• by Wendy Davis , Staff Writer @wendyndavis, February 29, 2008

Add Sen. John Kerry to the list of people irritated with Comcast for its antics this week at an FCC hearing in Cambridge.

Blogging in the Huffington Post, Kerry criticized Comcast for packing the audience with supporters by paying line-standers to reserve seats in the room for Comcast employees. Dozens of Comcast shills arrived early and took spots in the 250-seat classroom at Harvard Law School, leading campus police to turn away an estimated 100 net neutrality advocates.

"Trying to lock out the public is a great example of why we need net neutrality," Kerry wrote. "If the other side will use their money to restrict public access to a public meeting, how can we feel confident they won't use their power to restrict voices in the virtual world?

The FCC convened the unusual hearing after advocates and an online video company filed complaints that Comcast was violating net neutrality principles by slowing traffic to peer-to-peer networks.

Comcast's David Cohen came to Massachusetts to argue that the company is only trying to manage its network in a way that interferes with the least number of customers.

But the company seemed to feel that Cohen also needed a cheering section, so Comcast went to extraordinary lengths to make sure its supporters would be able to root him on.

A Comcast spokesperson said that paying line-standers is customary in Washington, but it clearly was unexpected in academia. It's fair to say that when the event was advertised as first-come, first-serve, the organizers weren't anticipating paid place-holders.

Comcast has argued that the advocacy group Free Press encouraged its supporters to attend, so it did likewise.

Kerry, for one, was unimpressed with that rationale. "The official response from this industry giant is to say that paying people to pack a hearing is simply a tit-for-tat response to the efforts of a grassroots organization of activists trying to make their voices heard," he wrote.

Of course, Kerry's not the only one to take a dim view of Comcast's stunt. The FCC also appears unimpressed -- so much so that Valleywag is reporting the agency will now hold a new hearing at Stanford about the complaint.