On Monday the 25th, the FCC had a hearing here at Harvard Law School. This may sound C-Span boring, but the day was actually quite full of excitement.

For starters, Comcast paid off a number of people to warm seats–and we do mean for starters, because there were 35-40 of these people here as early as 7:15 AM for the 10:30 hearing! And though these people were supposed to just save seats for Comcast’s employees, they all stayed the whole time. The result was that by the time the interested public showed up, the courtroom was too packed and many were turned away at the door. Although this is not technically illegal, it definitely makes Comcast look bad–especially when the “seat warmers” doze off…

Luckily, the press is all over this, and Comcast has had to admit their sketchy practices. The issue is so hot that the FCC has even considered holding another hearing at Stanford.

We have to say, though, that the hearing itself was not “disastrous for all involved” as Valleywag described it–in fact, it went quite well for supporters of net neutrality. The Berkman Center did a great job of organizing the event in such short notice, and the panelists put lots of information about the technology into the public record. Responses from the commissioners seemed to indicate that most of them were opposed to Comcast’s filtering of their customers’ internet traffic, and even the normally laissez-faire FCC Chairman, Kevin Martin, remarked that the internet should stay free and open to allow for continued innovation and free market competition.

Thanks to everyone who came out! We’ll let you know about any new developments.