Starve the Beast: Monopoly Power and Political Corruption

In 2017, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai announced his intention to dismantle the FCC’s hard-won network neutrality regulation. The 2015 net neutrality order owed its existence to the millions who submitted comments to the FCC demanding commonsense protection from predatory internet service providers (ISPs). After Pai’s announcement, those same millions flooded the FCC’s comment portal, actually overwhelming the FCC’s servers and shutting them down. Then millions of nearly-identical comments flooded into the FCC servers, all against net neutrality. All in all, 82 percent of the comments the FCC received were fake, and the overwhelming majority of fake comments opposed net neutrality. Sending all these fake comments was expensive and the telecommunications industry paid millions to corrupt the political process. That bill wasn’t footed by just one company, either - an industry association paid for the fraud. This is how it happens, and what needs to be done to shrink monopolies and restore net neutrality protections to ensure it does not continue.

[Cory Doctorow is a special advisor at EFF, science fiction author, activist, journalist and blogger.]