For several years now, the cable and broadband industry has, like so many industries, turned to obnoxious, misleading fees to help pad their already healthy revenues. The fees, usually tacked on below the line post-sale, aren't just a great way to covertly raise rates -- but they allow companies to advertise one rate -- then charge something decidedly different. Despite effectively being false advertising, this practice has long been ignored by regulators. Companies like Comcast and Charter have, however, been repeatedly sued for the practice.

Two major fees in the last few years have received the brunt of the attention. One being the "broadcast TV fee." The broadcast TV fee is simply your cable operator taking a part of the cost of programming and burying it below the line to help them falsely advertise a lower rate. Comcast and Charter have both insisted this is simply them being transparent with their customers.

Another contentious fee is the "regional sports fee," which functions in just the same way, and as the name implies is just the cost companies pay to broadcast sports content. On its face, this fee was already contentious (given that many cable providers own the local sports broadcaster). But one DirecTV customer actually discovered that you could use a tool on the DirecTV website to determine how much each zip code pays in regards to this fee.

What she found is that there appears to be no rhyme or reason for how this fee is assessed. Users just a few feet apart could pay $0, $2.47, $5.83, or $7.29 in regional sports fees -- despite all having access to the same content. The user even broke down this in practice in Arizona via a handy map:

The Consumerist then went city by city and found the same thing in Chicago, New York, and multiple cities in California. And in places like Philadelphia, the website found that people paying absolutely nothing in fees are often saddled right next to people paying up to $7.29 more per month:

There's no coherent reason for this. It's not because of regional franchise agreements, most of which were demolished when companies like AT&T and Verizon convinced state legislatures to pass state-level agreements when they got into the business a decade ago. Similarly, DirecTV doesn't even offer a regional sports offering in many of the markets with varying rates. What is for certain is that both the broadcast TV fee and these regional sports fees have skyrocketed in very short order. The regional sports fee has jumped from $1 to nearly $10 for some carriers in just the last few years.

Hoping to find out why different people pay such dramatically different rates, the website asked DirecTV and got a complete and total non (and frankly false) answer:

"We sent all these maps to DirecTV, hoping to get a better explanation than the non-answer given to Connie. After more than two days of waiting, the best the company has been willing to provide is “[Regional sports network] content and thus the costs charged by providers vary significantly by ZIP code.”

Yet that’s simply not true. The examples we provided to DirecTV all involve relatively small areas where any regional channels would be the same. For instance, we could find no evidence of any special regional sports channel being beamed only to residents of Chicago’s Logan Square neighborhood."

If the cost fluctuation had a legitimate, above-board reason, you'd have to think DirecTV wouldn't shy away from explaining it. Given that this is the least liked industry in America, the other possible explanation is that there's nothing to explain because the entire fee is bullshit -- and therefore so is its implementation. In that case, why not charge everybody the same, uniform rate? Are some neighborhoods not being charged the fee to improve overall subscription rates? Follow up questions to DirecTV were subsequently ignored, suggesting there certainly is a reason -- just not one DirecTV wants to share with you.

So when we last checked in with Comcast, the company was whining about a now deceased FCC plan to bring some much-needed openness and competition to your dusty old cable box. The FCC had proposed requiring that cable providers let users pick the cable box of their choice, later modifying the plan (after endless industry pearl-clutching) to simply requiring that cable providers bring their existing content in app form to existing streaming boxes. Granted, Comcast was at the heart of a massive, bizarre disinformation effort claiming the plan would end civilization as we know it.

Of course, what it would have ended was not only $21 billion in cable box monopoly rental fees, but a cornerstone of the closed, locked down walled garden that helps prop up the cable industry's gatekeeper power. Comcast, for what it's worth, claimed that bringing its content to third-party devices would harm copyright, increase piracy, hinder cable industry "innovation," and was technically impossible anyway. Regardless, the FCC's plan is dead, and it's not coming back any time soon.

But Comcast still has to drive the impression that it's listening to consumers and driving innovation, so the cable giant recently announced it would be bringing its Xfinity cable TV service to Roku streaming hardware. The app, currently in beta, lets users access their existing Comcast TV content without the need for a cable box, highlighting, Comcast insists, the company's innovation in the TV space:

"Featuring an immersive guide with rich graphics, imagery, personalized recommendations and detailed information for tens of thousands of movies and TV shows, the app will allow Xfinity TV customers to watch live and on demand programming, including local broadcast and Public Educational and Governmental channels, as well as their cloud DVR recordings, delivered over Comcast’s secure private managed network, on Roku devices in the home."

On its surface this sounded great. But this being Comcast, the company couldn't allow itself to be innovative without saddling customers with entirely unnecessary fees. Reports quickly began to emerge that Comcast would be charging customers that use Roku in this fashion an additional $7.95 every month, for no coherent reason whatsoever:

"What makes this fee striking is that it's not designed to pay for any particular cost to Comcast's business. The $9.95 fee that 99 percent of cable customers pay for set-top boxes is listed on bills as an equipment "rental fee." Even the Cablecard fee includes a bit of hardware from the cable operator. But the Roku app is purely software. It doesn't require a piece of equipment supplied by the cable company, nor does it require a technician to come to your home to set it up."

But Gigi Sohn, who served as a senior adviser to former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler, said she knows why.

"It's gravy to them," Sohn said. "You're already paying handsomely for the service. And now they're making you pay a second time."

It is, in effect, a $7.95 "because we can" fee, and a big reason the FCC wanted to standardize this process to keep cable executive "creativity" under control. Of course, this being Comcast, the company was also quick to make sure this service wouldn't count against the completely unnecessary broadband usage caps it continues to deploy across the least competitive portions of the company's footprint. Comcast's FAQ on the new Roku beta correctly notes that this technically isn't a net neutrality violation, because this traffic never actually touches the general internet:

The Xfinity TV service delivered through the Xfinity TV Beta app is not an Internet service and does not touch or use the Internet. Rather, it is a Title VI cable service delivered solely over Comcast's private, managed cable network, so it will not count toward your Xfinity Internet Data Usage Plan.

So yeah, while not technically a violation of net neutrality (not that those rules will be around long anyway), it still gives Comcast a competitive advantage. If you're trying to choose between a new streaming live TV service like Sony's Playstation Vue or Dish's Sling TV or Comcast's offering, the fact that those services will erode your Comcast usage cap could very likely drive you back into the arms of Comcast. Of course, that's quite by design, and is a perfect example of how every "innovation" Comcast pushes into the market tends to have a nasty underlayer of price gouging and anti-competitive shenanigans.

Last April, a few legal advocacy groups banded together to sue the US government over PACER fees. PACER is the court system's electronic access system whose fees are only supposed to help it break even on the "costs" of delivering courtroom documents in PDF form. Suffice to say, the fees exceed the costs and the money doesn't seem to be going towards making PACER a better system.

To sum up very briefly, PACER:

• works and looks like crap
  • 1998 crap, to be more specific
• fees are $0.10/page for nearly everything
  • including search results
• the search function works like crap
  • 1992 crap

Working (and looking) like outdated crap is one thing. Being charged by the federal government for pages your tax dollars helped create is another. PACER keeps working like crap and the US court system's administration keeps pretending the documents are stored in file cabinets and are being copied by hand for members of the public at a library-copy-machine rate of 10 cents a page.

In December, the presiding judge denied the government's attempt to dismiss the case. The government argued that members of the public agreed to whatever PACER felt like charging through some bureaucratic clickwrap.

The court disagreed with the government's assertions -- most likely because the government seemed confused about the lawsuit's purpose. The government argued that billing errors and overcharges weren't the government's fault -- and even if they were, users had agreed to pay first and ask questions later. The court pointed out this wasn't about billing errors, but whether the fees collected were lawful in the first place.

Now, the case has moved one step further -- again in favor of the public. As Politico's Josh Gerstein reports, the general public is being extended an invitation to participate in this bit of grievance redressing.

U.S. District Court Judge Ellen Huvelle said in an opinion she will allow anyone who paid so-called PACER (Public Access to Court Electronic Records) fees between April 2010 and April 2016 to be part of the class in the suit, which alleges that the government is violating a 2002 law that says fees for using the system should not exceed the costs to operate it.

In the opinion [PDF], the judge takes the government to task for its attempt to turn the proposed class action into something that only affects the original plaintiffs -- and then only affects these plaintiffs because they're supposedly so far removed from the normal PACER user.

According to defendant, named plaintiffs are not adequate representatives because “[t]heir interests in free PACER access for their favored subset of PACER users diverge from the interests of those PACER [users] seeking to minimize their costs of PACER use.”

This is the government hinting that the original plaintiffs perhaps use PACER too much, and as such, should definitely be giving Uncle Sam (US Courts division) a hand by shelling out 10 cents per page. The court points out that the plaintiffs have never alleged otherwise, but that their class action lawsuit would be beneficial to those who are both desiring access to public documents, but less likely to have as much disposable cash flow. These would be people the nonprofits are in the business of assisting. So, as Judge Huvelle points out, they're the perfect lead plaintiffs for the class action suit.

Named plaintiffs are not exempt from PACER fees and thus share with the other class members an interest in reducing the fees. The PACER fees that named plaintiffs have paid are low relative to their annual revenue and other costs of litigation. Because of their multimillion dollar annual budgets, named plaintiffs have averred that they cannot represent that they are unable to pay PACER fees, and as a result, they cannot qualify for exemptions. (Tr. 3-4.)

Thus, named plaintiffs must pay PACER fees and accordingly have an interest in reducing those fees. In fact, the nonprofit organizations who are named plaintiffs in this case make particularly good class representatives. They are interested in reducing PACER fees not only for themselves but also for their constituents. As nonprofit organizations, named plaintiffs exist to advocate for consumers, veterans, and other public-interest causes…

Thus, named plaintiffs have dual incentives to reduce PACER fees, both for themselves and for the constituents that they represent.

Now that it's a class action lawsuit -- one with thousands of potential plaintiffs at a minimum -- the government is going to have to work even harder to prevent taxpayers' money from being returned to taxpayers.

Back in April, we wrote about an interesting lawsuit filed over excessive fees for PACER, the federal court system's electronic records system. If you're not a lawyer or journalist, and have never used PACER, it is difficult to put into words what a ridiculous and outdated system it is. Not only does it look like it was designed and built in 1998, the court system leverages ridiculous fees for everything you do in it. It's officially 10 cents per page (with a limit of $3 max per document), but that's not just per page you download of court documents, but everything. Do a search? That'll be at least 10 cents and possibly more if the magic PACER system decides the results are long enough. Look at a docket of a court case? Better hope it's not one with hundreds of filings, because just opening the docket can cost you $3 -- and that's before downloading any documents. As we pointed out years ago, the fees charged for PACER appear to be illegal. The law, 28 USC 123, that allows the court system to charge for PACER limits the fees to being "reasonable" -- and that means, among other things, that the fees are only used for the upkeep of PACER, and not for other stuff.

But that's not true. PACER brings in a ton of money and most of it is used for other things within the court system (and very little of it seems to be earmarked for actually upgrading PACER). This is a huge problem if you believe in the rule of law, and the idea that people should be able to read the law. Because the law is much more than the official regulations -- it also includes case law. And PACER has made it so that the relevant caselaw can often be inaccessible and expensive. That's crazy.

So the lawsuit that was filed earlier this year was interesting -- and of course the federal government tried to get it tossed out. Thankfully, the judge in the case, Ellen Segal Huevelle, has rejected that request and allowed the case to move forward. The government objected on two grounds: first, that a similar, but slightly different case, had also been filed by someone else -- and (more importantly) that the lawsuit failed to state a claim, because they didn't first complain to the PACER operators. Judge Huevelle doesn't buy either argument. About the two separate cases, the judge notes that the two cases are about two different things. This case is about how PACER charges too much per page under the law. The other case -- Fisher v. the United States -- (which, yes, we also wrote about) is about how PACER overcharges people when they just look at a docket. That is, the claim is that because PACER just considers every 4,320 bytes to be "a page" it is overcharging people, since dockets that are many fewer pages are being charged at higher rates. As Huevelle notes, these are different issues:

According to the class action complaint in Fisher, “PACER claims to charge users $0.10 for each page in a docket report” and calculates pages by equating 4,320 extracted bytes to one page, thus “purporting to charge users $0.10 per 4,320 bytes. But the PACER system actually miscalculates the number of extracted bytes in a docket report, resulting in an overcharge to users.”... In other words, Fisher claims an error in the application of the PACER fee schedule to a particular type of request. In contrast, plaintiffs here challenge the legality of the fee schedule. These are separate issues, and a finding of liability in one case would have no impact on liability in the other case. Therefore, the Court will not dismiss the suit based on the first-to-file rule.

Personally, I think both cases have merit, but they are definitely on different issues.

As for the failure to state a claim, again, the court doesn't buy it. Here, the government argued that because when you sign up for a PACER account, you agree to all the fine print in the user agreement, and part of that says that if there are billing "errors" you "must alert the PACER Service Center." Thus, our government lawyers argue, it means that because the plaintiffs here didn't claim "errors" in their bill to the PACER Service Center, there is no legal argument here. This is a ridiculous argument. And the court recognizes that. First it notes that in the other case mentioned above (the Fisher case), the courts have already said that clause does not require you to go to PACER before suing, but more importantly, notes that this case isn't about billing errors at all. It's about whether or not the bills are legal at all:

This Court need not reach those legal issues because, unlike Fisher, plaintiffs here do not claim a billing error. Therefore, even if the notification requirement constituted a contractual condition, it would not apply to the plaintiffs’ challenges to the legality of the fee schedule. Likewise, even if users were required to exhaust their claims for billing errors, that requirement would not apply to the claim in this case. In sum, the PACER policy statement provides no basis for dismissing this suit.

At this point, there's still plenty to go on this case -- and this is just a procedural step along the way. But it's nice to see that the court recognizes the government's ridiculous arguments for what they are.

We've noted for some time how cable providers over the last few years have added a "broadcast TV" fee to customer bills. Such a fee, which simply takes a part of the cost of programming and buries it below the line, lets cable providers advertise one rate, then hit customers with a higher bill. It's false advertising, but you'd be hard pressed to find a regulator anywhere in North America willing to tackle the problem. When Comcast was criticized for the practice two years ago, the company claimed that burying a sneaky new fee below the line was just the cable company's way of being "transparent" with its customers:

"Beginning in 2014, we will itemize a portion of broadcast retransmission costs as a separate line item to be more transparent with our customers about the factors that drive price changes," he said. “In 2014, we will not increase the price of Limited Basic or Digital Preferred video service, and adjustments to other video service prices will be lower than they would have been without the Broadcast TV Fee."

While it's true broadcasters impose often unreasonable rate hikes on cable companies, the cost of programming is just one of several costs of doing business, and hiding these costs when listing your prices is the complete opposite of being transparent with your user base. Since the fee began popping up in 2014, some cable companies have as much as tripled the fee, which can now be as much as $6 to $8 per customer, per month.

Fast forward to this month when Charter (and now Charter-owned Time Warner Cable) was sued for the practice. The plaintiff in question wasn't asking for monetary damages; they simply wanted to highlight how an estimated 20% of Charter's revenues are now thanks to a practice that lets the cable company "deceive its customers by advertising and promising a lower price while actually charging a higher price." Charter has finally responded to the suit and, like Comcast, is actually claiming that it's misleading its customers for their own benefit:

"Our customer friendly approach includes simplified pricing and packaging with no data caps, no modem fee, no early termination fee and no separate USF [Universal Service Fund] fee. We provide simple to understand bills and want our customers to understand what they are paying for, including the skyrocketing cost of broadcast channels."

Right, but the lack of data caps is because the FCC banned them for seven years as a merger condition. And while Charter is one of the only cable ISPs that rolls the cost of renting a modem into the overall cost of service, breaking out the broadcast TV fee is the exact opposite of that. Hiding a part of your costs outside of the advertised price, then bumping that fee 300% in just a few years, remains false advertising and misleading jackassery by any measure. Leave it the cable industry to try and argue that intentionally misleading you into thinking you're not getting a rate hike this year is some kind of favor.

For some time now broadband providers have taken a page out of the banking playbook and hitting consumers with sneaky, below-the-line fees for TV and broadband service. Whether it's the use of "regulatory recovery fee" (a bogus fee designed to sound like it's government-mandated to misdirect blame) or an entirely pointless and nonsensical fee like CenturyLink's "Internet Cost Recovery Fee," these surcharges exist for one purpose: they let the ISP advertise one price, then charge something dramatically different.

You'd be hard pressed to find any regulator willing to crack down on this practice, leaving a rotating crop of lawsuits as the closest ISPs get to seeing actual punishment for such behavior. A few years ago Time Warner Cable was sued for false advertising and deceptive business practices after promotional rates wound up being significantly larger once the customer bill came due. While that suit still stumbles forward, Time Warner Cable (and new owner Charter) have just been hit with another, similar suit, this time more specifically focused on the company's use of "broadcast TV fees" and regional sports network fees.

The plaintiff in this case isn't seeking any monetary damages; the complaint itself going to great lengths (pdf) to point out how these kinds of deceptive charges now account for more than 20% of Charter's revenues. The case spends a lot of time focusing on the now-industry-standard "broadcast TV fee," which tries to take the cost of programming and bury a portion of it below the line:

"In March 2014, TWC began utilizing a shady backdoor way to increase prices to its prospective and current television service subscribers, while continuing to advertise and promise the same flat lower monthly rates for its service plans. Rather than implementing a top-line price increase for its advertised television service or bundled service plans - which would have been noticed by its prospective and current customers - TWC instead kept the advertised price the same and hid the price increase in a newly invented and inadequately disclosed “Broadcast TV Fee.”

You might recall that Comcast, when also sued for this exact same fee, tried to claim that taking the cost of business and hiding it below the line was just its attempt at being "transparent" with the company's customers. And of course once this fee is implemented it quickly soars — in Time Warner Cable's case having tripled in just three years to an additional $6.05 per month. These fees not only let companies falsely advertise a lower price, it also allows them to falsely crow about how they haven't raised rates in "X" years, even if they're technically raising rates pretty much constantly.

And while the FCC had been pondering a "nutrition label" for broadband & TV services that would have required ISPs be more clear about pricing, that program was voluntary and, like so many recent FCC initiatives, isn't particularly likely to see much attention under a Trump Presidency.

In an unpublished opinion, the Ninth Circuit Appeals Court has upheld awarded fees in an anti-SLAPP case.

Anti-SLAPP attorney fees awarded to a newspaper conglomerate as part of its legal battle with an Iranian-American attorney will stand, the Ninth Circuit ruled.

Shahrokh Mireskandari is a former partner in London firm Dean & Dean but was disbarred in England after an investigation by the Solicitors Regulatory Authority suggested that he was involved in a fraudulent telemarketing scheme.

Mireskandari claims the investigation was prompted by his efforts to prove that the Authority investigates minority attorneys more vigorously than white ones.

However, according to articles published by the British tabloid the Daily Mail — which is owned by Associated Newspapers (now known as DMG Media) — Mireskandari obtained his law qualifications from a mail-drop university in Hawaii and ran a telemarketing scam that misled people into believing they had won vacations.

Obviously unhappy with this portrayal, Mireskandari sued. And failed. The paper was mostly successful with its motion to dismiss. Anything left undecided by the lower court's decision is moot now because Mireskandari voluntarily dismissed his lawsuit, presumably because it was apparent he wouldn't win.

Both parties appealed the decision. The paper was looking for more fees to be awarded and Mireskandari was, unsurprisingly, hoping to mitigate the financial damage he'd inflicted on himself. Fortunately, the appeals court [PDF] has upheld the original fee shift.

Mireskandari asserts that the district court abused its discretion when it awarded the anti-SLAPP attorney’s fees against him because ANL did not succeed in striking all of his claims pursuant to its anti-SLAPP motion, and because the fees are unreasonably large. Of course, the mere fact that Mireskandari has now dismissed the action does not affect ANL’s right to recover appropriate fees, but the award is subject to the trial court’s broad discretion, and must be reasonable in amount.

This is the important part of this decision. To allow plaintiffs to simply abandon disingenuous lawsuits would undermine the aim of anti-SLAPP laws. This tactic, of course, isn't solely limited to these types of lawsuits. We've seen no less than the US government voluntarily dismiss cases without prejudice (leaving it the option to try again later) in hopes of preventing legal fees from being awarded. In some cases, plaintiffs have gotten away with this. Voluntarily dismissing a lawsuit that a plaintiff appears destined to lose allows legal bullies to force defendants to spend large amounts of time and money defending themselves while preserving the plaintiff's option to walk away before being ordered to compensate the opposing party.

No such luck for Mireskandari.

[W]e cannot say that the fee award was unreasonably large under the circumstances. The district court reduced ANL’s fee award by fifteen percent across the board because it determined that there was some overbilling. When properly explained, that approach is satisfactory. See Gates v. Deukmejian, 987 F.2d 1392, 1398 (9th Cir. 1992). The district court carefully delineated its reasoning in deciding that a reduction was required. Overall, it said enough to allow our review of its exercise of discretion.

Not only that, but Mireskandari is still personally responsible for previous litigation misadventures.

Mireskandari also asserts that the district court erred when it imposed sanctions upon him for his violation of the court’s scheduling and other pretrial orders. See Fed. R. Civ. P. 16(f)(1)(c), 16(f)(2). He argues that once he dismissed the complaint, sanctions for his past breaches of the district court’s orders were improper. We see no justification for holding that a voluntary dismissal precludes issuance of a sanctions order.

With this failed appeal, Mireskandari is on the hook for legal fees in multiple nations.

A bogus lawyer who was ordered to pay £1.4million in legal costs after being exposed by the Daily Mail and then struck off has been ordered to pay a further massive sum after abandoning an appeal.

Shahrokh Mireskandari, 53, has been given until April 4 to pay more than £230,000 in additional costs after being condemned by a leading judge for 'wholly abusive, unreasonable and manipulative conduct', including attempting to get the appeal hearing adjourned.

And his own legal bills are likely impressive in their own right.

Mireskandari was represented by 17 barristers at the misconduct hearing, but panel chairman Jacqueline Devonish said that allegations of dishonesty had been proved.

Courthouse News also reports that Mireskandari is listed as the plaintiff in seven related US lawsuits -- all of them filed within the last five years. There's nothing quite like quitting (at least once) while you're seriously behind.

In addition to vanilla price hikes and usage caps and overage penalties, ISPs have spent the last few years borrowing a tactic from the banking industry to covertly jack up the advertised price of broadband service: the completely nonsensical hidden fee. From CenturyLink's $2 per month "Internet Cost Recovery Fee" to Fairpoint's $3 per month "Broadband Cost Recovery Fee," such fees usually just hide some of the cost of doing business below the line, letting an ISP advertise one price, then charge something quite different at the end of the month.

Encouraged by the fact that the FCC can't be bothered to police this behavior, a few years ago Comcast began charging its cable customers a "Broadcast TV fee." At the time, Comcast proudly proclaimed it was just being "transparent" by taking a portion of the retransmission fees paid to broadcasters and putting it below the line:

"Beginning in 2014, we will itemize a portion of broadcast retransmission costs as a separate line item to be more transparent with our customers about the factors that drive price changes," he said. “In 2014, we will not increase the price of Limited Basic or Digital Preferred video service, and adjustments to other video service prices will be lower than they would have been without the Broadcast TV Fee."

The problem with this logic is two fold. One, the money Comcast pays to broadcasters for programming is the cost of doing business as a cable company and should be included in the overall bill. Two, this is effectively little more than Comcast advertising a lower rate, only to shock users with a higher bill. It's false advertising, which is about as far from being "transparent" with consumers as you can get. Yet again, you'd be hard pressed to see the FCC so much as mention this sort of behavior, despite occasional, breathless announcements that the regulator is very concerned about transparency in the cable and broadband sector.

Fast forward to this week, when eight plaintiffs filed a class action lawsuit against the cable giant alleging consumer fraud, unfair competition, unjust enrichment and breach of contract for trying to covertly raise rates while the users were supposed to be under a locked-in rate:

"Lead plaintiff Dan Adkins, of California, says Comcast started using "a shady backdoor way to increase prices" in January 2014. He says the company added a "newly invented" Broadcast TV fee to cable bills without clearly disclosing the price hike to customers or updating its advertisements to reflect the new prices. "Comcast not only charged the fee to new customers, but also added the charge to the bills of existing customers in violation of their contracts which had promised a flat monthly rate for the term of the contract," Adkins says in the 79-page complaint."

Like all Comcast pricing, the lawsuit also points out that Comcast has relentlessly raised the fee from $1.50 when introduced, to $6.50 per month this year, a 333% increase in just three years. And while FCC data makes it clear that programming retransmission fees are skyrocketing, again -- that's the cost of doing business as a cable company (also remember that Comcast NBC Universal is also a broadcaster). The lawsuit is also quick to point out that Comcast is among several cable companies that began charging regional sports fees last year. In Comcast's case (as the owner of Comcast Sportsnet), the lawsuit notes how that fee was also bumped by 350% in just a few years, from $1.00 to $4.50 per month.

Trying to mislead customers by advertising one rate -- then socking them with a notably higher bill -- doesn't seem like the actions of a company that repeatedly insists it's dedicated to fixing some of the worst customer satisfaction ratings of any company, in any industry in America.

We're still pretty skeptical about paywalls for most newspapers, because they really tend to limit the audience for your offering, and limit people sharing that content as well (which is pretty important for growing your audience these days). But, some newspapers have really embraced them, including the Washington Post, which lately has ramped up its paywall efforts. And, apparently with that, come sneaky fees. First noticed by an editor at the WSJ (another paywall site, though one that has been designed to be much more porous), Tim Hanrahan, it appears that the Washington Post now has an "activation fee" to subscribe to get around the paywall: Of course, we've been reporting on how telcos and broadband providers have made an entire (large!) business out of sneaking in bogus extra fees for well over a decade. As we noted back then, many of these tack-on fees are really so that the service provider can advertise much lower fees than they're actually charging. It certainly feels like misleading advertising, though the FTC doesn't seem that interested in getting involved.

Of course, we also wondered, all the way back in 2004, when these kinds of bogus fees would start spreading to other businesses.

"Perhaps other companies should get into this game as well. Want a pizza pie? It's just $3, but there's a $3.50 "crust fee," a $9.38 "oven fee," a $4.50 "service fee," and a $2.18 "cleanup fee." Plus tax."

Not too many other businesses have gone down that road... but I guess the Washington Post has decided to leap in head first.

A few years back, we noted how AT&T had begun charging broadband users a significant premium if they wanted to opt out of the company's Internet Essentials advertising program. Under that program, AT&T uses deep packet inspection to track consumer browsing behavior around the Internet -- down to the second. By default, AT&T users are opted in to the program. If they want to opt out of this data collection, consumers need to not only navigate a confusing array of options, but they also need to pay $44 to $62 more per month. AT&T, in typical fashion, has actually claimed this is a "discount."

With the FCC's Title II and net neutrality rules upheld, the agency is now considering new basic broadband privacy protections primarily focused on two things: ensuring ISPs properly disclose what's being collected and sold, and ensuring that ISPs provide customers with clear, working opt-out tools. But the agency is also considering banning ISPs from turning your privacy into an expensive luxury option.

Needless to say, Comcast isn't too pleased with this decision. In a new filing with the FCC (pdf) documenting a meeting at the agency, everybody's least liked cable company argues that stopping them from charging more for privacy would, amusingly, hurt consumers by making services more expensive:

"We also urged that the Commission allow business models offering discounts or other value to consumers in exchange for allowing ISPs to use their data. As Comcast and others have argued, the FCC has no authority to prohibit or limit these types of programs. Moreover, such a prohibition would harm consumers by, among other things, depriving them of lower-priced offerings, and as FTC Commissioner Ohlhausen points out, “such a ban may prohibit ad supported broadband services and thereby eliminate a way to increase broadband adoption."

Yes, that's Comcast actually trying to argue that charging customers more money for privacy is a good thing because it will lower rates and improve broadband adoption. Except as we all know, it's the lack of competition in the broadband space that sets broadband pricing and adoption. And there's yet to be an ISP that has seriously embraced the idea of offering a lower-priced service if consumers agree to have their behavior monetized. All AT&T is doing is taking an already expensive broadband service and tacking a very steep privacy surcharge on top of it.

In addition to trying to argue that the FCC doesn't have the authority to police such behavior (not true, it's simply updating existing Title II privacy rules governing phone network CPNI and applying them to broadband), Comcast said that making privacy a luxury option is simply a "bargained-for exchange of information for service":

"A bargained-for exchange of information for service is a perfectly acceptable and widely used model throughout the U.S. economy, including the Internet ecosystem, and is consistent with decades of legal precedent and policy goals related to consumer protection and privacy."

Again though, the implementation of this idea at AT&T is unique because in the broadband market, users can't switch providers if they don't like their privacy practices. Meanwhile, AT&T not only makes opting out expensive, it makes it incredibly cumbersome and confusing -- ensuring that the least number of users actually take the option. These ISPs consistently argue that they should be treated just like Google and Facebook when it comes to privacy regulations, intentionally ignoring the lack of competition in last mile broadband.

As they push harder into content and ads, Comcast, AT&T, and Verizon have all repeatedly tried to argue that there should be absolutely no privacy rules governing broadband because they can self-regulate in the absence of meaningful competition. But as we saw when Verizon was busted for covertly modifying wireless packets to track consumers (one of the things that drove the FCC to take this route to begin with), it's abundantly clear that's simply not the case.