Time Warner Cable is using our cable dollars to undermine our democracy and our Internet through a network of shadowy interest groups. It is pushing an agenda that would roll back net neutrality, and loosen protections of our private information.
But
next week company executives face their shareholders -- and we plan to be there, to demand they clean up their act and tell us which corporate lobbyists they're paying, and why. Can we get 10,000 people to speak out against this shady lobbying before the shareholder meeting? We'll deliver all the signatures directly to the Board of Directors next week.
Tell Time Warner Cable to come clean about the money it is funneling through shadowy trade associations.
Time Warner Cable pays undisclosed sums to the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, or NCTA, which is suing the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to block the net neutrality rules we all worked so hard to win. NCTA also passed along funding from Time Warner Cable to a fake grassroots organization, Broadband for America, which opposed net neutrality allegedly in the name of "300 Internet consumer advocates."
That's not all Time Warner Cable is doing with the money it gets from our cable bills. It is lobbying state legislators directly and through the secretive lobbying group ALEC to
make it illegal for communities to offer broadband. The ridiculously-named 21st Century Privacy Coalition, another recipient of Time Warner Cable's spending, is lobbying Congress to water down requirements to protect our personal information.
Now even Time Warner Cable's shareholders are asking questions, and the largest proxy advisor -- a firm to help shareholders vote on issues in the company -- is advising shareholders to demand Time Warner Cable come clean about its spending on trade associations and lobbying at the company's annual shareholder meeting next week. This rarely happens, and it means we have a real shot at winning.
We've already sent millions of comments, phone calls, emails and signatures to the FCC and President Obama to win an unprecedented and unlikely victory -- and we won't give up on this now. We won a massive victory this year but we always knew that the battle for an open internet free from corporate control wasn't over. Corporate America has a history of successfully bullying the FCC, which is why we need to keep up the fight now.
Demand that Time Warner Cable disclose its secret contributions to ALEC, NCTA and other groups!
Less than 20 years ago, the Internet barely existed. But in just two decades, it's changed the world: breaking open government secrecy, making access to knowledge cheap or free, and making it easier to come together to organize and make change.
It's no wonder that the world's most influential companies want the Internet under their control. They don't want people power threatening their profits. But access to the Internet is too important to be left to a handful of powerful companies and the lobbyists they pay to do their dirty work.