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The former Senior Director of Safety & Security at eBay, and the company’s former Director of Global Resiliency, have been sentenced to prison for their roles in a cyberstalking campaign. The targets of the campaign were the editor and publisher of a newsletter that eBay executives viewed as critical of the company.

For those that missed the reason for these sentences, we’ll need a quick rewind to 2019. Many see this letter by a hedge fund demanding better results from eBay as a direct cause for what followed. The letter caused some stress among eBay management, and for some reason they saw the negative reviews by EcommerceBytes as an obstacle that was holding their desired success back. EcommerceBytes was and is a resource for sellers on a number of platforms that enable users to sell items online. The website was set up by a couple that were both e-commerce bloggers. The eBay management team at the time was very unhappy with the criticism it got on the site. A third victim of their attention was the handler of a Twitter account named Fidomaster.

It was not that EcommerceBytes focused on ebay. Lots of similar companies featured in its e-commerce newsletter. Only the eBay employees felt the need to act and tried to silence them. A campaign was launched by eBay’s staff to harass and threaten the critics. This campaign featured packages being sent containing cockroaches, a bloody pig mask and pornography, death threats, physical surveillance, and late-night pizza deliveries. A full recount of what they had to go through makes for a gruesome read.

Vowing to take on the telecom giants that have monopolized the web for private profit, Sen. Bernie Sanders on Friday unveiled a $150 billion plan to make the internet a public utility, break up and tightly regulate corporate behemoths like Verizon and AT&T, and provide high-speed broadband for everyone in the United States.

It is outrageous that across the country millions of Americans and so many of our communities do not have access to affordable high-speed internet," Sanders, a 2020 Democratic presidential candidate, said in a statement. "Access to the internet is a necessity in today's economy, and it should be available for all." Sanders vowed that, if elected president in 2020, he will ensure that every American household has affordable and high-speed internet by the end of his first term.

Sanders' plan, posted on his website, would provide $150 billion in federal funding through the Green New Deal to help states and municipalities "build publicly owned and democratically controlled, co-operative, or open access broadband networks." The proposal also calls for: Reinstating the net neutrality protections that President Donald Trump's telecom-friendly FCC repealed in 2017; Using anti-trust laws to break up internet and cable monopolies; Ensuring that all public housing in the U.S. offers free broadband; Requiring all providers to "offer a Basic Internet Plan that provides quality broadband speeds at an affordable price"; and Guaranteeing that all new broadband infrastructure is "resilient to the effects of climate change" and "capable of managing high amounts of renewable energy."