usually happens is someone gets access to a card number through another purchase you made and then resells it. The subsequent charges that are made are usually under $50 and are generic enough to make one assume they are a result of a spouse or child who ordered something, and because the dollar amount is inconsequential for a lot of people, they don’t hurry to investigate. The Stuff for Minions victims reported about four additional charges from other companies.

Lesson to learn: If any charge looks suspicious, investigate it, even if a small dollar amount. If you don’t, it will lead to potentially many more.

The same old fundamental misunderstandings about the Internet that got former Sen. Stevens into so much trouble with his pronouncement that the Internet was a “series of tubes” that were being filled up by commercial providers, which is somehow why we cannot be for net neutrality, comes back time and time again with alarmist rhetoric about exafloods, brownouts, global data slowdowns, and the risk of the collapse of the Internet itself.

Just you wait and see.

And folks have been waiting and seeing since 1996:

• 1996: Full Capacity
• 1997: Overheated demand
• 2002: Soon be a shortage
• 2002: Shortages could start appearing later this year
• 2007: Internet could run out of capacity in two years
• 2008: Internet to hit capacity in two years

How can we be saved from the broadband collapse, drowning in exaflood tidal waves and zetaflood cataclysms when the funeral service was held more than a decade ago?

Using fear to advance a corporate or marketing agenda is hardly a new concept.  Unless we do “x,” “y” will happen and ruin your life has been used along with alarmist rhetoric to justify virtually everything.  For broadband usage capping and metered service, it’s front and center.  In fact, wherever service is lousy with limitations and someone has their hand out looking for more of your money, you can be sure the “clogged tubes” argument is going to be a big part of the snowjob.

Snow isn’t a big problem in Australia, but that doesn’t stop the blizzard of nonsense from showing up down under, where the Internet is a particularly lousy experience for Aussies forced to endure draconian caps from monopolistic providers.  Exceed your caps there and your connection slows to near-dial-up speeds.  Never trust a guy in a ludicrously loud shirt, nor someone who channels Sen. Stevens in calling the whole thing a series of “pipes.”  Maybe Pete Blasina got the shirt from Cisco, who he also conveniently notes is supplying switches to save us from impending doom.  They also happened to supply him with a lot of his talking points.  The bit about YouTube traffic in one month equaling Internet consumption in 2000 came from them.

Duncan Riley (who was the source for the history lesson on exaflood threats) does a fine job debunking the same nonsense we have to endure in North America.

The story is nearly always the same: telcos and infrastructure companies fund research that finds that the latest trend online at the time (audio, video, HD video, P2P, Sykpe and social networking are some previously used) is too much for the Internet to handle. The reasons behind the studies are usually variations on a theme: Government regulation or Government financial support. Which is where we start our story on how Sunrise played a role in the latest outbreak of industry astroturfing.

But how did a primarily American focused astroturfing campaign end up be served to Australians on breakfast television?

The outbreak of “Internet is full” stories this time was remarkably subdued. The last research paper was released in November 2008, which might account for part of the silence, although Sunrise says there’s a new report coming (the contents year to year ultimately deliver nearly the same doom and gloom message.) Given strong coverage of the 2007 outbreak as being an astroturfing campaign, news rooms may have been a little wiser this time round.

Duncan doesn’t realize the Internet is Full Crisis ’09 started last week with the latest Nemertes report we debunked a few days ago as a whole lot of industry-sponsored nonsense.  But it’s remarkable the astroturf campaigns have enough industry cash behind them to push this stuff worldwide.  Duncan’s piece links some other outbreaks of astroturfing so check it out.

In 2007, when Time Warner and their lobbying friends were up to no good trying to kill off municipal broadband, Google joined the battle to preserve freedom of choice and the powerful tool municipal broadband has to provide communities with advanced services incumbent providers refuse to offer.  The bill died two years ago due to a growing opposition.

In 2009, the cable lobby was back trying to sneak this same bad legislation through once again.  This time, they’ve found some new opposition they hadn’t counted on before:

1. Consumers!  It’s payback time for Time Warner Cable and other companies who sought to abuse their customers with ridiculous rate hikes, usage caps, and tiered access plans nobody wants.  Since they continue to refuse to completely abandon these profit grabbing schemes, ordinary citizens have organized and are willing to fight them on every front where their mischief stands to hurt consumers with higher pricing, reduced choice, and the creation on broadband backwaters.  In North Carolina, where the Triad was victimized with a Time Warner “experiment,” residents are joining forces and telling their elected officials to vote NO on HB 1252 and SB 1004, which are monopoly protection bills designed to thwart competition.  Consumers will remain vigilant until cable drops plans to gouge customers with tiered pricing and caps, in writing, and competes on merit, not on special favors.
2. Google is back with a letter to the Speaker of the North Carolina House of Representatives, co-signed by consumer advocacy groups and high technology companies who see how much this legislation will stifle North Carolina’s economy and high tech recovery.

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StoptheCap! must organize a Truth Squad of volunteers willing to confront sloppy journalism, lazy reporters, and Kool-Aid drinking consumers hoodwinked into actually believing that metered pricing is about saving them money instead of fattening broadband provider profits.

Your job: To find press accounts that might as well have been rewritten industry press releases, those that adopt the premise that the provider is pushing, and exposing industry talking points that go unchallenged in the media.  Then the call to action goes out to bombard the reporter with protest e-mail, confront the bias in the reporting in letters to the editor, and pro-consumer pushback in comment sections where the public can learn some facts for a change.

The Kansas City Star utterly failed in its report on Saturday, lapping up industry talking points and presenting them in a myopic view of the future of broadband.  Reporter Scott Canon quoted opposition from one public statement on the Free Press website, one sentence from a group called Knowledge Ecology International, and a sentence from a press release from Rep. Eric Massa (D-NY).  After that, he paddled around the pool with one industry talking point after another.

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