Net Neutrality

FCC To Kill Net Neutrality Unless We #StopTheVote

November 29, 2017 Protect Our Internet, www.popularresistance.org Resist! Ajit Pai, FCC, Internet Freedom, Net Neutrality

By Protect Our Internet. On December 14, Verizon lawyer Ajit Pai, who is currently serving as chair of the Federal Communications Commission, FCC, will bring his proposal to dismantle net neutrality for a vote. There are two other commissioners who support Pai's plan, and two who oppose it, so it will pass unless we take action to save net neutrality now. We faced long odds before and prevailed. In 2014, FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler proposed rules that would create a tiered Internet. In a short time, the actions of many pushed Wheeler to include reclassifying the Internet as a common carrier (like a public utility) so that net neutrality would be protected. Then, a sustained campaign for the next nine months swayed three commissioners to vote for reclassification. We won, beating the millions of dollars that telecoms used to try to stop us. Now, we must act again.

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.”

Tech Companies Make Appeal To Save Net Neutrality

November 28, 2017 Ali Breland, www.thehill.com Resist! Business, FCC, Net Neutrality, Telecom

By Ali Breland for The Hill. Hundreds of tech companies and groups, including Twitter, Airbnb, Reddit and Vimeo, are urging the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) to keep the Obama-era net neutrality rules. In a letter to FCC Chairman Ajit Pai dated on Cyber Monday, the companies touted the growth of e-commerce as “a testament to the power of the free and open internet to encourage entrepreneurship, drive innovation, make our lives easier, and to support a healthy economy.” "The internet is increasingly where commerce happens," the letter said, noting that Americans last year spent nearly $3.5 billion on Cyber Monday.

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.

From An Open Internet, Back To The Dark Ages

November 26, 2017 Jonathan Cook, www.counterpunch.org Educate! Facebook, Google, Independent media, Internet Freedom, Net Neutrality

By Jonathan Cook for Counterpunch. In December the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) plans to repeal already compromised regulations that are in place to maintain a semblance of “net neutrality”. Its chairman, Ajit Pai, and the corporations that are internet service providers want to sweep away these rules, just like the banking sector got rid of financial regulations so it could inflate our economies into giant ponzi schemes. That could serve as the final blow to the left and its ability to make its voice heard in the public square. The social media giants soon responded. It is becoming ever clearer that Facebook is interfering as a platform for the dissemination of information for progressive activists. It is already shutting down accounts, and limiting their reach. These trends will only accelerate. Google has changed its algorithms in ways that have ensured the search engine rankings of prominent leftwing sites are falling through the floor. It is becoming harder and harder to find alternative sources of news because they are being actively hidden from view.

Newsletter – Free Yourself From An Exploitative Culture

November 25, 2017 Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese, www.popularresistance.org Newsletter Amazon, Austerity, Inequality, Net Neutrality, New Economy, Tax Reform, Thanksgiving, Wealth Divide

By Margaret Flowers and Kevin Zeese. Shoppers hit the malls and online stores this week, spending over $3.5 billion online alone on what is called 'Black Friday'. Some people reject the extreme consumerism, calling it 'Buy Nothing Day' and staying home in protest, others take their protests to the streets. Anti-police violence activists in St. Louis, Missouri, demonstrated peacefully at a major shopping mall to say "No Justice, No Profit." True to form, police responded by violently attacking the 100 or so protesters and arresting seven people. Our friends at The Rules remind us that there are many fulfilling things money can't buy, such as community and wisdom. They write that 'Buy Nothing Day' is "an opportunity... to nurture the feeling of sovereignty you get when you step back from mainstream culture and know that it has no hold on you."

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.

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.

FCC’s Order Is Out: Will End Net Neutrality

November 24, 2017 Matt Wood and Gaurav Laroia, freepress.net Educate! FCC, Internet, Net Neutrality

By Matt Wood and Gaurav Laroia for Free Press - On Wednesday, Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai released his draft order to completely eradicate Net Neutrality. You can read the full text here. The short version is that Pai’s order takes the Net Neutrality rules off the books and abandons the court-approved Title II legal framework that served as the basis for the successful 2015 Open Internet Order. The FCC is scheduled to vote on this dangerous proposal at its meeting on Dec. 14. Pai’s draft is a lot of things: thin on substance and reasoning, cruel, willfully naive — and it’s everything that ISPs like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon could have wanted (and more). But what it’s not is sensible or grounded in reality. It will take away every safeguard we need to protect the open internet we’ve always had, giving ISPs the power to kill off their competition, choke innovation, charge more for different kinds of content, suppress political dissent, and marginalize the voices of racial-justice advocates and others organizing for change. We’ve had just a few hours to read this dud, launched by the FCC the day before Thanksgiving. Here are a few of the many lowlights in the draft order and a quick explanation of why they’re wrong. While we’ll have more analysis in the days to come, this is our first take. And if no one puts a stop to Pai’s plans — with more than 200,000 rightly outraged internet users calling lawmakers and urging them to do just that on Tuesday alone — we’ll have even more to say on this when we take the FCC to court.

Net Neutrality Protests Hitting Verizon Stores In U.S. During Holiday Season

November 22, 2017 Evan Greer, tumblr.fightforthefuture.org Resist! FCC, Internet, Net Neutrality, Verizon

By Evan Greer for Fight for the Future - Ajit Pai’s plan is expected to contain a “total repeal” of net neutrality protections, posing a grave threat to the future of freedom of expression, access to information, and small businesses particularly for communities of color and low income communities. The December 7 protests represent growing grassroots backlash to the FCC’s plan, which polls show is wildly unpopular with people from across the political spectrum. The events are supported by Team Internet, a grassroots network of nearly half a million volunteer activists spearheaded by Demand Progress, Fight for the Future, and Free Press Action Fund, three of the groups behind the massive July 12 net neutrality day of action that drove millions of comments, emails, and phone calls to the FCC and Congress. Over recent months the groups behind the protests have organized thousands of constituents to attend more than 600 town halls and meetings with lawmakers to demand their support for net neutrality. A phone call campaign through BattleForTheNet.com has generated nearly 250,000 phone calls to legislators offices. At the protests participants will be encouraged to take a group photo and tweet it at their local members of Congress. Where possible, protesters will march to a nearby lawmaker’s office and deliver petition signatures. Protests are currently planned in Phoenix, Denver, San Francisco, New York City, Indianapolis, Miami, Boston, Seattle, and several other cities across the country.

40% Of Detroit Has No Internet, They Are Creating Their Own

November 22, 2017 Kaleigh Rogers, motherboard.vice.com Create! Detroit, Internet, Net Neutrality, New Economy

By Kaleigh Rogers for Motherboard - Being stuck without access to the internet is often thought of as a problem only for rural America. But even in some of America’s biggest cities, a significant portion of the population can’t get online. Take Detroit, where 40 percent of the population has no access to the internet—of any kind, not only high speed—at home, according to the Federal Communications Commission. Seventy percent of school-aged children in the city are among those who have no internet access at home. Detroit has one of the most severe digital divides in the country, the FCC says. “When you kind of think about all the ways the internet affects your life and how 40 percent of people in Detroit don’t have that access you can start to see how Detroit has been stuck in this economic disparity for such a long time,” Diana Nucera, director of the Detroit Community Technology Project, told me at her office. Nucera is part of a growing cohort of Detroiters who have started a grassroots movement to close that gap, by building the internet themselves. It’s a coalition of community members and multiple Detroit nonprofits. They’re starting with three underserved neighborhoods, installing high speed internet that beams shared gigabit connections from an antenna on top of the tallest building on the street, and into the homes of people who have long gone without. They call it the Equitable Internet Initiative.

Chairman Pai’s Plan To End Net Neutrality Built On Lies

November 22, 2017 Timothy Karr, freepress.net Educate! FCC, Internet, Net Neutrality

By Timothy Karr for Free Press - WASHINGTON — Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai plans a full repeal of Net Neutrality protections, exposing internet users to blocking, throttling and paid prioritization of online content by the handful of internet service providers that control access in the United States. Pai will release his proposed rule changes on Wednesday. According to reports, the chairman will seek to overturn nearly all of the Net Neutrality safeguards put in place during the Obama administration. In 2015, the FCC grounded its Open Internet Order in Title II of the Communications Act, a move that follows the laws Congress wrote and that federal appeals courts have twice upheld. Pai is planning to eliminate the “bright line rules,” which prohibit blocking, throttling and paid prioritization. His proposal would also take away the general conduct rules and other protections against cable- and phone-company discrimination. Under the current rules, ISPs can’t “unreasonably interfere with or unreasonably disadvantage” people’s ability to access and use the lawful content, applications, services or devices of their choosing. This broader mandate to prevent unreasonable ISP discrimination, even when it doesn’t fall neatly under a bright-line prohibition, is crucial to preventing interference with internet traffic at interconnection points and other “upstream” bottlenecks that ISPs can abuse. Even worse, Pai plans to remove Title II classification of broadband internet access service providers.

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