Answer Guy Central

I haven’t mentioned Scott Adams in a while. Scott, the creator of business-themed cartoon Dilbert, is one smart guy, and last week said something that matters. It matters in business and business change, it matters in social networking, and it matters . . . well, maybe everywhere.

Less Is More.

Mr. Adams’ gives several examples. Booking Travel Online. Buying Movie Tickets. The iPad and pretty much everything else that Apple does. But in Apple’s case the example was that less is more works, whereas booking travel and buying movie tickets have become bogged down. More has become Less.

The business change examples are so numerous I won’t spend much time. Just think about how much easier it is to shop when you have packages to choose from, or pre-built meals at a restaurant instead of a la carte ordering. No comment on value or what’s “better”, or for whom; it’s just easier, and that makes everyone feel better.

In social networking, less is more is looking like the way things will go. Yesterday Apple announced a social network of their own. PING will be a way for iTunes users to share how they feel about the music they listen to with others. I don’t care, but my 21-year-old son thought it was a great idea.

Social networking needs more thinking like this; it needs a real Facelift. Social networks need to actually have something social about them, beyond the mere “come to the marketplace and see if you recognize anyone” approach being practiced by Facebook. Again, I personally think Ping is silly, but it’s going to be immensely popular—not so much because it comes from Apple, but because it makes sense.

Look for the news about the Facelift of Social Networking right here . . . very soon!

Economics 101: Pricing Matters.

So if older workers are smarter than younger workers, does that mean that we don’t care about their extra experience or that we don’t care enough to pay for it?

Speaking as an “old guy”, I have a personal stake in the answer to this question. There are things about technology that I know which my younger brethren don’t. And while my dated programming skills and understanding of what happens at a command line prompt may not matter any more the decades I’ve spent watching how the choices we make in technology effect the business impact of  those choices matter very much. Facebook is a prime example; It does everything, but it’s a nightmare to “get”.

Listen up: the kids at Facebook have done an amazing job building something huge, and I need to be clear: I’m way beyond impressed. And if anyone thinks they’re going to topple Facebook they’re fools. But there’s room—even need for—a business change. Facebook’s steadfast insistence on growth is by definition a model that can’t be sustained; where will they go next? And is there any way in the world that Zucketberg et.al. can be the people to pull it off?

I’m pretty sure I know what’s next. As I’ve mentioned before I’m part of a team that’s about to launch the next wave in social networking. And seriously; if I wasn’t as old as I am I might have thought of it, but I couldn’t execute it. But this leaves the issue of cost: in constructing the Facelift of social networking I’m going to have to either pay for older, experienced talent, or accept the narrower, simpler understanding of younger help.

Last week I came across a story about this issue: most businesses would rather churn through younger, cheaper labor than pay for expertise. And it seems that can be a smart choice; after a relatively short period the younger help get up to speed on all the things that most of then were ever going to be good for, anyway.

But what if you can hire older workers at a price closer to what the younger guys cost? Is a small(er) premium worth acquiring the extra expertise?

Except in the cases where existing knowledge gets in the way (!!!) the answer is yes. The question is creating a tenable balance between the expertise and cost issues. And that’s REAL business change.

I’m stopping there; this subject could be a book—or two. If you want to know more you’re going to have to ask. Drop Me a Line, and we can talk.

The Facelift of Social Networking. I think I like the sound of that.

I’m Old. Sometimes that gets in the way, but mostly it affords me insight and the ability to be pragmatic about some of what happens in front of me while younger eyes might lose track of reality.

Last week, Microsoft founder and gazillionaire Paul Allen filed a lawsuit against . . . well, yikes, against almost everybody. And the lawsuit goes way too far, as do most lawsuits over software patents. But the reaction to that suit has been off the mark. Almost universally, that reaction has been not to the merit of the lawsuit but to Paul Allen’s new career as a patent troll . . . and to how evil a place patent trolls occupy in the business world.

I’m on the record as believing that many lawyers do more harm than good, and that they add nothing the the GNP while lining their pockets with others’ money. And oh boy will Paul Allen’s attorneys make a bundle playing with this one. But I’m also on the record as saying that there’s nothing wrong with defending a patent.

And yes, managing your intellectual property almost requires attorneys.

So where’s the disconnect? How do we align software patents owned through purchase (not invention) by one of the wealthiest men in the world and also encourage restraint on a group of people who make their living by being the opposite of restrained in a business environment where things are changing so quickly that it seems like you’d better sue someone before they sue you?

We take a step back. We change the patent system. We make it harder to file lawsuits and impose large fines on those who file suits found to be without merit.

Which . . . uggh . . . means I just suggested creating more oversight and rules.

More than anything, I’m suggesting that we need for cooler heads to prevail. We need more experience and less “innovation”.

We need old people.

Come back tomorrow to see what I mean by that. But in the meantime, cut Paul Allen a break. His lawyers may have reached too far, but in the system we have now defending his intellectual property was the right thing to do.

Thank you, Federal Trade Commission. Just when I thought the FTC was doing something potentially useful, they’ve decided that their own regulation providing for fines of $11,000 each time someone tweets or otherwise blogs for payment without disclosing that payment isn’t worth enforcing.

Last year, The FTC created a regulation that was designed to make knowing what was trustworthy amongst all the stuff you read on the Internet easier. If you blog, tweet, or basically say anything and are paid for doing it you have to disclose the payment. Failure to do so carries an $11,000 fine.

Soon after the regulation was enacted I mentioned that one Kim Kardashian was shilling for Carl’s Jr. over Twitter and that her tweets weren’t marked. I presume Ms. Kardashian hasn’t been fined.

Yesterday, the FTC gave me good reason for that presumption. A public relations firm that placed many uncredited reviews for their clients’ music on iTunes has reached settlement with the FTC, and will be removing the offending posts. And that’s it; there’s no fine. It’s kind of the equivalent of this short conversation:

• “You’ve made a mess of this wall, young lady, please clean it up”
• “OK, Mommy”

But on the Internet, nothing ever gets erased. Sure, the PR company might be able to “remove their reviews from iTunes”, but those words have already been stored in thousands of other places; they aren’t going away.

The business change lesson in this is simple. Just as Google and Verizon understand that the real impact of their pact on Net Neutrality is control, on the Internet, you’re in control. All you need is a clear understanding of how the things you say impact the space.

I’ll make the offer again: For $11,000.01 I’ll blog about you, and I won’t disclose that you paid me.

The city of Philadelphia, starved for new sources of revenue like everyone else, has become aggressive about collecting business license fees. So much so that Philadelphia is going after bloggers with revenue, no matter how little that revenue may be.

I could make this complicated, but let’s go the other way:

While it might be technically correct that when you manage to scrape together a few dollars in revenue you are “operating a business”, and while many people wish to make a living as bloggers (and some make very nice livings, indeed), this isn’t the same as being “in business” or being a business.

In fact, I commented on this once before. Want a simple test of who is in business? If you ARE a business, then you are IN business.

Shame on the city of Philadelphia. But Philadelphia is a government, not a person; it shouldn’t surprise us when this kind of thing happens, because nobody is in charge, really. Except . . . wait . . . perhaps the mayor of Philadelphia could step forward and stop this ridiculous practice?

Business change is complicated. But sometimes it can be simplified by making a couple of smart decisions. Be smarter than Philadelphia: do business like a business, take responsibility for the choices you make, and move forward from there.

Although I make this point only occasionally, business change is all about negotiation. I opined that Barack Obama is perhaps the best negotiator of all time when he got British Petroleum to volunteer $20 Billion toward a fund that gets them off no hooks legally, and I was more than a little impressed when Pink Floyd told their record company they’d see them on the dark side of the moon.

And now I love The New York Mets.

OK, I already loved the New York Mets. I’m a fan, and have been since I was a kid. But last week they did something that has no precedent in their business and if they get away with it this will be a business change that will reverberate through professional sports and maybe even other businesses.

Recently, one of the Mets players is alleged to have assaulted the maternal grandfather of some of his children, and to have done so in front of many people. (that clumsy sentence was actually the shortest way I could think of to tell the story fairly and with an appropriate level of detail). In doing so, the player injured himself, thereby making himself unable to do the thing for which the Mets pay him approximately $12 million per year.

The Mets decided that because the injury was self-inflicted, it represented a violation of the player’s contract, and announced that they would not be paying him until he was able to do the thing they had contracted for him to do for them.

Whether you believe this is an appropriate response or unfair, it sure does represent business change through negotiation.

The business change may look more obvious than the negotiation, since the Mets’ action was carried out unilaterally, but let’s dig deeper.

Even though there may have been no face-to-face meeting on the topic or agreement on the way the Mets are interpreting their rights under the contract they have with their employee, acting as they have is a form of negotiation; the question is whether and how the player responds. File a lawsuit? That’s negotiation, too.

The negotiation that’s taking place thus far on the players’ side isn’t being carried on by the player or his agent, though; it’s being carried out by the Union that represents Major League Baseball Players. The question being debated and that will ultimately wind up in front of an arbitrator per the rules of the standard clauses in the player’s contract is whether the Mets had the right to do what they’ve done.

Now let’s be clear: I’m not an attorney. But if there’s a morals clause in the contract (there is) and the player (a pitcher) violated it (he may have), the Mets should have some recourse. More to the point though, is this: if there’s a clause in the contract covering the player’s absolute need to get his team’s approval for any non-baseball-related physical activity (again, there is) and punching someone with your pitching hand is an example of that (it may be), it seems that the Mets have acted within their rights.

To me, the issue is intent. If a player injures himself while skiing or playing in a pickup basketball game and can no longer do his job a result, it’s obvious that he’s violated the contract. In this case, I presume the player didn’t plan to attack anyone so maybe he has some wriggle room. But that’s where the discussion of the morals clause kicks in.

And no, I have no answer. And that’s the point.

EVERYTHING is negotiable. And renegotiable. And sometimes it’s that renegotiation that has the largest impact on your business and your planned business change.

The next time you sign a contract, keep that in mind. A contract, like any other “agreement” is a document that spells out intent. But intent is subject to interpretation. And your actions are always subject to business change.

Am I done with social networking yet? Almost. Next week I’ll be talking about BASEBALL for the first time ever (don’t worry; there’s a huge business change lesson in there), but for now . . . I have one more social networking point to make.

And it’s positive. And I’ll even say something nice about Facebook!

From Wired Magazine:

A study led by Abilene Christian University followed the Facebook profiles of 375 first-semester freshman students for nine months to examine how Facebook activity can be used as a predictor for a student’s likelihood to stay in school. The research found that students who returned to school after freshman year had significantly more Facebook friends and wall posts than those who didn’t return.

In other words, peer pressure works.

In business, the closest thing to this is peer review. When your work is held up to the scrutiny of the people you work with, you’re going to want their approval. So your work is better, before ever getting completed. For kids, in college, in a social networking environment, the very face that there’s a growing and tightening net of peers boosts the odds of success.

The positive upshot for social networking is obvious. The positive upshot for Facebook is . . . oh darn, I take it back; Facebook doesn’t make you feel connected to your peers, it makes you feel disconnected.

OK, maybe I should back down just a little. This study used Facebook and there was a clear positive outcome. Facebook helped kids stay in school. But the reason that worked was because the kids in the study were linked to each other naturally; Facebook merely facilitated the usefulness of that link.

And that’s where social networking becomes really useful (see yesterday’s piece on GetGlue). If you have a reason to be communicating with other people social networking goes a long way toward making that reason stronger. And that’s when peer pressure can become a good thing.

Social Networking: The topic that just won’t go away.

No, really: social networking really isn’t going away any time soon and you need to figure out your plan for social media, social networking, and how they impact your business change. Yes, I’ve said that before. I’ll be saying it again, too.

A few days ago, one of the writers at TechCrunch wrote a piece that made me think about social networking in a whole new way: all the tweeting, all the Facebook updates, and whatever else you do to scream “look at me!” is a matter of something a bit . . . scary: all we’re doing is trying to eat everyone around us.

I’M more important than YOU are. MY words are worth hearing. GET OVER HERE AND LISTEN TO ME.

And then I’ll eat you. Or at least own you.

What’s strangest about this dance is that social networking is being done in the name of better communication, while what it’s actually creating is communication that’s worse. MORE, but worse. We’re not saying anything worth listening to.

I mentioned a couple of weeks ago that I’m part of a team that’s creating a new social networking platform. It’s going to be unveiled very soon, and it’s different. Seriously. It isn’t “more”. It isn’t “special”. It’s respectful and focused. And if you join you’ll be happy you’re there.

Which is what being social is supposed to be about, right? Nobody really likes big parties where there’s so much background chatter you can’t even hear the person you’ve chosen to spend time with and are standing next to speak, right?

That’s how Twitter feels. Facebook, too.

The Guy Sure Looks Like Plant Food To Me. Feed Me Seymour!

MOVIES! FUN! BLOCKBUSTER (s)!

Last week, I told you that Netflix has expanded its movies-on-demand-over-the-internet offering by signing deals with three big Hollywood studios. It’s <ahem> a Blockbuster of a business change, but one that goes not nearly far enough. Presumably, time will improve this.

As I’ve mentioned before, my local Blockbuster Video Store recently shut down. I pointed out that the unavailability of movies made me understand why people would feel all the more justified downloading their “wanna see tonights” over the Internet. I’ve just re-discovered another business change in progress for movie rentals, and I started out really excited . . . but realized it’s a change that needs to be re-thought.

I’ve known about Redbox for quite some time. It’s a video kiosk business, and if you happen to live near a Redbox you can rent movies for just $1 per night. Sadly, I don’t; Redbox just isn’t that well represented and there’s not one within 20 minutes of my home. What I discovered yesterday is that Blockbuster is doing almost exactly the same thing as Redbox, and the kiosks are everywhere. The service is called Blockbuster Express, and it costs the same $1 to rent a movie that you’d pay at Redbox.

So let’s see: instead of going to a Blockbuster store (if you can find one ) and paying $5 to rent a movie you can get it from Blockbuster Express (popping up everywhere!) for $1. Big Win!

But only if you have a short-term view of what video rental is supposed to be.

At both Blockbuster Express and Redbox, there’s an inventory of between 600 and 700 movies. That’s great if you want to see movies that have been released recently, because understandably a number that low means that someone is deciding what to make available. “Recent” is simply the criteria that makes the most sense.

Also, there are problems that a physical-inventory system like this one simply cannot overcoming; the good news is that you can return the movies you rent to any location with both Redbox and Blockbuster Express, but that means that you might find yourself running around to find a kiosk that has what you’re looking for.

What’s most intriguing is that aside from it being a lot cheaper to use a kiosk at Blockbuster Express or Redbox than it was to walk into a video store and rent a movie, the physical store model simply worked better. It wasn’t a sure thing, but you at least had a chance of picking up that obscure oldy-but-goody at the thousands-of-titles-in-stock physical Blockbuster.

Internet downloads and streaming are looking better and better, huh? And the sooner the movie studios and distribution companies can figure out how to make rentals work “any film, any where, any time”, the better off everyone will be. What’s frustrating is that the technology exists and is in place in most homes right now; it’s all contractual issues that are standing in the way.

Remember that contracts are made to be changed. Kind of like business change itself.

When’s the last time you paid for Wi-Fi?

I’m astounded that there are still businesses trying to get you to pay for Wi-Fi. I mean, seriously: that connection costs them only a few dollars a month, and while it’s possible I’d hang out in or in front of my local Subway sandwich shop all day to get that signal, the truth for almost everyone is otherwise.

Guilt issues aside, even if you get a few hangers-on the extra money most people spend while sitting for hours at Starbucks makes giving that Wi-Fi away a great business change.

After trying to make money on the deal, Starbucks first made their Wi-Fi signal nearly free a couple of years back and totally free last month. Even McDonalds has figured this out.

But business change is a matter of always evolving and always finding and moving forward with the next business change. Or better yet, creating it. It’s called business development.

Don’t let anyone tell you that business development is the same as sales.

Getting you to buy more coffee is sales. Finding reasons to keep you in your seat SO THAT you buy more coffee is business development. And Starbucks is doing business development in a big way.

With all respect to the folks at Mashable for that fine article, I pointed this out a couple of months ago. Starbucks has made a deal with the Wall Street Journal for people who access the Internet using their free Wi-Fi to be able to read WSJ for free. Presumable, Starbucks is paying something for the right to have WSJ become free from their locations over the Internet connection they’re giving away. Ditto the other content that you need to pay for when you get to it from your home or office connection, but not from Starbucks.

THAT’S business development. And business change. And if you think about it, it’s also social networking.

Sooner or later, it even strays into the realm of coopetition.

I’ve been clear that you need to be doing social networking, but also being careful about how, and how much. It’s just like business development; you need to always be looking for ways to make more money through your connections, but you also need to keep doing actual sales.

And if you’re serious about any of these things you need to see where they merge, and where they don’t.

Chris Brogan has spoken: the social crash is upon us. And “Ambient Connectivity” is the solution.

I can’t argue the first half of that, and I don’t; I’ve been telling you for quite some time that even as we look for new ways to do social networking and engage our clients and potential clients and enact the business change that this new world calls for we need to scale back on the volume of social networking we do. Quantity simply doesn’t equal quality.

If the story Chris told in his post yesterday wasn’t such a train wreck I wouldn’t be thinking about it or passing it along to you. As smart as Chris is, he hasn’t said anything new in about a year now and has fallen into a pattern where he does little more than scream “rah rah!“. I’m bored with it, and while I’ve commented on Mr. Brogan’s activities a few times I had pretty much decided that until he said something new I wasn’t going to talk about Chris Brogan any more.

Oh man.

Let’s remember that the point of social networking is to engage the people you’re “targeting”. I could use a nicer-sounding word than that, but whether it’s business, personal, or whatever the word target is about as accurate a descriptor as I can come up with.

In describing the in-progress “social crash”, Chris held his own situation up as an example. Fair enough; Chris Brogan is connected in ways the rest of us can only dream of, and I believe that his experiences are about as valid and representative as anybody’s. And the short of it is that Chris Brogan, social networking and business expert, is now suggesting that people who are in his social network shouldn’t expect to be engaged by him. Euphemistically, he referred to the need for “ambient connectivity” in a world where there are more people trying to get his attention then he has the time or inclination to interact with directly.

Here’s the problem: Chris is right. Neither he nor anyone in his position can possibly keep up with it all personally. But because Chris Brogan’s digital peeps BELIEVE they have a “real” relationship with him, he has no choice but to keep them thinking so, unless A) he just don’t care or B) thinks they “get it” when he floated his ambient connectivity idea.

Oh they got it. Brogan spoke the truth, and used that truth to disconnect from the people who thought they were connected.

I hate to use so trite an example as an Eminem song, but what Chris Brogan is suggesting smacks of “of course I want you as a fan, but you shouldn’t expect anything in return”.

And that ain’t “social”. It’s demagoguery. Good luck with that in a social networking world.

The real answer is that when your social networking needs outpace your ability to keep up with them you need either to start employing someone to handle the overrun, or stop acting in a way that is so clearly faux social. Or better yet, both.

By the way: I posted a response to Chris’ story that made many of these same points. While critical it was certainly on-topic, and polite. And it got deleted. Apparently “social” in Chris Brogan’s world includes editing what the world thinks of you. I retract this. My comment has been reinstated, or I missed it earlier.

But what do I know? It’s not like taking care of impossible situations like this is what I do. Ambient Connectivity. REALLY?

Oh wait . . . it is . . .

When the United States Library of Congress created a policy that amounted to law, I made a passing remark about downloading movies in the aftermath of my local video store shutting down.

While Blockbuster Video isn’t responsible for the way people watch movies, Netflix may be. Yesterday, the movies-through-the-mail-and-over-the-Internet company announced a deal with three major movie studios to stream their media to subscribers over the Internet.

Before you get too excited (as I did for a moment) read the fine print.

Netflix is getting the right to stream new-ish movies to its users. The delivery lags the period during which the movies will be available in the dwindling number of freestanding video rental stores, but I’m OK with that part; the movie studios had to keep their existing customers happy, and probably have contractual obligations to do so.

But once on Netflix the movies will be available for a limited period of time, and then disappear as they become the sole purvey of television networks. In fairness, that’s a lot like what I mentioned relative to the slight delay in movies becoming available on Netflix, but in the real world it means that for some variable period of time anyone who wishes to see those movies, formerly available at the local Blockbuster store, will have only one option: download them illegally.

This is not business change, it’s business head-in-the-sand.

Kudos to the movie studios for seeing that Netflix and streaming need to be embraced. But until we can use Netflix to see whatever movies we wish to see, I’m not going to be excited about using them.

I guess TV will be with us for a while longer . . .

So now that Verizon and Google have proven themselves to be liars, the FCC is out of the Internet regulation business, and you still have to plan for business change, what should your next move be?

None. It doesn’t matter. Move on.

OK, so it isn’t as simple as that, but it’s close. Last week, when I told you about the Google / Verizon Collusion on Net Neutrality Pact, the most important point I made was this: Verizon and Google, working from a place that the rest of us can only dream about, are essentially making law. Oh sure, the FCC will eventually get around to writing the “official” version of how things work, but by attacking the issue preemptively, Google and Verizon have set up a showdown designed to ensure that the ultimate outcome is in their favor.

Let’s make sure what this means is clear:

Net Neutrality, the tenet under which telecommunications carriers like Verizon don’t decide for users what’s important, is an idea that isn’t really viable unless the laws governing it are so clear and carry such harsh (and easily enforced) penalties that carriers simply stay clear of even the perception of impropriety. This Isn’t Really Possible. In the United States our legal system is designed to allow skirting issues for long periods without fear of immediate enforcement.

Google and Verizon, under the thinly-veiled pretense of “doing the right thing”, are going to start operating in a way that, once established, will be nearly impossible for the FCC or any other governmental agency or lawmaking body to bust up without decades-long litigation.

And that litigation will happen. And millions if not billions of dollars will be spent running that litigation through the system. And when Verizon, Google, and whoever else is involved eventually “give in” and agree to government-mandated rules, those rules will be diluted to within an inch of being completely meaningless.

Big Business wins. Net Neutrality is over.

That said, the reason this doesn’t really “matter” is that

1. Big Business Always Wins
2. Everyone else figures out a way to deal with that

You may need to find ways around filters (yes, The Computer Answer Guy can help). You may need to move certain services to specific places (this is where Google comes in). You may even need to pay a little extra for special, higher-priority Internet service. But ultimately, you’ll be fine, and your business change planning will keep you in the game.

But Net Neutrality sure was a cute idea while it lasted!

OK, one more time: software patents are bad.

When Facebook was granted US Patent 7,669,123, I talked about it, and you’ve talked back for months; this thing simply should never have been awarded.

I’ve spoken more broadly about software patents, too. They stifle innovation and generally prove close to nothing. They’re a bad idea.

Last February, I pointed out something that bothers me a little bit less, though: when you own a patent (or patents), you need to defend your property, and the “patent troll” business is thriving.

And now Facebook is in the patent troll business. One $40 million payment to Friendster, eighteen patents in pocket, all of them covering social networking.

Again: software patents are a bad idea. But if they’ve going to exist, having them is a great way to go, especially if you have deep enough pockets to defend and enforce them. And Facebook certainly does.

Business change ought to be about actual change, and the patent troll business isn’t that at all. On the other hand, when you can effect change by making new revenue from the assets you already possess, you’re still looking forward. Much as I prefer to bash Facebook most of the time, this move is a winner. At least for them.

I’ve mentioned the idea of Net Neutrality a few times. It’s a simple, yet nuanced idea, and basically means that companies providing Internet access shouldn’t have any say in what traffic is important.

And that ship, as they say, has now sailed.

Yesterday, Google and Verizon announced an agreement under which Verizon won’t control what Internet traffic gets priority over other traffic . . . “unless it’s in the consumer’s best interest”.

Read that again.

Google, a company that can issue edicts based solely on their size and reach, and Verizon, a telecommunications giant that can do the same except when governmental agencies and lawmaking bodies tell them not to, have agreed to prioritize traffic, but only when it’s good for us.

Thank goodness we have Google and Verizon to protect us.

Tongue now removed from cheek, let’s be clear: Neither Google nor Verizon have any interest in protecting consumers. This is about taking control of a situation preemptively; the FCC has threatened to re-regulate data, and when that happens there will be years if not decades of litigation. Rather than wait for that event, Google and Verizon have simply gotten a jump-start.

And once the deals and operating parameters are established, a silly little body like the FCC isn’t going to stand in the way of Google and Verizon continuing to do business “as they have been”.

By the way: the broad parameters of the deal also specify that wireless data is going to be handled differently than data delivered over permanent lines. Which is great awful, because that real-world business change for the consumer isn’t really a business change for Google or Verizon.

But by pretending it is, they can obfuscate this issue even further.

UPDATE: less than a day later, Verizon and Google have both denied this story. Uh-huh. Let’s go back in time about 10 months to when AT&T, a company very much like Verizon, accused Google of being against net neutrality. And with good cause. Now Google’s taking the high road? OK, I believe them !

Oh, and by the way: the FCC has called off Net Neutrality talks because they couldn’t reach consensus with the involved parties. Maybe because the involved parties are doing this?