Americans Plan Massive 'Net Neutrality' Protest Next Week (theguardian.com) 110
An anonymous reader quotes the Guardian:
A coalition of activists, consumer groups and writers are calling on supporters to attend the next meeting of the Federal Communications Commission on September 26 in Washington DC. The next day, the protest will move to Capitol Hill, where people will meet legislators to express their concerns about an FCC proposal to rewrite the rules governing the internet... The activist groups are encouraging internet users to meet their lawmakers and tell them how a free and open internet is vital to their lives and their livelihoods...
"The FCC seems dead set on killing net neutrality, but they have to answer to Congress, and Congress has to answer to us, their constituents," said Evan Greer, campaign director for Fight for the Future, one of the protest's organisers. "With this day of advocacy, we're harnessing the power of the web to make it possible for ordinary internet users to meet directly with their senators and representatives to tell their stories, and make sure that lawmakers hear from the public, not just lobbyists for AT&T and Verizon," she said.
Monday Mozilla and the Internet Archive are also inviting the public to a free panel discussion featuring former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler on ways the American public can act to preserve net neutrality.
"The FCC seems dead set on killing net neutrality, but they have to answer to Congress, and Congress has to answer to us, their constituents," said Evan Greer, campaign director for Fight for the Future, one of the protest's organisers. "With this day of advocacy, we're harnessing the power of the web to make it possible for ordinary internet users to meet directly with their senators and representatives to tell their stories, and make sure that lawmakers hear from the public, not just lobbyists for AT&T and Verizon," she said.
Monday Mozilla and the Internet Archive are also inviting the public to a free panel discussion featuring former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler on ways the American public can act to preserve net neutrality.
"Americans"? (Score:1, Interesting)
No WE don't. Some of us realize the hypocrisy of this movement - and this article.
Guardian is the soruce (Score:2, Insightful)
This article is a barely disguised advertisement of the event. Guardian's "journalists" are making this story instead of merely reporting it....
Strangely enough, no one complains about this incident of foreign meddling in the America's political process.
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This article is a barely disguised advertisement of the event. Guardian's "journalists" are making this story instead of merely reporting it....
You have cause and effect mixed up. The sources cited in the article existed prior to the Guardian citing them. Or perhaps you believe that reporting on North Korea's missile launches are advertising them? "Waah someone is reporting on something I don't like, they must be the cause of it" -- retard logic, go figure.
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Sure, of course. But their reach was not sufficient — and the article helps the organizers inform far wider audience of their plans.
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And current ISPs will make sure that the competition is erased due to legal obstacles concerning patents and exclusive agreements with towns.
Mesh network (Score:1)
Re: Mesh network (Score:2)
Re:Just tell me, why not doing another ISP? (Score:5, Interesting)
The problem is the ISP and the communication Infrastructure are one and the same.
Back during the dial-up days, we had hundreds of ISPs in a single aria code, while AOL was the king, they were many ISPs who could provide internet access as well. Most of them were BBSs who added SLIP and/or PPP access.
But this meant that if you wanted to connect to the internet you had 2 bills. Your phone line bill which pays for for the infrastructure, and your ISP where it was the gateway to the Internet.
Now with broadband, as a necessary standard we normally pay a company who controls the wires and the service. In rural areas you may have only one choice usually Cable or DSL. But once you get the communication infrastructure you also have to rely on the whims of the same company for hosting the ISP.
Now governments local, state and federal have a slew of laws around these, because this infrastructure is rather invasive. Running across private property. So even if you were to start you own company you will still need to be politically involved to try to get these laws changed so you can be allowed to distribute your service to your customer base.
This isn't about being whiny liberals, (as the conservatives whine complain and demand they must be treated like special snowflakes on different topics) but needing to protest a system that isn't treating the public fairly.
Yes political protesters tend to come with stupid arguments and often over simplify the problem. But it difficult to post a 300 page thesis on the complexity of the problems, vs just saying AT&T is trying to kill your you tube Chanel.
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European [...] European [...] Europe
How many refugees from the U.S. and Canadian ISP regimes are European countries ready to accept?
Re: Just tell me, why not doing another ISP? (Score:1)
Syntax error: not enough Europes.
LOL (Score:5, Insightful)
"and Congress has to answer to us, their constituents,"
That's the funniest thing I've ever read...
Define Massive (Score:2, Funny)
Since most people haven't even heard about it. I learned about it reading this headline. It'll be massive like Trump's inauguration.
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Define massive.
AKA:bigly [dictionary.com]
"The FCC seems dead set on killing net neutrality, but they have to answer to Congress, and Congress has to answer to us, their constituents," said Evan Greer...
Isn't that cute? Don't get me wrong, I love it that this is how the constitutional republic works in theory, but if you can't get 50% of the people to vote once every four years, a grass-roots uproar loud enough for the governors to listen to is unlikely on the order of hen's teeth in your omelet.
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Congress isn't even in session so nobody fucking cares massive!
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I know right? If only Hillary had got in, I know she would be a much better defender of people's rights and net neutrality. She never caved into lobbying from big corporations.
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Just because A is bad doesn't mean B is better. What you say is the equivalent of "You don't like Cholera? Well, you sure must hate it that the last Pest wave went past our town!"
No net neutrality, so nothing to kill (Score:1)
The rules on what's being called "Net neutrality" has never been in force. The internets the way they are today are how they've always been.
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Yeah, 20 years ago we didn't have ISP's peering with the content networks and had to rely on dozens of middle tier networks and lots of latency making streaming video virtually impossible.
Those were the days
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Those were the days
They really were.
just in time for Hurricane Maria (Score:2)
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If it wasn't for those crazy storms, I would've gotten away with it, too!
Definition please.. (Score:2)
Who gives a shit about Rights again..? (Score:5, Insightful)
"...they have to answer to Congress, and Congress has to answer to us, their constituents,"
Before you go spouting off regarding who answers to whom, remember just how much people don't give a shit about Rights anymore. Just last week, Millennial's confirmed they would gladly give up their Right to Vote in exchange for getting some college debt relief.
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I've mostly ignored my right to vote because I don't want to vote for the lesser of two evils and can't seem to find any somewhat neutral candidates that have a chance in hell of getting voted in. So my lack of vote is my opinion of the available candidates.
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Too bad people see it as a vote for "I don't care, I support whoever wins".
There are many ways to vote and still not vote.
You hate all the candidates? Vote for none of them! Write in your own name if you want (I hear that's a thing). Spoiling the ballot
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My son is in 7th grade and the US History class is doing a unit on the Constitution.
The teacher gave them a list of 20 rights written in plain language, which included the bill of rights and some others not in the constitution (everyone is entitled to a free education) and they had to pick 10 from the list. I'm pretty sure fewer than half of the original bill of rights wound up in their aggregate list.
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My son is in 7th grade and the US History class is doing a unit on the Constitution.
The teacher gave them a list of 20 rights written in plain language, which included the bill of rights and some others not in the constitution (everyone is entitled to a free education) and they had to pick 10 from the list. I'm pretty sure fewer than half of the original bill of rights wound up in their aggregate list.
No offense directed at your son, but when a twentysomething Millennial barely recognizes the value of the Right to Vote, I'm pretty sure a 7th grader won't have a clue as to how to value Rights, reinforced by a complete lack of real-world application.
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Well, they are all about 13 years old and learning, so I kind of expect them to pick the "rights" that make sense to 13 year olds.
And really, I think the general population has been shown in polls for years to find many existing constitutional rights to be unwanted or misunderstood.
The problem is it's kind of a logic trap, where you have to have a certain list of specific rights to have any of the others hold up.
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Sounds like indoctrination against the bill of rights to run an experiment like that on children that have not yet learned high-school level civics.
It clearly was set up for the children to think selfishly instead of what would make for a stable democracy. Note that the US is the longest concurrently operating, stable democratic nation in existence, so the constitution gets it more right than any other plan tested.
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By now, thats the rational choice. Mrs De Vos Clearly shows that voting to get rid of the death-knell in US educational finance is a non starter.
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"remember just how much people don't give a shit about Rights anymore. Just last week, Millennial's confirmed they would gladly give up their Right to Vote in exchange for getting some college debt relief."
And 90 million Americans that could've voted in 2016, didn't.
That's not a hypothetical - that actually fucking happened. Somehow I don't think there are 90 million millennials (nearly 1/3rd of the US).
Over a quarter (27.1%) of the US population is under 21 years of age. The median age is 37 years old.
That's not a hypothetical - those are actual fucking statistics taken in 2014, so yes there are likely a considerable number of Millennials represented in the US now.
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"...they have to answer to Congress, and Congress has to answer to us, their constituents,"
Before you go spouting off regarding who answers to whom, remember just how much people don't give a shit about Rights anymore. Just last week, Millennial's confirmed they would gladly give up their Right to Vote in exchange for getting some college debt relief.
And you, dear sir, clearly don't give a shit about basic grammar.
And you, dear sir, have failed to understand your value here. When simple grammatical errors do not misconstrue the point being made, it only reaffirms why we often associate Nazi with grammar.
Frauds-R-Us (Score:2)
I am not against net neutrality per se. I am against Internet companies lying that they will provide me certain data rates, when in fact behind the scenes they are extorting a part of my Netflix fee, in essence making me pay more to them than the agreed-upon amount.
And no, hiding it in fine print, hoping people don't realize, is fraud.
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And no, hiding it in fine print, hoping people don't realize, is fraud.
You misspelled The American Way of Doing Business...
Er...we do? (Score:2)
Are you sure? Usually we need a little more advance notice to do that for you.
>> ordinary internet users to meet directly with their senators and representatives to tell their stories
I don't think I've heard the phrase "internet users" in about 20 years. You might find that most people already in touch with their reps are already on the Internet, but sure, let's see what you dig up!
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You can moan and yell and be upset and point at the house rules and say to wait till daddy comes home and put out the jumper cables...
Your ideas intrigue me and I would like to subscribe to your newsletter.
Congress answers to the people (Score:2)
Shout out from the UK (Score:2)
Don't ruin the internet for the rest of the world either, FCC.
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Too late.
You're free to create your own network if you don't like it.
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Thanks for the heads-up, AP.
Already? (Score:2)
"Protest" or "Rally"? (Score:2, Informative)
Americans Plan Massive 'Net Neutrality' Protest Next Week
Don't people normally protest against an action or idea? If they support a given cause, it's usually called a rally.
A solution (Score:3)
I have a solution. The infrastructure "generally" belongs to the ISPs, right? I'm on board with personal freedom, so I tend to side with property owners to do with their property as they will. Yes, I know that would suck for the customers, but I have a solution for that...
Congress pass a law which allows privately held ISPs to filter and shape traffic however they will. Same bill would explicitly allow city/county/state/fed entities to setup their own infrastructure AND create a federal fund that these entities can apply for to help build out their own infrastructure. ISPs would be barred from making any changes for 5-10 years, during which time they pay a new tax into the "build out" fund.
Private property is private property, and no one should be forced to restrict their use of such. So we make the infrastructure public, and introduce serious competition into the market. :D
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You aren't wrong, and I'll be the first to admit my idea is a pipedream. However, if you think public infrastructure would be any more snooped on than our current infrastructure I have some bad news for you.
If anything, the use of public funds to create a public infrastructure should result in more legal-required transparency, not less. It might actually result in more privacy controls, which would be an interesting side-effect.
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It's private property, but it's placed in the public rights of way. Without permission to use the public rights of way the ISPs have no access to customers.
The government needs to pull their heads out of their asses and use the resources they already control. Require minimum standards of service before allowing any private entity to place their private property into the public rights of way.
Since Google's recent actions I'n not so motivated (Score:2)
It's not that I don't think the ISPs should notbe given control of the internet. The ISPs have shown that they shouldn't be given control by their bad behaviour.
I'm just not so interested in fighting the ISPs so that Google can control the internet.
----
The greatest trick of Google was proving to the world that it was not evil.
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If that were actually an option for most people, there wouldn't really be a net neutrality push. The problem is that there isn't really such an option for too many people, unless you're counting "don't have an internet connection" as an option.
Massive? (Score:2)
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And you think it would be different without net neutrality? Without, you get that on top of corporations censoring and shaping to their benefit.
If anything, we need true net neutrality. All and any content must be delivered by those that transport it without any kind of discrimination. Only the endpoints may decide to disallow any kind of content to stem from them or be delivered to them.
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Your problem isn't net neutrality but your politicians. Throw them away and start anew.
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Even if the censorship legislation were to be removed, it doesn't prevent the beneficiaries of Net Neutrality from censoring content THEY don't like. Ultimately, Net Neutrality is a redistribution of power.
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Unlawful means "Not explicitly written in law", not illegal
That's both a strawman argument and false semantics, to boot. "Unlawful" means "not permitted by law", like copyright infringment or child pornography. Under your misinterpretation, copyright infringement and child pornography would have no laws covering them, which is obviously both stupid and wrong. However, that aside there is no such clause in Net neutrality legislation in the US. You are spouting completely fabricated nonsense, and almost certainly a shill.
Have any of you fucking morons read and understood it?
In your case, the answer is at least 50% "No".