In response, Pai stated his position that a number of comments are not as valuable as the content of those criticisms.
“As I said before, the raw amount is not as significant as the substantive criticisms that are on the record,” Pai told at a newspapers interview following recently monthly FCC conference.
Pai was stating a problem postured by writer Lynn Stanton of TRDaily. Stanton suggested, “shouldn’t a number of customers who feel they are detrimentally influenced be a portion in a cost-benefit analysis of what you do?” Pai did not give a definite yes-or-no answer to the issue of whether the number of pro-net neutrality remarks would get any difference in his decision.
Pai already wrote specific comments on one time, when he signed the “exceptionally valuable addition to the debate” made by an assembly of 19 non-profit municipal-broadband providers who defend the current net neutrality rules. But Pai made no explanation later on when 30 small ISPs urged him to preserve the rules.
The FCC is taking remarks on Pai’s plan to reverse the classification of broadband providers as public carriers and to cancel or replace the net neutrality laws that forbid blocking, throttling, and paid prioritization. On Wednesday, support groups held an “Internet-wide Day of Action to Save Net Neutrality,” which drew support from website administrators both large and small.
Advocacy organization Fight for the Future said the rally resulted in higher than five million emails and 124,000 phone calls to Congress and higher than two million comments to the FCC. Participating websites led visitors to forms that they could use to offer pre-written comments. There are presently more than 7.6 million public criticisms on Pai’s “Restoring Internet Freedom” proceeding.
The deadline for registering initial comments is July 17, and reply remarks are due August 16. The FCC will make the last decision sometime after that, but Pai said he hasn’t settled on timing yet.
Many of the anti-net neutrality observations were submitted by spam bots portraying people whose names and addresses were obtained from data breaches. There’s also been confirmation of a smaller number of pro-net neutrality bot activity. The FCC has not been done fraudulent comments from the record.
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