FCC Chair Ajit Pai “jokes” about being a Verizon shill | Hacker News Reader

FCC Chair Ajit Pai “jokes” about being a Verizon shill

gizmodo.com

121 pointswarent67 comments

Ajit Pai being an ass is not news.

The more interesting item is the FCC's implicit assertion that submitting comments under fake names is not against the law.[0] That's the part that should have people overturning tables.

The FCC also said that Schneiderman has not "identified any specific law or legal authority" to support its assertion that submitting comments under fake names violates state law.

[0]https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/12/fcc-chair-still-...

This might be a more thorough source for that instead of arstechnica

http://www.pewinternet.org/2017/11/29/public-comments-to-the...

About 6% where unique. Most were against net neutrality, but the single most repeated one was a pro-neutrality comment submitted 2.8M times.

> That's the part that should have people overturning tables.

Overturning tables because it is not against the law, so they should make it illegal, or because it is against the law and he was lying?

So what is the "specific law or legal authority" that makes it illegal?

18 U.S.C. § 1001

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/18/1001

Has this law ever been applied to public comments on a matter before a government agency?

Off the top of my head I don't know. Is the existence of a prior prosecution based on identical or substantially similar facts a condition precedent for a statute to be violated?

The reason I'm asking is that, IANAL, but I doubt that law was intended to cover something like this. So I'm simply wondering if it had been applied in a similar way in the past, because that would be the best indicator of whether or not it was applicable.

It is an enormously broad statute. Many would say too much so. This article[1] advocates that it is too broad, but provides some useful examples of how it has been interpreted and applied. Whether or not it was intended to cover something like this is not really relevant as to whether or not the statute was violated. I think what you might be getting at is the question of whether or not the statute is unconstitutionally vague, which is a pretty good argument, but has been mostly rejected by the courts.

[1] https://repository.jmls.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?referer=http...

Unless you were asking for the state law which would be http://codes.findlaw.com/ny/penal-law/pen-sect-190-25.html

So if it's not against the letter of the law, that makes it ok?

When did I claim that?

I would say that submitting a public comment under a pseudonym is OK even if it was against the law.

Maybe it is, maybe it isn't, but that's not actually the issue in question. The comments to the FCC board were made using (publicly available) real name and address pairs.

Someone submitted a comment using my legal name and current address. Whether that person should have been able to comment pseudonymously or not is beside the point. What they actually did is make a public statement in my name, which may or may not reflect my actual views, and which definitely impedes my ability to express those actual views if and when I desire to.

I imagine so, as that point it would be a matter of taste.

Yes. Thats the basis of legal system.

What do identity fraud statutes cover (NY, national, or otherwise)?

Pretending to be another (real) person is different from using a fake name.

A lot of "Pretending to be another (real) person" is being alleged.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20171030/11255938512/dead-...

This will probably get me some hate, but that speech was genuinely funny. Anyone who can't put aside their political differences and laugh along with it is a wet blanket.

And it points out how ridiculous the Verizon shill claim is — Pai worked there from 2001-03 when he was 3 years out of law school, then worked for DoJ and various congressional committees, then went to the FCC in 2007. Claims that he's beholden to Verizon are exactly as absurd as that Manchurian Candidate sketch.

> Claims that he's beholden to Verizon are exactly as absurd as that Manchurian Candidate sketch.

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20171205/10255738745/days-...

He sure isn't making a very good job at not looking corrupt beyond any doubt.

Color me unimpressed. Tom Wheeler spoke at the 2016 event and their 2015 annual convention.

[0] https://www.iicom.org/events/telecommunications-and-media-fo...

[1] http://www.iicom.org/events/item/annual-conference-2015-conf...

Tom Wheeler didn't promote the removal of net neutrality protections, an act which would benefit Verizon. This "it's just a joke" is about as funny as if Tom Wheeler had said the same thing Pai did while taking the same stance.

That's because it's indefensible, which is why you're pointing fingers to Wheeler instead of defending it.

It's almost like speaking at an International Institute of Communications forum is not correlated with shilling.

According to the itinerary for the event, then I suppose Robert L. Strayer from the State Department, Boutheina Guermazi from The World Bank, Nuala O'Connor from the Center for Democracy & Technology, Mozilla, Facebook, and Microsoft must all be corrupted/on-the-take by Verizon too?

http://www.iicom.org/events/item/tmf-washington-2017-event-p...

Maybe I'm a wet blanket, but I don't find it particularly funny when rich/powerful people laugh about screwing over the rest of us.

Wow. Four whole years. That’s amazing and obviously disabuses anyone of any notion of conflict of interest. Yep. This puts the issue to bed forever thanks for clearing it up.

3 years is plenty of time for him to drink the kool aid and be turned to their way of thinking. Verizon doesn't need to maintain contact to have him enact their plans, they just need him to be aligned with their reasoning.

It's not ridiculous to call him a shill when he plays the exact same cards Verizon would. And in the face of huge public backlash, he still continues with his plans! If he wasn't a shill, he'd be a little bit more than dismissive of the public.

It’s strawmanning.

A shill makes fun of himself being a shill, while at the same time pretending he is not a shill? It's more of a bad farce, than a worthy humor.

Pai's speech was funny, but his behaviour as chairman is completely indefensible, especially with all the evidence that the comment submission process was fraught with irregularities.

To put it more concretely: if you think he has no ulterior motive in acting the way he is acting, what betting odds would you give against him being given a very lucratively paid sinecure as vp in some sort of telecom as soon as he is legally allowed?

Whether or no Pai has a confict of interest is not very relevant.

Whether Pai's conclusions are based in personal opinion, or not is irrelevant.

The problem is that Pai is ignoring those whom it is duty to serve, and abusing the authority of his chairmanship to dictate policy for an entire country without any meaningful discussion.

Deleted comment

This isn't a new, or original, thought. It's an allusion to an ongoing conversation within what is considered mainstream comedy about why we (as a culture) seemingly have a plethora of mainstream liberal comedians (especially political comedians), but a dearth of conservative ones.

And, this conversation is an extremely important one to have. It relates deeply to the whole "fake news" obsession that seems to have taken hold of particular strains of "conservatism" (the right).

Someone did a study on the correlation between political identity and humor. Surprise surprise, conservatives tend to not be very humorous people:

> Within the sphere of nonsense humor, conservatives were intolerant of jokes that failed to provide resolution of incongruous elements. Such results confirm the hypothesis that conservatives seek emotional control and cognitive closure compared with liberals, who are comfortable with more abandoned self expression and thought processes.

http://citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.848... [pdf]

> This isn't a new, or original, thought. It's an allusion to an ongoing conversation within what is considered mainstream comedy about why we (as a culture) seemingly have a plethora of mainstream liberal comedians (especially political comedians), but a dearth of conservative ones.

Fair point. However, many liberal comedians, such as Jerry Seinfeld[1], will no longer perform on college campuses, because they don't want to deal with the blowback from the leftist students who take offense at seemingly anything that does not espouse their party line.

[1] http://college.usatoday.com/2015/06/08/jerry-seinfeld-espn-c...

To be perfectly honest, that has absolutely nothing to do with this conversation.

Yes, there is a conversation that needs to be had (and is being had) about when proclaimed "liberalism" becomes anti-liberal.

This conversation is about the nature of (mainstream) comedy, and how there are potentially aspects of modern conservatism that inhibit its viability as a topic of what is currently comedy other than as a topic of ridicule.

> leftist students

If you want to have an actual conversation about the current American political spectrum, please, use a real term. "Leftist" is, honestly, a stupid meme.

>If you want to have an actual conversation about the current American political spectrum, please, use a real term. "Leftist" is, honestly, a stupid meme.

Really? I've never heard that complaint before, from either end of the political spectrum. What do you think would have been a better word with which to refer to these particular students?

Well, that's exactly the problem. You haven't taken the time to actually considered what these students believe, or a good term that actually relates to those specific beliefs.

Leftist, as a term, exists only to describe opposition to the right. Not to actually describe a system of beliefs.

That's not really true. When someone self-identifies as a "Leftist", it's actually not (usually) being used to describe opposition the right, but to place themselves on the left as being further left than liberalism (i.e. identifying with Marxism, socialism, communism, anarchism, etc).

>Leftist, as a term, exists only to describe opposition to the right. Not to actually describe a system of beliefs.

Wikipedia disagrees with you:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-wing_politics

Ah! So, you're using the Wikipedia definition of left-wing. And, you're also using it in the context of American politics.

So, members of the left ("leftists"), i.e. Democrats, must be support "social equality and egalitarianism." Oh wait, but both the left and the right claim to support those things in modern 21st century America... That's probably because our left and right do not conform to the Wikipedia definition...

We can use the Wikipedia definition of what left and right is, but it's not helpful at all in the context of the modern American political spectrum. So, again, "leftist" is only used to describe opposition to the right, which is also how it's used colloquially in modern America... It's not a useful adjective for describing an actual system of beliefs.

To be honest, you're just intellectually being lazy...

Really? I've never heard that complaint before

You haven't been listening, or don't live in the U. S. "Leftist" is what The Right (yes, title casing) used before "Fake News". IOW, different variable names, but the pointers go to the same address as $THING_I_DONT_LIKE. In other, other words, it's an adjective that fails at its job because it doesn't modify the noun in a useful manner.

> You haven't been listening, or don't live in the U. S. "Leftist" is what The Right (yes, title casing) used before "Fake News". IOW, different variable names, but the pointers go to the same address as $THING_I_DONT_LIKE. In other, other words, it's an adjective that fails at its job because it doesn't modify the noun in a useful manner.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Left-wing_politics

Oh, I'm quite aware of the existence of left-wing politics. And "leftist" is certainly appropriate at times. My argument is against the colloquial use. Just like there is news that is fake, there are also political views that lean left. But just because Trump calls something "fake news" does not mean it's not true. And though I might be appalled at the current plans to run up the deficit and electing accused child molestors to Senate (views which should be easy to label as "traditional conservative"), I can guarantee you that Sean Hannity would label me as a "leftist" based on a few other whacky views I hold. Hell, it used to be anyone caught cozying up to the Russians was a "commie leftist". My, how times have changed.

"Am I so out of touch? No, it's the children who are wrong." -Principal Skinner

I'm sure editorial bias determining 'what is considered mainstream comedy' has 0% to do with this..

> It relates deeply to the whole "fake news" obsession that seems to have taken hold of particular strains of "conservatism" (the right).

this trend has taken ahold of all sides as a way to tar-and-feather political opponents; as best as I can tell the trend started when hillary lost and everyone in her camp was trying to blame russia for everything - it was then later co-opted by trump and has subsequently been used all around.

> I'm sure editorial bias determining 'what is considered mainstream comedy' has 0% to do with this...

Ah, yes, the multitude of journalists that have written articles on the subject must be overlooking the plethora of conservative Jon Stewarts of the world purely on "editorial bias".

Maybe you can shed a light on this, until recently, hidden world of conservative comedy?

> this trend has taken ahold of all sides as a way to tar-and-feather political opponents; as best as I can tell the trend started when hillary lost and everyone in her camp was trying to blame russia for everything - it was then later co-opted by trump and has subsequently been used all around.

Look, I'm not going to turn this into a bunch of finger pointing. You very blatantly misunderstood what I said. I'll overlook the somewhat absurd statements you make as it relates to this deep misunderstanding...

I'll just say that I'm explicitly referring to the current administration's painting of the mainstream media (the MSM, as the administration's supporters like to refer to it) as "fake news". This is very clearly not a problem with "both sides" (as there is only one side that is part of the current administration). This is also not a new phenomenon, it just has (until now) only been a major part of the political fringe. Rumblings of the bias of the media is not new, this administration has just made it (among other things) mainstream.

I think you would benefit from more research into fake news. As referring to "news" stories that are completely false and made up, the origin is mostly in the runup to the 2016 US presidential election where such stories were widely spread, mostly on facebook, and there is indeed evidence that they were mostly anti-Clinton and often had Russian origin.

> as best as I can tell the trend started when hillary lost

No, the concept of major uptick in “fake news” became a concept fairly early in the campaign (while the primaries were still happening), starting with people pointing to similarities between a flurry of pro-Trump (and anti-Trump’s opponents) “fake news” that seemed to follow the recent Russian propaganda approach that RAND Corp had labelled the “firehose of falsehoods” approach (we now know that at least some of that was, in fact, Russian propaganda, not just something appearing stylistically similar.)

Trump himself then (still fairly early in the campaign) adopted the phrase and liberally applied it to every unfavorable report in any media outlet, regardless of its veracity. (An approach which fits into, but dials up to 11, the Republican Party’s war on the media designed to push it further right by painting it as left-biased that has been going on, with tremendous success, since at least the early 1980s.)

It's Gizmodo. The only conservatives most of their authors know are the strawmen they've constructed, who exist solely in their own minds.

But any humor that one does not like can be branded as some type of racism, bigotry, sexism, chauvinism, profanity and so on. So in a way this quote is correct. What liberal would consider as humor conservatives might not and vice versa.

> But any humor that one does not like can be branded as some type of racism, bigotry, sexism, chauvinism, profanity and so on.

This is the kind of thing people who want to make racist, sexist, etc. jokes end up saying because they want to be able to keep making offensive jokes and blame it on a difference of opinion.

Offensive jokes are offensive whether or not they are funny.

Unfunny jokes are unfunny whether or not they are offensive.

Unfunniness and offensiveness are not necessarily related.

>half of the American population is Conservative

[citation needed]

Pew: Has it at 42-45%, depending on which scale you want to use. So close to half, and close enough to state "half of the American population" in casual conversation. HN isn't a doctoral review board.

http://www.people-press.org/2017/10/24/political-typology-re...

Probably other numbers out there as well.

http://news.gallup.com/poll/201152/conservative-liberal-gap-...

Note that associating yourself with a label isn't necessarily reflective of your functioning ideology.

Finally, someone who uses my tag properly!

Honestly modern comedians aren’t even funny. Trevor Noah, John Oliver, Ect just moralize and brow beat anyone who isn’t idealogy pure with mainstream hollywood ethnics.

That's why they have such low ratings.

One thing that strikes me about comedians like John Oliver is the audience spends far more time cheering than laughing. His act hits the cultural touchstones for his particular audience, which finds him entertaining. But not actually funny.

It's Gizmodo: it's not going to be much more than an intentionally divisive reflection of the readership's values.

It always helps to remember that our political opposites may also possess a sense of humor

I saw the quotes around "jokes" and didn't read the article.

Bias is obvious, it's not going to be informative reading.

A line from THGTTG springs to mind...

...A bunch of mindless jerks who'll be the first against the wall when the revolution comes...

First against the wall? More likely they'll be sipping margaritas in the Caymans, Vanuatu, or wherever they can go to avoid extradition.

Former mass murdering dictators freely roam international waters, what's a bit of crony capitalism.

I’m guessing you’re not familiar with the referenced work of satirical fiction.

IMO proving the guy has some form of Antisocial Personality Disorder.

FYI Those were not fake names, they were stolen identifies, including correct addresses and phone numbers. I know that because my mom who passed away 2 years ago was on the comments list posted in August of this year against net neutrality.

Regarding duplicates entries, that is explained by multiple sites making it easy to post for net neutrality, using the same language for each person who posted.

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