We have received several inquiries about where Stop the Cap! stands on the “Stop Online Piracy Act” — legislation currently in Congress designed to combat online piracy.  We’ve remained silent on this legislation for only one reason: we just haven’t have the time to cover it.  But I wanted to take a moment to answer the ongoing inquiries from readers about where we stand on this legislation.

In short, we oppose it.

As with virtually all legislation bought and paid for by large corporate interests, this attempt to thwart online piracy is yet another example of special interest overreach with a bountiful basket of unintentional consequences corporate lobbyists are not paid to consider when pushing the agenda of giant media and entertainment conglomerates.

As of yesterday, the Obama Administration seems to have recognized the growing opposition to the legislation from just about everyone apart from the corporate interests spending millions to promote and lobby it.  Some media reports seem to indicate SOPA is on the verge of being shelved, at least temporarily.  But you can be certain that like all monied legislation, it will be back.

Instead of a lengthy explanation about SOPA, we’d prefer to point you to some excellent pieces explaining why the proposed bill is a really, really bad idea.  Free Press has an organized campaign to stop the legislation in its current form, one that you should consider supporting, even if the bill is now languishing in Washington.  Also check out the Electronic Freedom Foundation’s web form to contact your legislators to oppose SOPA.

Stop the Cap! will participate in the Stop SOPA censorship campaign scheduled for tomorrow.  Visitors will first land on an information page explaining why this site “has been blocked.”  But that page includes a link to continue your journey back here, where regular coverage will continue.

Be sure to watch these two videos:

[flv width=”596″ height=”356″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/MSNBC Chris Hayes SOPA and Antipiracy Debated 1-15-12.flv[/flv]

Chris Hayes’ courageous in-depth debate about SOPA appeared on MSNBC, a network owned by Comcast-NBC, which ardently supports the legislation to the point of distributing pro-SOPA coffee mugs to employees. (18 minutes)

[flv width=”512″ height=”308″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/SOPA Marvin Ammori.flv[/flv]

Marvin Ammori’s assessment of the legislation appeared on Al-Jazeera English, one of the few news networks willing to discuss the proposed legislation on-air.  (4 minutes)

In Wisconsin, one protest after another as state legislators deliver results for corporate interests, often at the expense of the public interest. Broadband was the latest close call.

Imagine if you drove down to your local credit union this morning to find the doors padlocked and an ominous sign taped across the front door: “Closed for Anti-Competitive Business Practices.”  Then you return your books on loan from the public library, but find the same padlock and sign on that building, too.  Scratching your head, you then drive home vowing to get to the bottom of this only to be greeted by the mailman, who hands you a letter from your daughter’s school announcing steep and immediate tuition increases required to cover surprising new expenses.

As you try and understand what exactly has happened, it all becomes clear when you switch on the evening news — the Republicans in Wisconsin have launched their version of a “revolution,” — one that originally promised to “restore fiscal sanity,” but instead looks more and more like a statewide pilot project run by the Ayn Rand Institute, with the financial backing of AT&T.

In the fight for better broadband, normally the bad actors can be easily identified and called out from both political parties.  Democrats and Republicans turn campaign contributions and promises of power and influence into favorable, often custom-dictated legislative proposals that come straight from the companies that will benefit the most.  But the last six months of Republican rule in Wisconsin cannot be compared with anything else that has come before.  It’s a wholesale sellout to AT&T, and even statewide protests and media coverage on a massive scale appears to have only delivered a temporary reprieve, with strings attached.  What’s worse, even after the massive call-out against the telecom overreach, some of the proponents of broadband slash and burn politics are completely unrepentant, vowing to try again, perhaps when the public isn’t paying attention.

While some educational institutions believe any deal is better than no deal with the state’s ideologues, they will do themselves no favor if they drop the issue after the “compromise” is reached.  This all-out “war on broadband” cannot be appeased while AT&T’s true believers remain in office.

Let’s catch up.

In the last 48 hours, an ongoing series of “discussions” about the ultimate fate of WiscNet, Wisconsin’s institutional broadband cooperative network, have brought some assurances the network will not have to close its doors, at least not yet.  Yesterday, AT&T’s meddling to make changes to the “compromise” was on display, and one should never underestimate the cleverness of this company at finding ways to tie the hands of its targets with innocuous-looking legislative language.  Those stealthy last-minute additions can deliver a powerful sting only realized later, after the bill becomes law.

Angry phone calls pounded legislators in Madison, as did many newspaper editorials, TV news coverage (which we will review below), and a lobbying counterattack by librarians and educators all working to stop AT&T from winning an all out victory.  But make no mistake, this battle is by no means over.

For at least two years, WiscNet appears to have won the basic right to continue to exist, but only under a form of big government supervision.

The provision to ban award recipients from accepting broadband stimulus money from the federal government has been dropped.  Telecom industry lobbyists fought hard to get Wisconsin to virtually return federal stimulus money awarded to public broadband projects by trying to prohibit winners from accepting the checks.  Tens of millions already allocated to the University of Wisconsin would have had to be forfeit.  Instead, the changes worked out this week allow the university to use those funds to build and expand WiscNet to more state schools, libraries and public buildings.

WiscNet Coverage

Few legislators would openly admit trying to utterly destroy WiscNet, instead preferring “death by a thousand cuts,” writing rules and regulations that threaten the viability of the network’s ability to conduct operations.  While most of the onerous provisions were turned back, including those that would ban participation in Internet2 and limit WiscNet’s expansion, the compromise forces the network to face additional auditing and scrutiny by committed opponents to public broadband.

WiscNet put on a brave face, releasing the following statement:

We welcome an objective review of the relationship between the University of Wisconsin and WiscNet, a nonprofit cooperative.  The amendment allows the University of Wisconsin to continue as full members of WiscNet for the next two years, while the review helps everyone understand these issues better.  We look forward to a healthy dialogue with legislators, telecommunications providers, community partners, and others.  We are confident that those open lines of communication will be fruitful.

Don’t count on it.  Having followed these legislative battles for the past several years, one thing is certain: AT&T and their industry friends like Access Wisconsin will be back to try again and again and again.  As long as the current legislature includes members who are not only amenable to AT&T’s world views, but openly espouse them (and occasionally exceed them), WiscNet and public broadband in general is hardly safe.

Let’s remember who and what we are dealing with here:

The War on Broadband: At the core of the Republicans’ argument against public or institutional broadband is that it competes unfairly (somehow) against private corporate providers.  That argument ignores the fact WiscNet, among many other public and institutional networks, is essentially a cooperative, and one that existed long before phone and cable companies got into the Internet Service Provider business themselves.  Members pool resources to sustain a service that first and foremost delivers benefits to its users, not to external banks or investors.  Many institutional networks like WiscNet might even be compared to credit unions, delivering service to a pre-determined constituency that also happens to have a voice in how that network is run.

There are big banks and their supporters who detest credit unions because they represent “unfair competition” for them, because they can afford to deliver more service for less money.  It’s a familiar argument when you listen to some Republican senators in Wisconsin argue that the very existence of WiscNet represents anti-competitive behavior, harming fellow networks like Badgernet (another state institutional network).  It should not be a surprise to our readers to learn Badgernet is a network largely serviced by AT&T, and charges radically higher prices for its service because of what the phone company charges them for access.

The conservative movement in Wisconsin has been largely content dismissing broadband support in Wisconsin as a luxury perk, despite the fact the state scores 43rd out of the 50 best-wired states.  In addition to the purposeful distortions coming from those opposing networks like WiscNet, some have been reduced to arguing academia simply wants these networks for fast access to porn and copyrighted content.

Can Wisconsin afford their asking price?

“Help” from Dollar-A-Holler Mouthpieces like Access Wisconsin: This group, funded by the commercial telecommunications companies it represents at the expense of ordinary consumers, claims it is a helper in delivering an improved broadband experience in Wisconsin.  So helpful, in fact, it joined with AT&T and the state Republicans in calling for federal broadband stimulus money to be returned and not spent in the state for improved service.  While Access Wisconsin attacks government subsidies it doesn’t like, its member companies run to the bank with over $90 million annually in federally-mandated Universal Service payments.  The group is even upset the University of Wisconsin didn’t use state-based providers and contractors to build their expanded fiber network.  That comes as little surprise considering the University reached out to several of Access Wisconsin’s member companies (and AT&T) and found none interested in helping out.

The War on Libraries, Schools, and Taxpayers: The proposed cuts in library spending are deemed so dire by many patrons, they have begun to suspect the Republican majority would rather see people buy books at Wal-Mart than check them out for free at the town library.  On top of the budget cuts, broadband costs for schools and libraries would explode if these institutions were forced to buy access from Badgernet.

The party of “fiscal sanity” supported killing off cost-effective, money-saving broadband from WiscNet to fulfill a rigid ideological framework that would ultimately deliver less service for a lot more money.

Let’s compare prices for a moment.  Badgernet, which gets wholesale access from AT&T, charges prices that are far higher than WiscNet charges.  Badgernet itself is not the problem, its wholesale supplier is.  To defray the costs, the state of Wisconsin subsidizes Badgernet to the tune of nearly $17 million annually, to keep prices affordable for libraries and schools.  That $17 million effectively goes straight into AT&T’s bank account.  But that subsidy only gets you so far.  Badgernet charges $6,000 a month for 100Mbps service because that is the price required to recover costs charged by AT&T.  Many institutions rapidly outgrow this level of service and can upgrade to 1,000Mbps service, so long as they have a spare $49,500 a month laying around for broadband.

In contrast, clients on WiscNet can purchase 1,000Mbps service for about $10,000 a year.  Is that price disparity worth raising a ruckus over?  Apparently so.

The AT&T Dilemma: While AT&T did not win everything it wanted this year, prior evidence shows the company will be back to try again, just as it did with its statewide video franchising legislation that was supposed to deliver a competitive market for cable in the state.  In fact, it delivered higher prices instead.  Negotiating defensively with companies like this assures a war of attrition, as public providers find themselves compromising away core features of their network to protect whatever is left.

A much better idea for Wisconsin broadband is to launch an all-out counteroffensive.  Instead of stalemate compromises that constrain public networks, let’s demand they expand.  If there can be a co-op for dairy products and a credit union for banking, there certainly can be a community broadband cooperative that delivers service not just to institutions, but to members of the public and any independent provider who wants access — publicly owned for the public good.  That may not be WiscNet, designed under an institutional model, but it certainly need not be yet another overpriced offering from AT&T.

Before that can happen, Wisconsin residents need a cleanup — an upgrade — of the caliber of elected officials working on their behalf.  Thus far, a good percentage of Wisconsin’s current majority party seems far more interested in turning the state into a corporate lab experiment of their version of the free market done their way — for their benefit, at your expense.  The proof was at hand this week when the state nearly adopted a “cost saving” measure for broadband that would have cost Wisconsin taxpayers considerably more, all for the benefit of a handful of telecom companies.  Let’s help those legislators find a new day job sooner rather than later.

After that, WiscNet needs a legislative advocate of its own to introduce measures that undo the damage and then build on WiscNet’s success by expanding its reach and keeping it affordable.

Timeline: Tracking Wisconsin’s Awakening of the Wisconsin Republicans’ Broadband Agenda

Too often, broadband policy debates are too arcane for the general public to grasp.  Most people in the state probably never heard of WiscNet, and don’t realize when they might be using it.  But what they do understand is pay-for-play politics that hits them in the pocketbook.  As state residents learned the Republican majority wanted to ban the provider that delivers the most service for the least amount of money in favor of AT&T, they got involved and helped temporarily defeat the plan.

[flv width=”512″ height=”298″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WISC Madison UW Schools Voice Concerns About Budget Measure Affecting Internet 6-7-11.m4v[/flv]

June 7th: WISC-TV in Madison explains to viewers the plan to kill WiscNet would carry a pricetag of at least $70,000 in Madison alone, with potentially millions more at stake, all for the industry’s claim of a “level playing field.” (2 minutes)

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WAOW Wausau Library Internet 6-08-11.mp4[/flv]

June 8th: WAOW-TV in Wausau discovers what the war on WiscNet would do to Internet access in area libraries.  (2 minutes)

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WFRV Green Bay WiscNet Deleted 6-12-11.mp4[/flv]

June 12th: WFRV-TV in Green Bay tells its viewers the cost to procure Internet access in area universities could increase from $70,000 to more than $400,000, all to benefit private providers who want to compete at much higher price points.  (1 minute)

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WXOW LaCrosse Pulling the Plug on WiscNet 6-13-11.mp4[/flv]

June 13th: LaCrosse residents are told they’ll pay more for less if large telecommunications companies get their wish to knock out inexpensive broadband through WiscNet.  WXOW-TV lead the 5pm evening news with news the bill was a last minute addition that received full support from state Republicans.  (2 minutes)

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WEAU Eau Claire WiscNet 6-14-11.mp4[/flv]

June 14th: WEAU-TV in Eau Claire reports Sen. Terry Moulton (R-23rd District) got an earful from area hospitals about the terrible impact the shutdown of WiscNet would have there, which concerned him.  The station also reports on the threat to broadband funding in rural Chippewa Valley.  (Loud Volume Warning) (2 minutes)

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WQOW Eau Claire WiscNet Targeted 6-14-11.mp4[/flv]

June 14th: Eau Claire station WQOW-TV reports university students and academia generally faced the end of unlimited bandwidth if the state proposal to do away with WiscNet were to pass into law.  A telecom industry lobbyist claims the bill would allow private providers to deliver comparable service to institutions, but one local institution found an amazing price disparity: $2,500/yr with WiscNet or $1,000,000/yr with a private provider.  (2 minutes)

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WXOW La Crosse New Amendments 6-15-11.mp4[/flv]

June 15th: Newly elected Rep. Steve Doyle introduces amendments to turn back Republican proposals in the legislature that would harm statewide broadband networks, reports WXOW-TV in La Crosse.  (2 minutes)

[flv]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/WKOW Madison WiscNet will stay the same in budget 6-16-11.mp4[/flv]

June 16th: WKOW-TV in Madison reports a compromise deal which will keep service running as-is for now, but subject WiscNet to government approval of any expansion efforts.  (1 minute)

Here we go again.

You always know when a new year has arrived when another North Carolina legislator files a Big Telecom industry-written bill attacking community-owned broadband.

This year, the laughably-named “Act to Protect Jobs and Investment by Regulating Local Government Competition With Private Business” comes courtesy of Rep. Marilyn Avila (R-Wake County), a former manager of the conservative think tank John Locke Foundation.

H.129 is remarkable for its legislative micro-management, coming from someone who claims to oppose big government meddling.

Among its requirements:

• Demands a public accounting for every community broadband network;
• Limitations on service to strict city boundaries;
• Prohibits contractual agreements with apartment and condo building owners that mandate municipal service for individual residents;
• Bans advertising and “promotion” of community-owned broadband networks on Public, Education, and Government access channels;
• Shall not price any component of its service below cost;
• Requires payment of a special tax equal to the amount of local property taxes and/or fees normally exempted for local government enterprises;
• Requires permission through an extended hearing process to win permission before delivering service to any area deemed “unserved”;
• Demands a laundry list of pre-conditions before obtaining permission to shop for financing.

Avila

Avila doesn’t mind putting government all over the backs of community-owned networks if they happen to compete with her friends at AT&T, Time Warner, and CenturyLink.

Let’s review this exceptionally provider-friendly piece of protectionist legislation.

First, Avila’s demand for an open accounting of community broadband projects provides a treasure trove of business intelligence for any competitor.  They can demand to open the books and gain critical subscriber information — what residents pay for service, who gets the service, and how much it costs to provide.  That’s pure gold for targeted marketing campaigns to win back customers with special offers municipal providers are banned from offering.

We’re calling a foul ball because Avila’s “fair and level playing field” doesn’t have room for fair play.  Private providers get to keep the secrets community-owned network are forced to reveal.  That, by design, puts municipalities at a competitive disadvantage and could help drive them out of business.  Remember, these networks are financed by privately obtained bonds, not taxpayer dollars.  Shouldn’t any such provider have the right to keep its business strategies secret?

Second, if banning mandatory service for renters and condo owners is such a great idea, why does Avila only limit it to community-owned networks?  The record is clear — private providers are increasingly signing agreements with property owners mandating cable television fees for residents.  Apparently Avila’s concept of fairness doesn’t include the actual companies found guilty of raising the rent.

Third, Avila bends over backwards for her cable and phone friends by tying the hands of municipal providers who want their networks to be commercially successful.  Time Warner has no problem injecting endless promotions for its own services not just on a handful of channels, but on virtually every channel on the lineup, often during nearly every commercial break.  Can municipal networks ban advertising from AT&T and Time Warner?  Of course not.  And the definition of “promotion” specified in Avila’s ad ban is vague.  If a town government meeting talks up the success of a community-owned network, has Avila’s law been broken?  Apparently censorship by government mandate is a-OK as long as it doesn’t target her Big Telecom friends.

Avila’s ban on setting pricing below cost is another giveaway to Time Warner and AT&T, who routinely deliver retention and new customer promotions that could be temporarily priced below cost to secure or maintain a customer relationship for a limited period of time.  Of course, Avila doesn’t require either company to open their books to find out exactly what it costs companies to provide these special pricing packages.  No municipal provider seeks to price service at a rate that puts the project out of business.  Time Warner Cable has been accused of delivering below-cost retention pricing to departing customers in Wilson, where GreenLight has been poaching the cable company’s customers for more than a year.  Avila’s hand-tying provision allows some companies in the marketplace to keep pricing flexibility while the municipal provider is forced to price service according to a state-dictated formula.  John Locke would be turning over in his grave if he heard about this planned economy-pricing.

Rep. Avila can certainly no longer claim to be for low taxes, because her bill would effectively raise them for community-owned networks.  Again, since these projects are almost always funded from private bond markets, not public tax dollars, slapping complicated tax formulas on municipal providers while continuing to permit special tax break deals for private companies (such as “payment in lieu of taxes” or special tax breaks/grants for Time Warner in return for job creation) shouldn’t work for most small government conservatives.  Shouldn’t they support lower taxes for everyone?  Instead, Avila seeks to hamper community network business models by punitively sticking them with taxes she would otherwise oppose for commercial providers.

Avila’s support for smaller, less regulatory-minded government must also be called into question with this bill’s ridiculously complicated regulations for serving unserved areas of the state (which also grants a special window to private providers to protest, which they will certainly do in just about any area of the state even partially suitable for a future project).  Her bill even demands 60-day delays, custom-tailored to allow industry lobbyists to gin up opposition and demagogue projects.  Since a commission will be involved in the decision making process and has to take into account opposition from private providers, all of the benefits of Avila’s legislation flow to the cable and phone industry, none to community-owned networks or individual consumers that will ultimately benefit from better service at lower prices.

Avila's idea of a level-playing field.

Avila destroys her own “level playing field” argument in language within her own bill:

“The city or joint agency making the application to the Commission shall bear the burden of persuasion.”

In other words, Avila offers a “level playing field” with an 11-foot electrified barbed wire fence surrounding it.  Unfortunately, municipalities won’t be the only ones shocked by Avila’s cable and phone company protectionism.

Ordinary consumers in communities like Wilson, exempted from the relentless annual rate hikes from Time Warner because of the presence of a municipal competitor won’t get to keep the savings if Avila has anything to say about it.  She wants you to pay full price for your cable service, and pay higher prices year after year.

Her claim that the legislation will somehow “protect jobs and investment” is specious at best.  Time Warner has not exited Wilson or Salisbury — two cities with a community-owned competitor.  In fact, Time Warner is on record welcoming competition.  In reality, these companies simply don’t welcome new choices from those providers that will actually deliver savings and better service to customers.

This anti consumer legislation brought to you by Time Warner Cable...

The cable industry’s flagellation against projects like GreenLight and Fibrant flips between calling them financial boondoggles not worth bothering about to unfair competition that will harm private investment.  AT&T’s protests, in particular, ring the most hollow.  This is the same company that wants deregulation to make it easier for new players like themselves to enter the marketplace.  Their U-verse service enjoys the benefits of statewide video franchising, which removes accountability to local governments.  Yet this same company lobbies for increased bureaucracy and regulation for some of their potential competitors.  Avila is only too happy to oblige.

As with every other piece of legislation we’ve seen on this subject from North Carolina, it’s yet another custom-written favor to big cable and phone companies and an attack on consumer interests across the state.  Generous campaign contributions from the telecom industry pay off only too well when state legislators allow these companies to write the bills designed to protect their turf.

For Time Warner Cable, the costs associated with sending selected legislators and their families to a recent delicious BBQ event in sunny San Diego to attend a sham “conference” sponsored by a corporate front group shows there are plenty of favors to be had all around, just as long as you support the company’s legislative agenda.

...and AT&T

Fighting this year’s anti-consumer legislation will be tougher than ever.  For the first time in 112 years, the corporate friendly North Carolina Republican party won control of the General Assembly.  For many members, the free market can do no wrong and anything government touches is bad news.  Many will reflexively support Avila’s legislation.  But any underserved county in the state knows the truth about today’s broadband in rural North Carolina — if local communities can’t step up and deliver the service, nobody will.  For these representatives, Democrat or Republican, concern should run high that Avila’s bill assures these areas of years of high prices, poor or no service, and status quo protection designed to keep the market exactly as it is today.  Considering how poorly North Carolina stands in national broadband rankings, standing still should never be an option.

Since federal courts ruled that corporations are people, shouldn’t that mean those corporations also deserve the same privacy rights you and I enjoy?

AT&T intends to find out at the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of FCC v. AT&T Inc., an effort to win privacy rights for itself and keep potentially embarrassing documents out of the hands of third parties.

At least one court — the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit, which includes the very-business-friendly state of Delaware, agreed with AT&T.  It ruled that since a corporation is also defined as a  “person,” it deserved enhanced protections available to ordinary citizens.

In AT&T’s world, that includes adjectives — all things personal, as in “personal privacy.”

The implications of such an interpretation are stunning, and judicial activism on this scale would deliver a golden platter of new rights to corporate interests that would wipe away oversight and more than a century of accepted business law.

AT&T could use its new powers to deny requests for documents and other materials, on the principle it would violate its privacy and potentially “embarrass” the company.  AT&T as an entity could get the right to remain silent and enjoy double jeopardy protections from repeated investigations.

It would be like watching a Law & Order episode with a corporate logo propped up at the defense table.

Overreach much, AT&T?

Many members of the U.S. Supreme Court apparently thought so during last week’s arguments, judging from the astonished reactions to AT&T lawyer Geoffrey Klineberg’s reasoning.

“Anything that would embarrass the corporation is – is a privacy interest?” Justice Antonin Scalia asked. “You talk about personal characteristics. That doesn’t mean the characteristics of General Motors. You talk about personal qualities. It doesn’t mean the qualities of General Motors. [The ‘personal privacy’ of a corporation] is a very strange phrase to me.”

Chief Justice John Roberts was also skeptical of AT&T “adjective”-shopping, noting several examples of adjectives with different meanings from their root nouns: “craft and crafty; squirrel and squirrely; pastor and pastoral.”

AT&T is no stranger to the federal court system, pouring millions of dollars into a range of legal actions that suggest the company takes its “Rethink Possible” slogan to literal extremes in some business-friendly legal venues.  [Stop the Cap! covered an earlier California case where AT&T argued consumers do not have the right to file class action lawsuits against the company.]

At Issue: Earlier AT&T Wrongdoing

In 2004, SBC Communications (which now owns AT&T) overcharged the government to provide technology services to several Connecticut schools, under the government’s E-Rate program (funded by telephone ratepayers).  After earlier abuses in the program were exposed and the federal government was threatening to expand investigations, SBC turned themselves in and handed over documents demanded by the Federal Communications Commission.  In return for its cooperation, AT&T got to admit no wrongdoing, but did pay a half-million dollar fine.

That didn’t sit well with CompTel, a Washington-based phone company trade association.  In 2005, Mary Albert, the group’s assistant general counsel e-mailed a request for copies of the documents collected by the FCC in the case.

“I made the request because I was very surprised to see the FCC enter into a consent decree in a case like this,” Albert said. “There has been a serious problem with E-Rate fraud over the years. I don’t mean to accuse AT&T of fraud, but there were clearly [enough] problems with its billing [to the program] that it reimbursed the government.”

Klineberg

Under federal law, documents collected by the government have to be made public under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), so long as those documents do not violate national security or expose certain personal, private information (typically home addresses, phone numbers, Social Security numbers, etc.)  Companies also have long-standing, existing exemptions protecting confidential trade secrets and other proprietary business information.

Albert expected to receive documents with “blacked-out” information protecting AT&T’s trade secrets, but instead she ended up with nothing.

AT&T argues the release of -any- of the documents would embarrass the company and violate its personal privacy.  It demanded, and got the FCC to withhold release of the documents and the dispute has been working its way through the court system.

The FCC argues corporations can’t sue over invasion of privacy.  Why?  Because they are an entity, not a person.

How does someone violate the privacy of a corporate entity that doesn’t live, breathe, or even blush?

Legal observers say the case isn’t really about protecting AT&T from potential embarrassment — it’s about curtailing the government’s right to request and receive documents from companies as part of its oversight process and to investigate potential wrongdoing.

On cue, Lawrence J. Spiwak, president of the Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal & Economic Public Policy Studies (which receives substantial funding from AT&T), argues AT&T’s arguments have merit because if corporations are not protected under FOIA’s law-enforcement exemption, they will be less forthcoming to the government.

In other words, if you don’t give AT&T what it wants, it will bury, shred or hide important documents when regulators come looking.

AT&T customers looking for better service need to put down those cellphones and turn off the computer and pick up a good book.  AT&T recommends Fed Up! Our Fight to Save America From Washington, written by Texas Gov. Rick Perry.

Perry’s book, which compares Social Security and FDR’s “New Deal” social programs with a Communist takeover is so popular with the Big Telecom, it purchased over 700 copies to hand out for free to state legislators, lobbyists and activists attending a conservative policy summit luncheon.  Oh, and the company paid for the lunch, too.  Total cost?  More than $13,000 — all ultimately paid for by AT&T’s customers.

AT&T made sure every guest had their own personal hardcover copy of the governor’s book, something that didn’t go unnoticed by former Texas Solicitor General Ted Cruz, who thanked AT&T from the microphone for paying for the books.

“Governor Perry has written a book – a book that all of us very kindly have been given by AT&T,” Cruz said. “Thank you, AT&T.”

AT&T’s gladhanding of conservative state politicians doesn’t come accidentally, reports the Dallas Morning News.  With hundreds of millions in revenue at stake, AT&T’s investment in the state’s Republican dominated legislature guarantees the company’s voice will be heard on important legislative matters.

AT&T has spent as much as $9.3 million to lobby Austin lawmakers and regulators, according to Texas Ethics Commission data. AT&T’s political action committee has donated $494,740 to Perry during his nine years in office, according to Texans for Public Justice.

The latter group told the newspaper AT&T doesn’t get into the book club business lightly.

“It does raise concerns. AT&T has a lot of business before the state of Texas and Texas regulators,” said Craig McDonald, director of Texans for Public Justice, a group that tracks money in politics. “They are generally the largest lobby in the state. They can reach out and touch every lawmaker simultaneously.”

Elected officials who write books routinely find some of their biggest sales come from lobbyists, who buy books in bulk and hand them out at public speaking engagements, or simply shove them into the nearest storage locker.  It’s not about the book, it’s about the access companies like AT&T gain from the goodwill earned from buying copies.

Perry does not profit directly from the book sales, but his political interests do.  Proceeds of the book sales go to the Texas Public Policy Foundation’s Center for Tenth Amendment Studies, a group dedicated to protecting corporate interests and “state’s rights.”

AT&T’s corporate interest is protected by the Policy Foundation’s opposition to Net Neutrality, but the group generally opposes broadband stimulus funding, some of which is likely to end up in AT&T’s pockets.

[flv width=”480″ height=”380″]http://www.phillipdampier.com/video/Texas Public Policy Foundation Net Neutrality.flv[/flv]

The Texas Public Policy Foundation invited two Republican FCC commissioners — one current and one former — to bash Net Neutrality and broadband reforms before a stacked panel and audience of like-minded thinkers.  (1 hour, 50 minutes)