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Net Neutrality

6 Things FCC Chairman Doesn’t Want You To Know About Net Neutrality

May 30, 2017 Timothy Karr, www.billmoyers.com , ,
By Timothy Karr for Bill & Moyers - Under its Trump-annointed chairman, Ajit Pai, the Federal Communications Commission decided last Thursday to revisit its net neutrality ruling. The agency has reopened a docket for public comments on Pai’s proposal to undermine the safeguards needed to protect people from having their internet service providers block, throttle or de-prioritize the online content they want to see. The last time the agency did this, in 2014 and 2015, it unleashed a torrent of public comments in support of the idea that the open internet should have basic protections under the law. Four million people voiced their concerns via the agency’s beleaguered website. The vast majority of these comments supported meaningful net neutrality protections. That’s just what the FCC put in place: It responded to the public outcry and reclassified ISPs like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon as common carriers under Title II of the Communications Act. The 2015 decision was a stunning victory for the public interest. Millions of net neutrality supporters faced down a mighty phone and cable lobby, which had spent hundreds of millions of dollars over a decade to dismantle the one principle that makes the internet a tremendous engine for equal opportunity, democratic access, free speech and economic innovation.

Dead People Are Posting Anti-Net Neutrality Comments To FCC Website

May 30, 2017 Daniel Oberhaus, www.motherboard.vice.com ,
By Daniel Oberhaus for Motherboad - Yet upon closer inspection, some 500,000 of these comments are anti-net neutrality copypasta and bear the telltale signature of a bot (such as perfectly identical formatting and names listed in alphabetical order). Moreover, dozens of people whose names are associated with these comments have come out of the woodwork to say that they never posted these comments and are in fact strongly in favor of net neutrality. On Thursday, 14 people who say their identity was inappropriately used to oppose net neutrality without their permission wrote a letter demanding that Pai and the FCC open an investigation into the alleged astroturfing campaign. "Whoever is behind this stole our names and addresses, publicly exposed our private information without our permission, and used our identities to file a political statement we did not sign onto," the letter reads. "While it may be convenient for you to ignore this, given that it was done in an attempt to support your position, it cannot be the case that the FCC moves forward on such a major public debate without properly investigating this known attack."

Cable Industry Lobbyists Write Republican Talking Points On Net Neutrality

May 29, 2017 Lee Fang and Nick Surgey, www.theintercept.com , ,
By Lee Fang and Nick Surgey for The Intercept - FOLLOWING THE VOTE last week by the Federal Communication Commission to unwind the net neutrality rules enacted during the Obama administration, House Republican lawmakers received an email from GOP leadership on how to defend the decision. The email was shared with The Intercept and the Center for Media and Democracy. Net neutrality is the principle that internet service providers must treat all web traffic in the same way. If the FCC eventually undoes the Obama-era regulations in their entirety, an ISP like Comcast could demand that websites pay it fees in order not to slow or block them. Large companies like Facebook would easily be able to afford such charges, but smaller companies might not, creating an uneven playing field. “Want more information on the net neutrality discussion?” wrote Washington state Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, chair of the House Republican Conference. “Here is a nifty toolkit with news resources, myth vs reality information, what others are saying, and free market comments.” The attached packet of talking points came directly from the cable industry.

Right Wing Trolls Sent To Net Neutrality Rally To Advocate Censorship

May 28, 2017 Staff, www.PopularResistance.org , , ,
Two articles. Jack Posobiec sends fake "anarchists" with pro-censorship signs to net neutrality protest On the 18th of May, activists holding a sit-in and rally at FCC headquarters for net neutrality noticed several folks trying to pose as anarchists, with signs calling for banning far-right websites. This message was in direct conflict with net neutrality. Jack Posobiec streamed this fake news of planted signs onto Twitter via their "periscope" service. The fake protesters turned out to have a camerman with them from Jack Posobiec's "Rebel Media" crew, and did a very poor job of posing as an anarchist black bloc. Jack Posobiec is an infamous liar and troll, known among other things for planting someone with a sign calling for raping Melania Trump in a left wing protest. This is one way Trump supporters create "alternative facts" and actual fake news.

Cable Lobby Conducts Survey, Finds That Americans Want Net Neutrality

May 27, 2017 Jon Brodkin, www.arstechnica.com ,
By Jon Brodkin for ARS Technica - As US cable companies push to eliminate or change net neutrality rules, the industry's primary lobby group today released the results of a survey that it says shows "strong bipartisan consensus that the government should let the Internet flourish without imposing burdensome regulations." But proponents of keeping the current rules can find plenty to like in the survey conducted by NCTA—The Internet & Television Association. A strong majority of the 2,194 registered American voters in the survey support the current net neutrality rules that prohibit ISPs from blocking, throttling, or prioritizing online content in exchange for payment. While most opposed price regulation, a majority supported an approach in which regulators take action against ISPs on a case-by-case basis when consumers are harmed—the exact same approach the Federal Communications Commission uses under its existing net neutrality regime. Full results of the NCTA survey conducted with Morning Consult are available here. About 61 percent of respondents either "strongly" or "somewhat" support net neutrality rules that say ISPs "cannot block, throttle, or prioritize certain content on the Internet."

FCC Is Honoring Fake Anti-Net Neutrality Rants Left By Bots

May 26, 2017 Kevin Collier, www.vocativ.com ,
By Kevin Collier for Vocativ - The federal agency weighing whether to kill a basic internet freedom wants to hear from you first. But it probably thinks your real voice is worth the same as that of a faked comment pretending to come from a real person. Whenever the Federal Communications Commission weighs a serious decision — like now, when it’s weighing whether to overturn rules to protect net neutrality, which keep internet providers from selling internet “fast lanes” and “slow lanes” for certain sites — it invites the public to comment, and weighs its response in its decision. So far this year, it’s already received more than 2 million such comments on net neutrality, and will assuredly receive far more in the coming months. Public comments are, in theory, an important part in how the FCC makes a choice. “When I was at the FCC, problems with the electronic comment filing system were treated with the utmost urgency and transparency,” Gigi Sohn, the counselor to previous FCC Chair Tom Wheeler, told Vocativ. However, as a ZDNet investigation discovered, however, a number of the recent comments supporting the net neutrality rollback used the exact same screed, blaming former U.S. President Barack Obama for the net neutrality rules and falsely claiming they’ve stifled broadband internet investment.

Cable Industry Lobbyists Write Republican Talking Points On Net Neutrality

May 25, 2017 Lee Fang and Nick Surgey, www.theintercept.com ,
By Lee Fang and Nick Surgey for The Intercept - FOLLOWING THE VOTE last week by the Federal Communication Commission to unwind the net neutrality rules enacted during the Obama administration, House Republican lawmakers received an email from GOP leadership on how to defend the decision. The email was shared with The Intercept and the Center for Media and Democracy. Net neutrality is the principle that internet service providers must treat all web traffic in the same way. If the FCC eventually undoes the Obama-era regulations in their entirety, an ISP like Comcast could demand that websites pay it fees in order not to slow or block them. Large companies like Facebook would easily be able to afford such charges, but smaller companies might not, creating an uneven playing field. “Want more information on the net neutrality discussion?” wrote Washington state Rep. Cathy McMorris Rodgers, chair of the House Republican Conference. “Here is a nifty toolkit with news resources, myth vs reality information, what others are saying, and free market comments.” The attached packet of talking points came directly from the cable industry.

Access Denied. Please Pay Up.

May 24, 2017 Eleanor Goldfield, www.artkillingapathy.com ,
By Eleanor Goldfield for Art Killing Apathy - “The commission voted along party lines Thursday to move forward with the proceeding to eliminate the regulations, which reclassified internet service providers as telecommunications companies and required them to treat all web traffic equally. Republican FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s proposal would undo the reclassification, which would eliminate the commission’s legal authority to prevent internet service providers from blocking or throttling web content or creating “fast lanes” that websites can buy into.” What a gift to big Telecoms! On top of that, the Intercept released an article today reporting that the talking points delivered to Republicans on how to support Pai’s plan comes STRAIGHT from “the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, a trade group that lobbies on behalf of Comcast, Cox Communications, Charter, and other cable industry companies.” We are up against a considerable force of Telecom lies and trickery specifically aimed at turning the Internet into a toll road and restricting our access. Constituents on both sides of the aisle need to understand the depth of deception and the real importance of Net Neutrality for us all!

Newsletter – United To Save The Internet

May 21, 2017 Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers, www.popularresistance.org , , , , ,
By Kevin Zeese and Margaret Flowers. The former Verizon lawyer, Ajit Pai, who now chairs the Federal Communications Commission has taken the first official steps to destroy the free and open Internet by proposing the end of Title II net neutrality rules on May 18. This would be a giveaway to Comcast, Verizon, AT&T and other large Internet Service Providers that would allow them to control access to content on the Internet and charge users more fees. Chairman Pai, a former lawyer for Verizon, is an example of the revolving door between government and industry that serves big business interests, and not the people. Pai has demonstrated during his first few months as chairman that he will say anything, including obvious lies, to serve the telecom industry. We must act quickly to save the Internet from going the road of cable TV

Tell The FCC To Protect Net Neutrality

May 21, 2017 Staff, www.popularresistance.org , , ,
By Popular Resistance. On May 18, Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission Ajit Pai formally introduced a proposal to end net neutrality. He plans to rush the process through this summer while people are on vacation and less likely to notice. This is a critical time to take action. We won the fight for net neutrality in 2015 in part because millions of people submitted comments to the FCC in favor of reclassifying the Internet as a common carrier under Title II of the Telecommunications Act. This means that neither the government nor the Internet Service Providers, such as Comcast, Verizon and AT&T, can control where people go on the Internet. Title II treats the Internet like a utility - for example, electric companies can only provide electricity to your home, they can't tell you what you can and cannot plug in.

FCC Manhandles Reporter For Asking A Question

May 19, 2017 Julie Schoo, www.press.org , ,
By Julie Schoo for The National Press Club - The reporter, John M. Donnelly of CQ Roll Call, is an award-winning journalist. He is also chairman of the National Press Club’s Press Freedom Team and president of the Military Reporters & Editors association. He has chaired the NPC Board of Governors and formerly served on the Standing Committee of Correspondents in the U.S. Congress, which credentials the Washington press corps. Donnelly said he ran afoul of plainclothes security personnel at the FCC when he tried to ask commissioners questions when they were not in front of the podium at a scheduled press conference. Throughout the FCC meeting, the security guards had shadowed Donnelly as if he were a security threat, he said, even though he continuously displayed his congressional press pass and held a tape recorder and notepad. They even waited for him outside the men’s room at one point. When Donnelly strolled in an unthreatening way toward FCC Commissioner Michael O’Rielly to pose a question, two guards pinned Donnelly against the wall with the backs of their bodies until O’Rielly had passed. O’Rielly witnessed this and continued walking. One of the guards, Frederick Bucher, asked Donnelly why he had not posed his question during the press conference.

People On Margins Have ‘Everything To Lose’ In Net Neutrality Fight

May 19, 2017 Mike Ludwig, www.truth-out.org
By Mike Ludwig for Truthout - Last week, while pundits were debating whether crashing web servers at the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) were hit by hackers or simply by a flood of public comments following another viral segment on net neutrality by TV comedian John Oliver, FCC Commissioner Mignon Clyburn was on her way to a forum in Los Angeles. There she heard from advocate Sylvia Hernandez and others who are often left out of the beltway's tech policy narratives. "I wouldn't have even found [a homeless] shelter, if it hadn't been for the internet," said Hernandez, who was able to access the internet at local libraries and is currently housed. Hernan Galperin, a communications professor at the University of Southern California who maps the digital divide in Los Angeles County, told Clyburn that broadband adoption among the city's white residents is 20 percent higher than it is for Black and Latinx residents. Lack of competition among providers is to blame for high costs, he said. Fifth-grade teacher Melissa Baranic said some of her students come from families that can't afford internet service at home, putting them at a clear educational disadvantage.

Net Neutrality Loses Only If The People Stay Silent

May 18, 2017 John Eggerton, www.broadcastingcable.com ,
By John Eggerton for Broadcasting Cable - FCC commissioner Mignon Clyburn told a crowd of Title II fans that network neutrality is dead unless they make themselves heard, no matter what the vote on the upcoming Title II rollback is. Clyburn was speaking at a TechCrunch Disrupt NYC conference May 16. Her talk was billed as "Commission impossible: Keeping the internet free." The FCC plans to vote May 18 on Republican FCC chairman Ajit Pai's plan to reverse the Title II classification of ISPs that Clyburn supported in the Open Internet order she helped approve back in 2015. Clyburn is currently the lone Democrat under the new Republican Administration, so she cannot stop the reversal of Title II but could delay it if she does not show up for the May 18 meeting and denies the chairman the necessary quorum. That does not sound likely since she said she did not know what the FCC would be launching this week, but she would vote "in the opposite way" from the Republicans. She said net neutrality is dead if "we are silent," no matter how the vote goes. Moderator Devin Coldewey of TechCrunch was the moderator and asked whether the comments matter and pointed to identical pro-Title II comments that had been filed.

Pai Needs To Start Acting Like A Chairman Of The FCC

May 18, 2017 Harold Feld, www.wetmachine.com , ,
By Harold Feld for Wet Machine - In my 20+ years of doing telecom policy, I have never seen a Chairman so badly botch a proceeding as Chairman Ajit Pai has managed to do with his efforts to repeal Net Neutrality. For all the fun that I am sure Pai is having (and believe me, I understand the fun of getting all snarky on policy), Pai’s failure to protect the integrity of the process runs the serious risk of undermining public confidence in the Federal Communications Commission’s basic processes, and by extension contributing to the general “hacking of our democracy” by undermining faith in our most basic institutions of self-governance. Yeah, I know, that sounds over the top. I wish I didn’t have to write that. I also wish we didn’t have a President who calls press critical of him “the enemy of the American people,” triggering massive harassment of reporters by his followers. What both Trump and Pai seem to fail to understand is that when you are in charge, what you say and do matters much more than what you said and did before you were in charge. You either grow up and step into the challenge or you end up doing serious harm not only to your own agenda, but to the institution as a whole.

Why The Fight To Save The Internet Matters

May 17, 2017 John Zangas, www.dcmediagroup.us ,
By John Zangas for DC Media Group - The fight over control of the Internet has reignited as advocates for Net Neutrality draw battle lines against deep pocket telecoms. Last month FCC Chairman Ajit Pai signaled his intention to give control of the backbone of U.S. communications to the telecoms. If this battle sounds familiar, it’s because it was already fought–and won–in 2015 when the FCC classified the Internet as a public utility. Tech groups joined grassroots activists to preserve Net Neutrality. Those telecoms–Verizon, AT&T, Time Warner (TW Telecom), Comcast, T-Mobile, and Sprint–are still licking their wounds from their 2015 loss. But with a Republican administration, they found new support from FCC Chairman Ajit Pai. The stakes are high, and there’s no guarantee the new fight will be won a second time, even if Internet freedom groups mobilize like they did during 2014-5. The new battle will take everything Net Neutrality supporters can muster and more because the FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, who was previously a Verizon lawyer, has already sided with the telecoms on this issue. The internet is one of the last communications crown jewels left because it is still a common good, accessible by everyone.
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