Internet

How Silicon Valley Became The FCC Chair’s Scapegoat

December 5, 2017 Joshua Brustein, bloomberg.com Resist! FCC, Internet, Net Neutrality, Silicon Valley

By Joshua Brustein for Bloomberg - The debate over internet regulation has steadily morphed over the last few years from an insular fight between telecom experts into a standard-issue political screaming match. The process seemed to devolve fully over the last week, starting when Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai released his plan to roll back Obama-era open internet rules on Nov. 22, the day before Thanksgiving. The proposal was a logical candidate for a pre-holiday news dump. Significant public support has built over the last three years for net neutrality, the principle that internet providers shouldn’t give preferential treatment to certain websites and services. If internet providers have this power, the argument goes, they could smother views they don’t like, or services that compete with their own. The energy to prevent this is coming nearly entirely from the Democratic side, and resulted in the strongest-ever net neutrality protections in the form of the 2015 Open Internet rules. Most Republicans thought the rules were unnecessary, and hated that the FCC claimed greater regulatory power over companies like Comcast Corp. and AT&T Inc. in implementing them. For some reason, restoring the lost power of huge telecom companies hasn’t lit a fire in grassroots circles on the right, a point that Pai’s political allies have been acknowledging privately for months. So the FCC chair came back from Thanksgiving looking to create a spark.

Yes, U.S. Net Neutrality Debacle Will Impact People In Canada.

December 5, 2017 Steve Anderson, nationalobserver.com Educate! Canada, FCC, Internet, Net Neutrality

By Steve Anderson for National Observer - Web services from Canada and elsewhere will likely face the same "prioritization" fees or worse if they want to reach US users. So Canadian-based Hootsuite, Shopify, New/Mode and Europe-based Prezi, and SoundCloud, could be forced to pay fees or be slowed down for U.S. users. There’s no guarantee that U.S. Telecoms will give them a fair deal, especially in the Trump-era. Then there’s also the fact that as Internet law expert Professor Michael Geist has noted, “A lot of Canadian internet traffic goes through the US, and we’re not totally sure whether that will be affected”. Even if the telecoms don’t hit us with new fees directly, the new costs born on services like Netflix are sure to be passed along to Internet users one way or another. As Executive Director of OpenMedia Laura Tribe put it to the CBC: "Extra costs just to get their content streaming in the U.S. is going to probably be passed along to both American and Canadian consumers in the form of higher subscription fees." If that sounds like a transfer of wealth from Internet users to giant telecom conglomerates, that’s because that’s exactly what this is. An Internet tollbooth in the U.S. could also have a domino effect in countries around the world. Since the U.S. is so dominant in the global economy there's likely to be a renewed push by big telecoms everywhere to establish their own version of top down control of the Internet in other countries.

Net Neutrality Reg Rollback Riles Religious Groups

December 5, 2017 John Eggerton, broadcastingcable.com Resist! FCC, Internet, Net Neutrality, Regulation

By John Eggerton for B& C - Religious groups are calling on FCC chairman Ajit Pai not to eliminate the bright-line network neutrality rules, which he has proposed doing at the FCC's Dec. 14 public meeting. That came in a letter Monday from, among others, the National Council of Churches, the Islamic Society of North America and the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops. Saying communications was "one of God’s great gifts to humanity," they said, and suggested net neutrality was needed to protect that gift. "We implore the policymakers at the Federal Communications Commission to retain the existing policies which maximize an open and free Internet," they wrote. "We are concerned about paid prioritization and other policies that will increase costs and limit opportunities for our nonprofit organizations and the communities we serve," they added. "We urge you to retain the existing protections to protect an Open Internet and to use the strongest legal authority to prohibit paid prioritization. Robust net neutrality protections are essential for all sectors of society, including ours." Pai is proposing eliminating the rules against blocking, throttling and paid prioritization, instead having the Justice Department take action against any conduct it deems anticompetitive, and the Federal Trade Commission police for conduct that is unfair or deceptive, including holding ISPs to their promises of no blocking or throttling.

FCC Wants To Kill Net Neutrality. Congress Will Pay

December 4, 2017 Ryan Singel, wired.com Resist! Congress, FCC, Internet, Net Neutrality

By Ryan Singel for WIred - FCC CHAIR AJIT Pai’s plan to repeal net neutrality provisions and reclassify broadband providers from “common carriers” to “information services” is an unprecedented giveaway to big broadband providers and a danger to the internet. The move would mean the FCC would have almost no oversight authority over broadband providers like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T. For years, those broadband providers have used lawsuits and agency filings to fight FCC oversight and overturn its authority to prevent net neutrality abuses. But never in those companies’ most feverish dreams did they expect an FCC chair would propose to demolish all net neutrality protections and allow ISPs to extract tolls from every business in the country. Even industry analysts who expected the reclassification of broadband providers from Title II common carriers to Title I information services were stunned. Following Pai’s announcement, independent cable analyst Craig Moffett sent out an email to investors entitled "Shock and Awe and Net Neutrality," writing, “We've known since the election that the FCC would reverse Title II. But we never expected this. Yesterday’s FCC Draft Order on Net Neutrality went much further than we ever could've imagined in not only reversing Title II, but in dismantling virtually all of the important tenets of net neutrality itself.”

Reddit Revamps Homepage To Rally For Net Neutrality

December 2, 2017 Timothy B. Lee, arstechnica.com Resist! FCC, Internet, Net Neutrality

By Timothy B. Lee for Ars Technica. If you visit the reddit.com home page today expecting to see the usual mix of news stories and entertaining cat memes, you're likely to see something very different: a wall of posts naming and shaming members of Congress—mostly Republicans—who have taken money from the telecommunications industry. "This is my Senator, Ron Johnson," reads the headline for the top post when we checked reddit.com on Friday afternoon. "He sold me, my fellow Wisconsinites, and this nation, to the telecom lobby for the price of $123,652." Posts further down shame John McCain (R-AZ), Marco Rubio (R-FL), Todd Young (R-IN), and other members of Congress using virtually identical language.

The Internet Is Freedom, And It Is Under Attack

December 2, 2017 William Rivers Pitt, truth-out.org Educate! FCC, Internet, Net Neutrality

By William Rivers Pitt for Truthout - This is the story of the long progress of humanity from the early days of opposable thumbs to the first farmer, the first builder, the first cured disease, the first literature in its second edition, the first time secondhand information was shared as a means of expanding knowledge, the first time anything was read for the first time by a second person who then passed it on, because they could. This is about the internet as it exists today. It began when Bi Sheng invented the first moveable type, using materials made of porcelain during the Northern Song dynasty in China around 1040 AD. Some 300 years later, metal print books were created during the Goryeo dynasty in Korea. Less than 100 years later, Johannes Gutenberg invented the moveable-type printing press in Europe, using materials that remained standard in the process for more than half a millennium. The Bible he printed, and the machine he used to do it, are widely viewed as the beginning of the Age of Enlightenment, the Renaissance and an explosion of learning that transformed the world. It was no longer just the priests and wealthy elite who had access to information. The world had the words on a page now, and slowly but surely everything changed, and changed again and then again. The only requirement for joining this ever-expanding new club was learning how to read.

Why The Internet Should Be A Public Utility

November 30, 2017 Umair Haque, eand.co Educate! FCC, Internet, Net Neutrality, Public Utilities, Utilities

By Umair Haque for Eudaimonia - Now. Where does this approach — lower prices leading to the greater good — leave America? Well, it leaves it unable to provide utilities well, or genuinely, really, at all. Lower prices are always thought to be provided by competition, hence, instead of utilities being things are provided by a working social contract to everyone, they are deregulated. The invisible hand, it is hoped, will provide them. The problem is that utilities are all natural monopolies: it’s always cheaper for there to be one energy or water or news provider than for a dozen, because laying those lines and pipes costs money. And precisely the same is true for the net: market competition cannot lead to lower prices, because the internet is a natural monopoly, hence, you have at most two choices of providers in most markets, if that. The invisible hand becomes a fist. The result is that Americans don’t really enjoy utilities in the same way as the rest of the world at all: they are fleeced for the basics, by natural monopolies, who never lower prices, only raise them — and eviscerate the quality of what they are supposed to provide. Flint has no clean water. Puerto Rico has no power. California was sent into crisis by manipulated energy “markets”, which weren’t markets at all. America has no BBC or National Health Service, again because “competition will lower prices” — only there is no competition, and prices only rise, while quality falls.

Businesses As Well As People Support Net Neutrality

November 29, 2017 Staff, reuters.com Resist! FCC, Internet, Net Neutrality

By Staff of Reuters - In a letter dated on Monday, the companies urged FCC Chairman Ajit Pai to reverse course and vote against changing the rules. Pai, a Republican appointed by President Donald Trump in January, unveiled plans last week to scrap landmark 2015 rules intended to ensure a free and open internet, moving to give broadband service providers sweeping power over what content consumers can access. The FCC is set to vote on Dec. 14. The move was seen as a victory for big internet service providers such as AT&T Inc (T.N), Comcast Corp (CMCSA.O) and Verizon Communications Inc (VZ.N), which favored a repeal. The companies, which sent the letter on Cyber Monday to coincide with the biggest online shopping day of the year, argued that slowing access to content, called “throttling,” or blocking it altogether, would hurt the U.S. economy. “This would put small and medium-sized businesses at a disadvantage and prevent innovative new ones from even getting off the ground,” the companies said in the letter. Pai defended the change as a way to remove heavy-handed internet regulations.

Opposition To The Repeal Of Net Neutrality Is Broad

November 29, 2017 Zaid Jilani, theintercept.com Resist! FCC, Internet, Net Neutrality

By Zaid Jilani for The Intercept - FEDERAL COMMUNICATIONS COMMISSION Chief Ajit Pai has announced that on December 14, the body will vote to pare back net neutrality rules. Internet freedom activists and progressive organizations immediately responded to the announcement with a wave of opposition, as was expected. But more interestingly, in some of the most right-wing and Trump-supporting corners of the internet, there is a rebellion brewing. Take, for instance, Breitbart News. The popular right-wing website has been a loyal ally to President Donald Trump, perhaps more devoted to his cause than any other. The article about Pai’s move has 1,117 comments, mostly aghast at the FCC’s plan. “This is as anti consumer as it gets. All will pay more for less [while] simultaneously enriching corporations as they increasingly control who sees what when and how. This is NOT MAGA. It’s a heist and a hijacking,” writes commenter Dr. Pangloss in the top-voted comment on the thread. Others, like john05, quickly came to the correct conclusion that this could even help telecommunications companies that are close to the Democratic Party. “Comcast will be laughing all the way to the bank when it gets permission to bias its subscribers’ internet traffic in favor of its own media holdings like MSNBC,” he noted. “Why is Trump on board with this?” asked commenter STOP! “We need more monopoly-busting (e.g. Goolag. Twitter, Facebook free speech guarantee), not less.”

How Internet Co-Ops Can Protect Us From Net Neutrality Rollbacks

November 27, 2017 BySammi-Jo Lee, nationofchange.org Create! FCC, Internet, Net Neutrality, New Economy

By Sammi-Jo Lee for Nation of Change - In 2011, brand new fiber optic cables lit up for the first time across the forested terrain of the Ozarks and up and down the farmlands of central Missouri. Here among the hickory and red oaks, you might expect to be in the land that the internet forgot. That’s what it could have been, had residents not decided to stop waiting on large for-profit telecommunications companies. They built their own internet instead. They turned to their electric utility for a solution, and Co-Mo Electric Cooperative, established in 1939 to bring power to the region’s farms, answered the call. “What got the project off the ground was the membership demand,” said Randy Klindt, who at the time was the general manager of Co-Mo Connect, the co-op’s internet branch. “The members all drove it from the grassroots. They went door to door. They paid their neighbors’ $100 deposit.” Later at a community meeting, a local bank surprised the room by paying the deposit of everyone present. They quickly crowdfunded enough money to begin construction, and in 2011, just before Christmas, its first members came online. Co-Mo’s members aren’t the only people who can say they own their own internet utility. In cities and rural swaths across the country, there are hundreds of small internet service providers owned by member cooperatives, local municipalities, or tribal governments.

Net Neutrality And The Drive To Censor The Internet

November 27, 2017 Andre Damon, wsws.org Educate! FCC, Internet, Net Neutrality

By Andre Damon for WSWS - Wednesday’s move by the Trump administration to end net neutrality marks a milestone in the offensive by the US government and major corporations to put an end to the free and open internet, paving the way for widespread government censorship of oppositional news and analysis. Under the current law, upheld by numerous court decisions and reaffirmed by the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in 2015, companies that provide internet access to users, known as internet service providers (ISPs), cannot block or impede their users’ access to any website or service. But the draft proposal published by FCC chairman Ajit Pai Wednesday, and expected to sail through the approval process next month, would put an end to the decades-long treatment of internet services as a public utility, allowing the internet monopolies Comcast, Charter, AT&T and Verizon full ability to block, throttle and promote internet traffic at will. This will allow them to block or limit access to websites, such as the World Socialist Web Site, WikiLeaks and other sources of politically critical news, entirely at their discretion, as well as peer-to-peer file sharing networks, which were used by news outlets to bypass censorship in the past. The ending of net neutrality will also have a substantial economic impact. By scrapping most government regulation of the internet giants, the ISPs will be able to use their monopoly power to jack up prices for consumers.

FCC Commissioner: Stop GOP Colleagues From Killing Net Neutrality

November 25, 2017 Andrea Germanos, commondreams.org Resist! FCC, Internet, Net Neutrality

By Andrea Germanos for Common Dreams - ...Op-ed came a day after Democratic FCC commissioner Mignon Clyburn said Pai's proposal is "worse than one could imagine" and released a fact sheet (pdf) explaining its consequences to the net as we know it, as Common Dreams reported. As NBC News outlines, the resistance to Pai's plan is intensifying. "While the topic of net neutrality is certainly one that can be described as 'wonky,'" the reporting notes, "it's still something that could affect every person who uses the internet." Among those catalyzing the resistance is digital rights advocacy organization Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF). Corynne McSherry, legal director at EFF, wrote this week, "Instead of responding to the millions of Americans who want to protect the free and open Internet, the FCC instead is ceding to the demands of a handful of massive ISPs, like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T." The group is also urging open internet supporters to contact their members of Congress to fight any rollback of net neutrality. Digital rights group Fight for the Future is also urging constituents to press their lawmakers to stop the plan, and is calling for protests at Verizon retail stores nationwide on December 7.

Google Admits Political Censorship Of Search Results

November 24, 2017 Niles Niemuth, wsws.org Educate! Censorship, Digital, Google, Internet

By Niles Niemuth for WSWS - Eric Schmidt, the executive chairman of Google’s parent company, Alphabet, confirmed this weekend that the world’s largest Internet company is, in close coordination with the state, manipulating search results to censor sites critical of the US government. Responding to a question about the “manipulation of information” on the Internet during an appearance at the Halifax International Security Forum, Schmidt announced that Google is working on algorithms that will “de-rank” Russian-based news websites RT and Sputnik from its Google News services, effectively blocking users’ access to either site. Schmidt’s remarks at the gathering of military and national security officials confirm the World Socialist Web Site’s charges that Google has been deliberately altering its search algorithms and taking other steps to prevent people from accessing certain information and specific websites through its search engines. The WSWS has itself been a principal target of these efforts. The statements expose as lies the company’s previous claim that changes to its search engine were aimed at “improving search results” and that these changes were politically unbiased. Google’s efforts are just one part of a much wider government-corporate drive to assert control over the flow of information over the Internet, involving Amazon, Twitter and Facebook, as well as Internet service providers such as Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Verizon and AT&T.

Fmr. FCC Commissioner: Ending Net Neutrality A Disaster

November 24, 2017 Staff, commoncause.org Educate! FCC, Internet, Net Neutrality

By Staff of Common Cause - The reckless wrecking ball strikes again. FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s scorched-earth plan for net neutrality displays callous disregard for both process and substance. The Chairman’s plan to do away with net neutrality will be a disaster for consumers and yet another handout for big business. There can be no truly open internet without net neutrality. To believe otherwise is to be captive to special interest power brokers or to an old and discredited ideology that thinks monopoly and not government oversight best serves the nation. In this case, I think it’s both. The FCC under Pai is handing over the internet to a few humongous gatekeepers who see the rest of us as products to be delivered to advertisers, not as citizens needing communications that serve democracy’s needs. By empowering ISPs to create fast lanes for the few and squelch alternative points of view, the Trump FCC fecklessly casts aside years of popular consensus that the public needs net neutrality. The tens of thousands of Americans I have talked with, both Republicans and Democrats, fully understand this need.

FCC Wants To Remove Caps On Calls From Jails & Prisons

November 24, 2017 Bruce A. Dixon, blackagendareport.com Educate! FCC, Internet, Net Neutrality, Prisons

By Bruce A. Dixon for Black Agenda Report - When it comes to the people’s will, the FCC have never been good listeners. The Trump FCC wants to kill subsidies for poor people to pay phone and internet bills, and remove caps on how much telecoms can charge the families of prisoners to receive phone calls. Its FCC chair used to represent a prison phone company. And they intend to kill network neutrality. Early this week former Verizon lobbyist and current FCC chairman Ajit Pai unveiled the details of the Trump administration’s plan to scrap the network neutrality rules which prevent telecoms from selectively blocking or throttling traffic, from segregating the internet into slow and fast lanes to favor or penalize customers and content providers according to the whims of corporate “business logic.” Net neutrality is the legal notion that the internet should be available to all content, to all technologies, to all messages and to all people, and that nobody has the right to restrict who can send, receive or connect to it. The concept of network neutrality emerged out of almost a century of peoples struggle against the greedy monopoly interests that controlled telephone networks in the US. Phone companies – originally there was only one – THE phone company, which prohibited devices manufactured by others to connect to phone networks, and refused to build infrastructure out to small towns, rural and poorer urban areas.

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