There's something seriously wrong about this.

Comcast — or someone who really, really likes Comcast — evidently bused in its own crowd. These seat-warmers, were paid to fill the room, a move that kept others from taking part.

[Update: Comcast admits to paying people to stack the room in their favor. Read the report.]

They arrived en masse some 90 minutes before the hearing began and occupied almost every available seat, upon which many promptly fell asleep (picture above).
MarkeyComcast’s sleeper cell

One told us that he was “just getting paid to hold someone’s seat.”

>> Listen to the audio

He added that he had no idea what the meeting was about.

If he was holding someone else’s seat, he never gave it up.

Many of this early crowd had mysteriously matching yellow highlighters stuck in their lapels.

The Department of Justice has weighed in against Net Neutrality:

The Justice Department said imposing a Net neutrality regulation could hamper development of the Internet and prevent service providers from upgrading or expanding their networks. It could also shift the "entire burden of implementing costly network expansions and improvements onto consumers," the agency said in its filing.

Such a result could diminish or delay network expansion and improvement, it added.

Are these the same network providers who already were paid huge government stipends and tax breaks to expand and improve broadband internet?

The agency said providing different levels of service is common, efficient and could satisfy consumers. As an example, it cited that the U.S. Postal Service charges customers different guarantees and speeds for package delivery, ranging from bulk mail to overnight delivery.

You gotta love that. Really, the USPS as a success story? Tell that to all the dead trees that are mailed every day straight through your mailbox into the garbage can (or, hopefully, recycling bin).

"Whether or not the same type of differentiated products and services will develop on the Internet should be determined by market forces, not regulatory intervention," the agency said in its filing.

This is a disingenuous argument, as people already are paying varying rates for varying levels of service. If you want a fast connection, you pay more. If you have a website that has a lot of media files to serve, you pay more.

What the DOJ seems to be arguing is -- to use their analogy -- much like having the USPS tell you that you cannot get mail from Chicago, but you can get similar mail from another sender in Atlanta. The telecoms who were paid by the taxpayer to build the backbone and make it stronger and faster now want to control the content on that backbone. This does not serve competition. In fact, undermining net neutrality would have the effect of undermining the free market. Not when individual access to information is choked off and controlled by middleman companies who are playing for the big contracts.

I'm very disturbed by this development, but I have to confess I'm not that surprised. We live in a political and business climate that is suspicious of individual expression and freedom of speech -- or at least places very little value on it.

Over recent years, we've seen how social media and "web 2.0" sites have changed how we use the internet. Now we're starting to see how we use the internet change how we think about and interact with non-internet things.

Take politics. If you've been paying attention to the news lately, you've seen how presidential candidates have implemented community-style websites as key parts of their campaigns. A quick glance at the BlogHer Politics & News blogs shows more and more posts relating to how the very fabric of campaigns is changing as candidates and their campaign staffs learn how to navigate the waters of the blogosphere.

The blogosphere isn't just covering the political challenges of the day -- it has become a big political challenge of the day.

Of course, this kind of thing isn't quite new. The disruptive nature of "web 2.0" has been the focus of forward-looking businesses for some time now. On SiteProNews, Kalena Jordan writes that social media is "The Instant Brand Killer":

The good news is that social media is user driven. The bad news is that social media is user driven. Yes, there's the rub. Users are fickle creatures - they can love a product one minute and then drop it like a lead balloon the next, depending on their experience with the product, a rumor, or whether they have had their morning coffee yet. And if their experience is bad, the noise is generally louder. To protect their reputations it's not just journalists that companies have to impress these days. It's anyone with a computer and an Internet connection. Love it or hate it, the user community now has enormous power over the online reputation of a company or brand.

Not surprisingly, businesses and individuals alike clamor for the attention and mostly enjoy the limelight that social media can bring. Others hate the intense scrutiny that often accompanies the popularity. An example is usability blogger Kim Krause Berg's unpleasant first experience of Digg - I Don't Digg Being Dugg (http://cre8pc.com/blog/archives/198).

Users aren't the only fickle creatures. So are voters. Now, after working primarily the margins in prior years, we're seeing social media play a similarly disruptive role in politics -- especially presidential campaigns -- as it has in business, by taking control of the message away from the campaign managers and placing it into the hands of the people ... all of the people.

Whoops!

The mix between political and blogging communities can get rough, and the politicians aren't always coming off well. It doesn't seem like they were quite expecting that. What with the choice by several campaigns to make their announcements online first, rather than on network news or talk shows (or comedy shows), perhaps the campaigns didn't quite know what they were getting into -- especially with regards to the inevitable trolling and flare-ups that can happen in the political blogosphere ... or how some loud, well-financed political operatives can get at politicians who've committed themselves to listening.

As a result, DC insiders are already getting gun-shy when it comes to the internet. Get a kick out of this post from Liza at culturekitchen:

I was told by a party insider they could not link to this blog because I used the word "panties" in one of my posts.

Yes people. Like 9 year-olds, Democrats are skittish of the word used for a girls' cootie catcher.

Do I have to be a multi-millinaire political socialite or a couple of guys dressed in blog drag for it to be acceptable? What of the DNC linking to the aforementioned blog back in 2004 when it had a media dilettante who's shitck at said blog was to endlessly pepper her posts with sodomy jokes?

Does choosing not to link to this blog have something to do with common decency or is it just out right censorship?

What will happen to the American political culture that has been safely ensconced in the one-way announce-only paradigm of the mainstream media, as it continues to interact with a voting populace that has platforms to talk back? It's already proving a volatile mix.

And we're only just getting started in this campaign.

Recently, Lynn d Johnson wrote about a new political website, techPresident:

The 2008 election will be the first where the Internet will play a central role, not only in terms of how the campaigns use technology, but also in how voter-generated content affects its course. TechPresident.com plans to track all these changes in real-time, covering everything from campaign websites, online advertising and email lists to the postings on YouTube and who's got the fastest growing group of friends on Facebook.

Our team of bloggers is made of veterans of the 2004 and 2006 elections, ranging across the political spectrum. Their expertise covers everything from website design to the latest in mobile tools and social networking sites. And we'll look closely not just at what the campaigns are or are not doing, but what voters and activists are doing online to independently affect the election.

One sample:

Marianne Richmond at Blog the Campaign in 08 takes a look at the blog on Hillary Clinton's site and find something missing: Hillary.

Mitt Romney is trying his best to replicate Barack Obama's Facebook popularity. However, the University of Arizona's student paper, the Wildcat, points out: "Of the 36 posted photos of Romney's life and campaign, he seems to only interact with white people. (Note to the Romney 2008 campaign: These things can be both an asset and a liability.)"

It will be interesting indeed to see how the carefully managed, massaged, powdered and spun presidential campaigns fare in the wild and wooly world of social media, where you don't need to buy expensive airtime to be heard, where spin from ads and corporate media has limited effect, and where news can spread like wildfire.

If we are now the machine, which candidate will we choose before the election even takes place?

[Cross-posted on BlogHer.]

Warning: Spoilers

After last night's season 3 opener, I'm a little concerned about my favorite show on television, "Battlestar Galactica." The show is starting to resemble "Lost," which from my perspective is not at all an improvement.

I'm not just talkling about the tents and stress monkeys in the jungle. It's the whole arbitrariness that comes across in sequence after sequence of surprises with very little tension. The show used to be terrific at building tension. Whether it's seizing the ore on a hostile asteroid or finding water or holding red alert for several days while Cylons continue to find the fleet within 33 minutes of arriving anywhere or two strong military commanders poised to take their ships into full battle against each other, the show built great anticipation of what was going to happen next.

Now we get surprises, not suspense. This happens, then this happens, then this happens. We see very little planning and feel very little of what the characters want -- which is very un-Battlestar Galactica. The show had been great at portraying all sorts of fascinating, complicated characters, which made for messing up the clean Good Guys/Bad Guys kinds of delineations that can make such shows boring. No, you found yourself sympathizing with a villain at times, disliking a hero at times -- because these were people. Even some of the Cylons were interesting people.

The Cylons have gotten boring now. Now, except for the Sharons and the now-deceased-soon-to-be-resurrected Caprica Six, they're one-dimensional Nazi caricatures. They're not even interesting interacting with each other, which strikes me as a missed opportunity.

Baltar is getting interesting again, though. (There's one villain who can be sympathetic.) I find myself wondering what he's going to do, now that he's gone and signed the death warrants of just about all of the rest of the cast.

On the upside, though, the performances are very good, despite the dull script. Oddly, it's the special guest stars who are most disappointing. Lucy Lawless' Number Three is truly despicable without really doing anything, which speaks to her talent as an actress, and Dean Stockwell is his usual charismatic self on screen, but his role is rather one-note as Cylon grand inquisitor, and Lucy has little to do but sneer at people. Here are these big stars, at least for the scifi/fantasy television realm, and they just don't seem to have much to do besides act as plot points and scenery.

Ultimately, though, what really bothers me is all this time spent on "New Caprica." Sorry, but just because "Lost" does the tent city thing doesn't mean Battlestar should emulate it.

Please, Ron Moore! It's not "Tent City Galactica"!

I'm not sure about this turn in the Starbuck storyline, either. Her love affair with the sports star was pretty boring, yes, but this mommy-prison stuff with the Cylon who has the creep sweats is on the dull side, too. Starbuck needs to move. Let her move! (Read IGN's Katie Sackhoff interview.)

I just hope Adama can mount a rescue and save the show. The first two seasons, which are now out on DVD, get better and better with each viewing. Galactica doesn't need to go back to the Twelve Colonies, but in my view the show needs to go back to its home, in space, in fascinating characters, searching for Earth.

For some other takes:

DougMcHone at CoffeeSwirls had his first viewing of the show:

So I sat down and expected some space battles, some intrigue, something entertaining. What I got was a heavily politicized show, with the Cylons being seen as an occupying force and the humans seen as the heroic insurgency. There was talk of torture and rape against the insurgents and the Cylons said that they just wanted the humans to accept their way of life so everything could be better for all parties.

He blames "the liberal media." For more amusingly silly political takes, there are PostWatch's outrage at DCBlues' equally silly take on the new season, and Devilstower's interpretation that Americans are Cylons. Really, in this day and age of cracking the human genome, if there's a "bigger message" to take away from Battlestar Galactica, it's the question of what makes us human (though I confess that the torture that's been used in many episodes throughout the show, by heroes and villains alike, has proven to be rather timely, alas). As for New Caprica standing in for Iraq -- sorry, I just don't see it. But if you look at the posts out there, there seems to be a lot of political angst about his show. It's a political season, I guess.

Update: Galactica is really back now.