

Ask HN: is http://www.fcc.gov/comments down for anyone else? - dmschulman

So if I have this correctly, the FCC set up an app to get public comment on FCC related issues (most notably right now Net Neutrality) and the public comment period is something they&#x27;re obligated to do under law, yet the system they&#x27;ve created does not work or fulfill its purpose:<p>http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.fcc.gov&#x2F;comments<p>Has this site just flat out not worked for anyone since the public comment period began May 15th?<p>Is this an issue of the site being overloaded at the moment?<p>Maybe it&#x27;s some kind of ironic commentary on how user rights and free speech will suffer under the FCCs new proposed rules?
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doctorshady
Last I checked an FCC proceeding on Friday it worked. Not so much right now,
though. I just get an error saying "Cannot open connection" after a long
pause.

My suspicion is someone might be ddosing it out of outrage, but it could just
as easily be their own problems. The commenting system did stop working once
in February or so.

EDIT: Their main site seems to be up, so I assume it's not anything shady.

~~~
dmschulman
Yeah, I should have been more exact in my initial wording. This is the error I
was receiving as well, though I check it now and instead am getting an error
from my browser ("No Data Received") instead of getting the "Cannot open
connection" error from the service.

I noticed on Techcrunch today there was a segment on John Oliver's Sunday
night HBO show where he discusses Net Neutrality. I didn't watch the clip but
maybe the outage is related to this.

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dragonwriter
> Has this site just flat out not worked for anyone since the public comment
> period began May 15th?

The site is up and shows 45,647 comments on Proceeding 14-28 "Protecting and
Promoting the Open Internet" in the period since comments opened on it (which
is more than 30 times the activity of the next-heaviest over the past 30
days), so it clearly has worked for some people. I suspect any errors you are
encountering (the only error I see is if you attempt to click through the link
to the existing public comments) are because of an unanticipated activity
level resulting from the fact that the comment link is being broadcast with
many opinion articles/broadcasts on the issue accompanied by calls to flood
the system.

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shayna123
This is crazy, I can't believe this insanity. If not for John Oliver I
wouldn't even know about net neutrality. Who thought this up anyway!!!

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ozten
I had to re-submit 4 times before it saved successfully.

Their EJB prints SQL back to you. Wonderful.

to retry: Hit back, confirm, submit again.

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leftydunne
is this the fcc? a lobbyist should not be able to influence regulations that
are contrary to the public good. he should be excused due to conflict of
interest. as a matter of fact, the whole motion should be excused!

