[TriLUG] Move over Google: Wilson, NC did it a long, long time ago

[Scott Chilcote via TriLUG]

On 02/27/2015 04:53 PM, John Vaughters via TriLUG wrote:
> My last comment before I leave for a weekend of skiing. I found this survey that shows 79% of the people polled agree that the rules should be released prior to voting. 
> This time I mean it, I am done. Thanks for the debate and have a great weekend. 
>
> PRESS RELEASE: New Survey Finds Americans Skeptical that FCC Regulation of the Internet Will Be Helpful; Favor More Disclosure - Progressive Policy Institute
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> | PRESS RELEASE: New Survey Finds Americans Skeptica...For Immediate Release WASHINGTON—The Progressive Policy Institute (PPI) today released the results of a new survey finding that most Americans are unfamiliar ... |
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> | View on www.progressivepolic... | Preview by Yahoo |
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If you read the press releases published by the Progressive Policy
Institute "think tank", they closely resemble the talking points that
the broadband industry has been using to attempt to frighten the public. 

Strangely enough, sourcewatch.org shows that the AT&T Foundation was
either their first or second largest financial contributor for the most
recent four years on record.  The other one is a conservative foundation
with ties to the Koch brothers.  Oddly progressive, these folks.

I encourage everyone to read the survey that the PPI funded
(http://www.progressivepolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/FI11518-Final.pdf). 
It's a study in the fine art of "biasing context". 

The large majority of respondents said (question 2ab) that they did not
understand the term Network Neutrality.  Perhaps these are not the best
choice of people to weigh in on this admittedly complicated topic?  But
no matter.  Question #3 is a long murky slog.  It claims that the
internet is "a major private investment by the nation's wired and
wireless internet providers".  Oh really?  Didn't the taxpayer's two
hundred billion dollars (newnetworks.com) play a mention-worthy role? 

Question #4 irrelevantly points out that "Net Neutrality has nothing to
do with any government effort to protect consumers against spam and
malware on the Internet".  Um, yeah.   That's important.

But where this crock of a "survey" leaps off the diving board of
objectivity into Full Slant is #5, which begins "Now I am going to read
to you several reasons why some people oppose the proposal of (wait for
it) "government regulation and /control/ of the internet". 

So at this point, all of those respondents who admitted that they had no
idea what Net Neutrality means are read a litany of think-tank
fabricated reasons why "some people" are afraid of having the government
in their tubes.  Good gawd! 

And only after that did they lead into the questions that resulted in
the percentage that Mr. Vaughters found so quoteworthy.  I read all the
way to the end of this four pager, and nowhere did I even catch a whiff
of rationale for reigning in the out of control titans of the broadband
industry!

So my humble opinion is that this survey is steaming crap.  I recommend
reading it, as a study to see how false impressions are crafted.

Scott C.

-- 
Scott Chilcote
scottchilcote at ncrrbiz.com
Cary, NC USA