Thursday, 23 November 2017
quote [ The FCC's plan to gut net neutrality deserves a heated response from the millions of Americans who work and create online every day. ]
FCC commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel, center, alongside Chairman Ajit Pai, left, and commissioner Brendan Carr, right, during their confirmation hearing on Capitol Hill on July 19. (Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images)
Right now, you can go online and connect with friends, watch videos and read the news. There’s a good chance you are reading this online right now.
We do much more on the internet than consume content, however. Increasingly, the internet is also where we create. We use online platforms and digital services to develop, share and spread ideas around the corner and around the globe. This is the open internet experience we all know, and it’s a big part of why America’s internet economy is the envy of the world. But this week, the leadership at the Federal Communications Commission put forth a plan to gut the foundation of this openness. They have proposed to end net neutrality, and they are trying to force a vote on their plan on Dec. 14. If the idea behind the plan is bad, the process for it has been even worse. It’s a lousy idea. And it deserves a heated response from the millions of Americans who work and create online every day. Net neutrality is the right to go where you want and do what you want on the internet without your broadband provider getting in the way. It means your broadband provider can’t block websites, throttle services or charge you premiums if you want to reach certain online content. Proponents of wiping out these rules think that by allowing broadband providers more control and the ability to charge for premium access, it will spur investment. This is a dubious proposition. Wiping out net neutrality would have big consequences. Without it, your broadband provider could carve internet access into fast and slow lanes, favoring the traffic of online platforms that have made special payments and consigning all others to a bumpy road. Your provider would have the power to choose which voices online to amplify and which to censor. The move could affect everything online, including the connections we make and the communities we create. This is not the internet experience we know today. Americans should prevent the plan from becoming the law of the land. There is something not right about a few unelected FCC officials making such vast determinations about the future of the internet. I’m not alone in thinking this. More than 22 million people have filed comments with the agency. They overwhelmingly want the FCC to preserve and protect net neutrality. At the same time, there are real questions about who filed some of the net neutrality comments with the FCC. There are credible allegations that many of the comments were submitted by bots and others using the names of deceased people. What’s more, some 50,000 recent consumer complaints appear to have gone missing. As he announced this week, New York Atty. Gen. Eric Schneiderman has been investigating these apparently fake comments for six months. The Government Accountability Office is also looking into how a denial-of-service attack may have prevented people from getting their thoughts into the official record. In short, this is a mess. If the idea behind the plan is bad, the process for commenting on it has been even worse. Before my fellow FCC members vote to dismantle net neutrality, they need to get out from behind their desks and computers and speak to the public directly. The FCC needs to hold hearings around the country to get a better sense of how the public feels about the proposal. When they do this, they will likely find that, outside of a cadre of high-paid lobbyists and lawyers in Washington, there isn’t a constituency that likes this proposal. In fact, the FCC will probably discover that they have angered the public and caused them to question just whom the agency works for. I think the FCC needs to work for the public, and therefore that this proposal needs to be slowed down and eventually stopped. In the time before the agency votes, anyone who agrees should do something old-fashioned: Make a ruckus. Reach out to the rest of the FCC now. Tell them they can’t take away internet openness without a fight. Jessica Rosenworcel is a member of the Federal Communications Commission.
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the circus said @ 7:56pm GMT on 23rd Nov
[Score:2 Insightful]
OK, here's the thing I'm not getting. This is a black and white, left/right issue. Republican politicians are voting to repeal net neutrality, Democrats are voting to save it. There seems to be an attempt to present this as a non partisan public outcry, when really it looks like something liberals are fighting to save and conservatives aren't aware of and don't care. What do these Republican politicians and appointees care if informed democrats won't vote for them? Unless I'm hearing that right leaning people are threatening to go left, all I'm hearing (and all I suspect the officials hear) is a bunch of white noise that means nothing.
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EvilNinjaX24 said @ 9:27pm GMT on 23rd Nov
As is tradition.
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arrowhen said @ 9:59pm GMT on 23rd Nov
It's a left/right issue for politicians. The general public benefits from net neutrality regardless of where they lie on the political spectrum, which means it *has* to betrayed as a non-partisan public outcry to prevent half of the general public from supporting fucking themselves over just to score points against the other side.
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MFDork said @ 9:59pm GMT on 23rd Nov
But the voting base of the right doesn't actually want it. The little fuckheads of the alt-right / Reddit men between 18-26 are all right of center, and they certainly don't want it.
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MFDork said @ 10:01pm GMT on 23rd Nov
And here's the thing, when you tell people "Republicans made your favorite website more expensive, and if you're rural hope you like modem noises", you're going to get people who, if they don't vote democrat, at least don't turn out.
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bbqkink said @ 11:22pm GMT on 23rd Nov
It is amazing how many left right issues can be solved by making them about dollars and cents. The real problem is how do you get the right to listen? The powers that be have spent years and billions of dollars making the media the enemy. Truth has no effect.
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backSLIDER said @ 6:11am GMT on 24th Nov
[Score:1 Underrated]
Not just the media but "elites" and "experts" have been made to look like out of touch loons. And both sides have fostered a "just feel with your heart" and you'll know how to vote base.
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knumbknutz said @ 2:59pm GMT on 24th Nov
This is a pretty decent article that I posted back in the spring. It's a very partisan issue at its base, and involves tons of lobbying and back-room deals from ISP's and media conglomerates.
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rylex said @ 6:28pm GMT on 23rd Nov
Fuck.
You know it's bad when gov officials are begging for help in the LA Times. I patiently await the day they ask us to take up arms against them, published in the NY Post. |
ComposerNate said[4] @ 9:48pm GMT on 23rd Nov
Anything good is worth paying for, so when Democratic leaning websites wish to remain free to read, that is admission they do not provide good content.
Edit: This is a Republican/ISP talking point I predict to hear without net neutrality, a further politicizing filter control of information. It is not an opinion I share, nor quite sarcasm or else would be followed by /s. |
backSLIDER said @ 6:17am GMT on 24th Nov
[Score:1 Insightful]
So this is the inductive reasoning of if you would pay more for better. Converse is you wouldn't pay for shit. But people will pay more for shit and there are good things out there for dirt cheap. So your logic is crap. If you believe that a free market is a meritocracy I've got some bad news for you. Hell, even the job market isn't a meritocracy.
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eggboy said @ 10:32pm GMT on 23rd Nov
What?
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bbqkink said @ 11:19pm GMT on 23rd Nov
More like if you don't pay me you can't play.
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Ankylosaur said @ 12:54am GMT on 24th Nov
What?
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Fish said @ 4:40am GMT on 24th Nov
[Score:-4 Troll]
filtered comment under your threshold |
eggboy said @ 6:23am GMT on 24th Nov
[Score:5 Yep ]
The reason people keep calling you a troll is that no-one could possibly be that fucking stupid and still be able to spell.
Fuck off |
the circus said @ 1:23pm GMT on 24th Nov
Yeah, he's sort of giving himself away as just an automatic contrarian (or he would be if he ever attempted to make well intended points instead of obnoxious trollery). The two camps seen to be for net neutrality, and not caring. There isn't really an angry about net neutrality camp except among a handful of, what would be the best term, aristocrats?
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Fish said @ 5:55am GMT on 25th Nov
"Fuck off" he explained.
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Ankylosaur said @ 8:21am GMT on 24th Nov
[Score:-1 Yep ]
filtered comment under your threshold |
Fish said @ 2:57pm GMT on 24th Nov
[Score:-5 Boring]
filtered comment under your threshold |
Ankylosaur said @ 4:42pm GMT on 24th Nov
[Score:-3]
filtered comment under your threshold |
Fish said @ 6:49pm GMT on 24th Nov
[Score:-5 Boring]
filtered comment under your threshold |
Ankylosaur said @ 6:54pm GMT on 24th Nov
[Score:-4]
filtered comment under your threshold |
steele said @ 12:40am GMT on 24th Nov
I feel like y'all forgot about Tom Wheeler and the backlash it took to "change" his mind. And the president that nominated him knowing he was against Net Neutrality. And the Democrats that were against Net Neutrality until it became clear they might start a revolution. And CISPA. And the DMCA.
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eggboy said @ 3:56am GMT on 24th Nov
[Score:1 Yep ]
The MPAA kept trying to bring SOPA back in different guises, long after it was pointed out in no uncertain terms that that was against the law.
Lotta companies don't mind how much they're hated, especially if they have a bit of a monopoly. But polititians run in popularity contests. Just got to keep letting them know how much the public fucking hates this shit and everyone involved. There is no way that Ajit scrape of shit would attempt half of this stuff if he was an elected official. (On that note, does the head of the FCC get secret service protection? I doubt there's a pub in the western world where he could get served, if he smiles at a random in the street he runs the risk of getting touched up.) |
lilmookieesquire said @ 5:53am GMT on 24th Nov
That’s what money and gated communities and high end restaurants are for.
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bbqkink said @ 9:13pm GMT on 24th Nov
only about 17 percent of the comments submitted to the FCC on net neutrality were written by individual humans. Ninety-five percent of these were in favor of net neutrality. The rest of the comments were “submitted in bulk and many come in batches with obviously incorrect information — over 1,000,000 comments in July claimed to have a pornhub.com email address.” These were overwhelmingly supportive of the Trump administration’s position. |