Net Neutrality

Massive Nationwide Protests For Net Neutrality

December 8, 2017 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, www.PopularResistance.org/a> Resist! Freedom of Speech, Internet Freedom, Net Neutrality

By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers for Popular Resistance. Yesterday, more than 700 protests were held across the nation in small towns, suburbs and cities by people calling for a free and open Internet, net neutrality. In red districts, blue districts or purple districts, the people of the United States were united in their call a free and open Internet and in calling on Congress to protect the Internet by stopping the FCC. The Internet is the primary venue for freedom of speech and freedom of commerce for businesses, small and large, in the 21st Century. It is not under the control of corporate interests but a space where everyone has equal access. Net neutrality ensures free and equal access to the Internet for all. A 3-2 majority of the FCC is moving to change the Internet from an open space to one controlled by a handful of corporations. People power is taking action to stop them.

Artists, Actors, And Musicians Support Net Neutrality Protests

December 6, 2017 Evan Greer, www.fightforthefuture.org Resist! FCC, Internet Freedom, Net Neutrality

By Evan Greer of Fight for the Future. “If the FCC votes to gut these protections it will explicitly allow Internet providers to charge extra fees that amount to a tax on the entire creative economy,” the letter reads. “A few corporations will have control over what you see and hear, while independent and up-and-coming artists’ ability to make a living will be devastated. Without net neutrality there will be less awesome art. Period.” The letter goes on: “We support the people from across the political spectrum protesting across the country on December 7, and we echo their call for our members of Congress to do their jobs and take action to stop the FCC vote that’s planned for December 14.”

It May Be The Final Days Of Free & Open Internet

December 6, 2017 Staff, youtube.com Resist! FCC, Internet, Net Neutrality

By Staff of Redacted Tonight - On December 14th, the FCC is voting to gut net neutrality. While internet providers like Verizon will definitely abuse their monopoly-like power with net neutrality protections, undoing Obama era net neutrality rules will escalate corporate control of mass media in the US and must be avoided. Net neutrality can only truly be protected by a revolution in who owns the networks. We need to end our dependence on telecom monopolies and build locally-owned internet infrastructure. Redacted Tonight Correspondent John F. O’Donnell joins host Lee Camp at the desk to not only remind us about the need for municipal broadband, but to let everyone know that there are still a number of actions happening across the country where we can push back and demand a free and open internet

Local Governments Ask FCC To Delay Net Neutrality Vote

December 6, 2017 Jay Cassano, ibtimes.com Resist! FCC, Internet, Local Government, Net Neutrality

By Jay Cassano for IB Times - When the Federal Communications Commission votes December 14 on Chairman Ajit Pai’s proposal to repeal “net neutrality,” the Obama-era rules that classified broadband providers as “common carriers,” regulation of the internet will likely be ceded to the Federal Trade Commission. With the vote approaching, a coalition of local governments and consumer protections groups sent a letter to the FCC Monday morning asking the commission to delay the vote until a crucial, obscure court case is resolved. Leading those governments is New York City, alongside a host of high profile consumer rights advocates. At issue is the case FTC vs AT&T Mobility , which could undermine the FTC’s regulatory authority. AT&T's unorthodox argument: that because part of its business is already regulated by the FCC as a common carrier, the FTC does not have jurisdiction because of what is known as the “common carrier exception.” That exception is normally read to apply to specific activities of businesses and not the entire business itself. Nonetheless, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit originally sided with AT&T. The decision was later vacated and is now being reviewed en banc by the entire court.

Day 5 Of Countdown To Launch: Evan Greer

December 6, 2017 Staff, www.popularresistance.org Organize! Internet Freedom, Net Neutrality

By Popular Resistance. Evan Greer is a transgender activist and musician living in Boston, Massachusetts. She is the Campaign Director for Fight for the Future, which works to protect Internet Freedom. Evan served as an interim editor of Popular Resistance in the spring of 2014 and she assisted Popular Resistance in improving our social media skills early on. Popular Resistance and Fight for the Future worked together closely in 2014 and 2015 to win reclassification of the Internet as a common carrier in order to protect net neutrality. That campaign started with an eight-day occupation of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in Washington, DC, and progressed through a series of actions including disruptions of FCC hearings, a musical in front of the FCC, actions at the White House, blocking the chairman's driveway and more.

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.

Groups Urge FCC Chairman to Delay Net Neutrality Vote

December 4, 2017 Harold Feld of Public Knowledge, www.PopularResistance.org Resist! Freedom of Speech, Internet Freedom, Net Neutrality

By Harold Feld for Public Knowledge. Popular Resistance Joins Public Knowledge Organized Letter of 40 Organizations Calling for Delay of FCC Vote on Repealing Net Neutrality and Title II Rules. Groups urge this delay because the Ninth Circuit might decide that the FTC has no jurisdiction over broadband providers. If so, and if the FCC rolls back the net neutrality rules December 14, then neither the FTC nor the FCC will have the authority to regulate broadband providers. Public Knowledge contends that this would leave consumers at the mercy of internet service providers.

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.”

Net Neutrality, in a Nutshell, Is a Nondiscrimination Law

December 3, 2017 Matt Wood, www.freepress.net Resist! FCC Internet, Net Neutrality

By Matt Wood for Free Press. Net Neutrality advocates are fighting back in the courts, in Congress and in the streets. We’re seeing nationwide protests to stop Pai’s plan, and people will sue the FCC if the rules are overturned. Net neutraity has existed in some form since the Internet began. Our laws have always said that two-way communications networks must be nondiscriminatory. And as former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler came to understand in 2015 after a lot of good advocacy from people like you, the communications rights the law grants do not and should not change even as the technology advances and evolves. Net Neutrality in a nutshell is a nondiscrimination law. Equal access to the Internet for all -- Internet Freedom.

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.

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