Net Neutrality

I repeat, there are plenty of more dangerous people in the current government, who are actually in position to kill people, but Pai is honestly the most hateable.

Kind of like Harry Potter. Voldemort et al. are more evil, but Umbridge is way more detestable.

Tell your representatives to support the GOOD bill to SAVE net neutrality!

I would argue that Pai is the greater threat as he represents the potential destruction of people's ability to find out about the other threats and organise democratic opposition to them.

Pai almost certainly presents a greater long-term threat to democracy, but Trump et al. are the ones poised to, you know, kill people (indirectly)

EDIT: Call made, although I doubt the son of a bitch gives a shit.

edited 10th Dec '17 10:49:05 AM by TroperOnAStickV2

Here's a closer look at the FCC's plan to repeal Net Neutrality.

Well, this is getting to be a bit too much. Here's a story about the VeggieTales to lighten the mood.

Steve Wozniack, along with other internet pioneers, have called on Pai to cancel the upcoming vote.

Wozniack et al. pointed out the plan is “rushed and technically incorrect”, point out that Pai's notice about it relied on an incorrect understanding of how the internet works, and calls out the "seemingly bot-generates submissions" among the comments they had received.

Pai probably won't listen to his betters, but it's something.

edited 11th Dec '17 1:45:39 PM by TroperOnAStickV2

Pai claims that the internet will be policed by the FCC and the FTC. What's more, blocking and throttling would only be addressed if an ISP did not inform their users of it beforehand, which seems to be useless with a market as noncompetitive as the US internet.

Basically, as long as they say they're fucking you, they get to fuck away.

Which they will put in their terms and conditions because they know most people don't read T&Cs.

In total, Congress received about 101 million dollars from the ISP industry.

This is why we're being sold out, people. Buying politicians should not be legal.

edited 11th Dec '17 5:21:16 PM by TroperOnAStickV2

The problem is that the tech giants (Amazon, Google, etc.) who just as much money as the ISP's and are against this thing, are too closely identified with the Democrats to carry much weight with a Republican-dominated Congress. We must await 2018 and 2020.

found an EFF article on this matter that serves as a summary of the proposals' problems and brings up that activists are planning a nationwide protest tomorrow.

edited 11th Dec '17 6:11:10 PM by MorningStar1337

Yes, we are.

I signed on for the online protest, I can't do anything in person because I'm going to the hospital with my father.

edited 11th Dec '17 6:23:49 PM by TroperOnAStickV2

Call me naive (again), but wasn't it mentioned a while ago that someone was planning to issue a legal challenge in the event that the motion to repeal NN passed? Several legal challenges, IIRC.

Maybe if we're lucky, the actual repeal will get tied up with mountains of lawsuits, delaying its actual implementation long enough for the 2018 midterms to take place.

I believe the order as it is isn't actually allowed unless it's proven in court that net neutrality isn't needed anymore (which it definitely still is), and I also remember reading that there's at least one group planning on challenging it immediately. And net neutrality's already been upheld twice in court, or so I've heard.

I don't think the repeal would immediately go into effect if unchallenged anyway, but it's likely it'll get delayed even further (I believe one article's said the case could go onto 2021). So there's that.

That being said, I've also read that the ISPs are planning on supporting (read: possibly outright writing) legislation that would put their view of things into law, so that's something else to keep an eye on and fight like hell against.

So even if the repeals passes, it wouldn't go into effect immediately is what you're saying?

I don't think so? I remember hearing something about how it'd go into effect in January at the earliest.

Sadly I don't have a link to back this up. Maybe someone else could back me up on this?

Except wouldn't all of the court cases keep it from going into full force, at least for a while?

Again, probably?

This article was linked a couple pages back, which talks about the court challenges Pai's likely to face and how it could tie him up until 2021.

I came across another article on a similar subject while doing net neutrality stuff on Twitter the other day, although I can't remember where it was. It was a little more pessimistic than the one above, but also spoke about how the ISPs aren't likely to jump on their newfound freedom immediately at risk of giving their opponents more ammo to work with in court.

The short of it is that everything we're doing now is for the court battles after the vote, since the vote is unlikely to be stopped at this point.

On the subject of net neutrality and Twitter: I do think it's worth tweeting Pai. Not because he'll actually listen, but because all this pro-Net Neutrality spam has to be taxing on his sanity somehow. Even if it's not, anything's better than just rolling over and dying.

With the final stretch of the battle underway, Doug Walker makes one more rallying call:

I have to question if Doug Walker is gonna reach anyone who hasn't already heard about this by now.

This will be challenged in court. I'm sure several organizations already have lawsuits prepared.

And here's the kicker, I wouldn't necessarily be opposed to considering a repeal of Net Neutrality, if there was legitimate competition in the industry. That would mean creating incentives and subsidies to help new ISP's start up, and possibly even some good old fashioned Trust Busting.

In many parts of the country, there is only one ISP to choose from, which allows them to drive up prices and have poor customer service, because there's no other real choice. By opening it up to a market system, if one started throttling or something like that, people would just move to another one. (Of course, this also requires regulation that prevents them from forming sweetheart deals and that kind of crony capitalism as well.)

edited 12th Dec '17 3:43:07 PM by megaeliz

I kind of agree or at least understand and don't fully object, but until we get competition, net neutrality is kind of needed.

Wonder where the free market wonks are on this issue?

Exactly. This isn't a move to make the market freer and provide consumer choice. If they really wanted to do that, they would encourage competition in that sector, create the necessary anti-trust regulations to prevent companies from signing sweetheart deals and put limits on consolidations that could reduce competition, and maybe even some Trustbusting. (like Teddy Roosevelt did with the railways.) They are doing this because the big IPS's payed them a lot of money to get rid of it.

edited 12th Dec '17 4:02:19 PM by megaeliz