'Red Alert' Protest For Net Neutrality Starts May 9 (cnet.com) 60
Net neutrality activists and websites like Etsy, Tumblr, Postmates, Foursquare and Twilio will post "red alerts" starting May 9 to protest the FCC's effort to roll back Obama-era net neutrality protections. From a report: This latest protest, announced Monday, is set to coincide with the next step in an ongoing process in the Senate to use the Congressional Review Act (CRA) to halt the Federal Communications Commission's repeal of the 2015 net neutrality rules. On May 9, senators will present a petition to force a vote on a resolution to undo the FCC's net neutrality rollback. The CRA gives Congress 60 legislative days in which to roll back the FCC's decision. The countdown for the rollback effort began in February when the FCC published its order in the Federal Register to repeal the rules. Further reading: 100 US Mayors Sign Pledge To Defend Net Neutrality Against Crooked ISPs.
We all know how useful virtue signaling is! (Score:2, Insightful)
Wake me when there's an actual problem, instead of people postering because they fear their own shadows.
Re:We all know how useful virtue signaling is! (Score:5, Insightful)
You have to pay to play and that's how it is, get over it.
We've already paid for our internet use, through our ISP. This is about ISPs wanting to make deal with companies to charge you varying amounts (or on top of what you already pay for service) based upon the source of the content. You paid for it, why does the ISP care if that data is coming from Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, CNN, Youtube? They want to charge customers to receive the data and companies to send the data, effectively getting paid twice for the same data. How would you like to pay $10 more a month to access news sites (beyond the ones that have already paid to be "included" in the ISPs base package)? $10 more to access Google services (oh, and an additional $5 for Youtube on top of that)? Twitter paid off your ISP, now you can't access Facebook or Instagram. Access to content producers owned by the ISP: free. Access to content producers like Netflix or Hulu? Pay extra (so you are now paying Netflix and your ISP to watch Netflix).
This is like your water company charging you different rates based upon whether you are using your shower or the kitchen sink or the sprinkler in your yard. You paid for the water, you decide how you use it; you paid for the data, you decide where that data comes from.
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This is like your water company charging you different rates based upon whether you are using your shower or the kitchen sink or the sprinkler in your yard. You paid for the water, you decide how you use it; you paid for the data, you decide where that data comes from.
That idea is already partly implemented by the WSSC water company in the greater Washington DC area. You can get a sub-meter to get your outdoor-use water at a substantially lower rate than your indoor-use water. The reason is that your outdoor-use water doesn't enter the sewer system, and sewer rates are double the water rates.
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We've already paid for our internet use, through our ISP. This is about ISPs wanting to make deal with companies to charge you varying amounts (or on top of what you already pay for service) based upon the source of the content. You paid for it, why does the ISP care if that data is coming from Netflix, Hulu, Amazon, CNN, Youtube?
But none of that is happening. These laws weren't put into place until 2014, and no ISP had abused net neutrality before then, it was just a knee jerk reaction to a "what if" scenario. Trump repealed them and again, no ISP is abusing net neutrality. Stop crying wolf.
Re:We all know how useful virtue signaling is! (Score:4)
Sure, let's make it easier for ISPs to claim that it's too ingrained in their systems and business model to change.
You might not worry about the train coming towards us, but don't force me to stand on the tracks with you.
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That hasn't been true for over 20 years.
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Blame you local governments for the last mile ISP monopoly. Government has been the problem and government is the problem going forward. Once you start opening free markets sans net neutrality we'll start seeing more competition.
Yes, those evil local governments forced large ISPs to come in and give them loads of money to make sure no other ISP could roll out in that area. And don't forget the mean government taking those poor ISPs to court over One Touch Make Ready laws.
Oh, wait, you mean ISPs have lobbied to create local laws that prevent competing ISPs from rolling out and have sued local governments that have tried to implement policies like OTMR which promotes competition? It's almost like in the absence of government regu
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Must you Trump idiots infest literally EVERY forum on the Internet???
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There is an actual problem. Comcast is slowing down connections. We have about forty employees with home connections that we pay for, and run monitoring when they connect to our VPN. Latency has almost tripled and packetloss increased by near tenfold in the past month.
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Reddit has a subreddit for this:
https://www.reddit.com/r/thatHappened/ [reddit.com]
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There is an actual problem. Comcast is slowing down connections. We have about forty employees with home connections that we pay for, and run monitoring when they connect to our VPN. Latency has almost tripled and packetloss increased by near tenfold in the past month.
Are there any published stories about this? I am pretty dubious because I ALSO work at home, mostly on a VPN, and use Comcast. I have not noticed any of what you are claiming here.
As others have said it's way more likely to be Comcast infrast
My employees use Comcast BUSINESS Class services (Score:1)
for our remote work. They include terms of service that guarantee rates. Look into paying for it while you're complaining about your connectivity problems.
Re: We all know how useful virtue signaling is! (Score:1)
A big noisy protest is needed, otherwise people might not notice anything has changed with the Internet.
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Much sound and fury, signifying nothing.
I guess if you're a politician who doesn't have any real solutions to any real problems, your best bet is to make up fake problems and then create a big PR campaign to let everyone know how you're fighting for them by talking a lot about the fake problem you made up. It does help if you have willing accomplices in the media and large website companies.
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How about putting that effort into community broadband and not protected federal monopoly telcos?
When I started reading the title of the post.. (Score:4, Funny)
... I got excited for a moment because a new Command and Conquer was coming out.
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Ditto, but then I didn't like RA3 tho.
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The small ISP we've worked with for over fifteen years supported the repeal and in their newsletter they quoted Ajit Pai as saying, "smaller Internet service providers...don’t have the time, money, or lawyers to navigate a thicket of complex rules." Several big infrastructure projects were canceled after the new, complex rules were put into place in 2015. Our ISP lost an investor because of the uncertainty of how much more the new rules would cost them. I just don't agree with him that a federal l
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Not an NDA, but the co-founder told me that I assume in confidence since they were having trouble making payroll. Found the old email, but the link to their newsletter no longer works I assume because they redid their web site. Either way, I remember this quote:from Pai that a friend that works for a WISP here in Seattle confirmed was true for his company here in Seattle:
"Wireless Internet Service Providers Association, which represents small fixed wireless companies that typically operate in rural Americ
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'as useful as teets on a bull', but I'll modernize that by coining, "This effort will be as useful as a change.org petition."
Well, you and I know that this protest will be as effective as that petition... As far as Net Neutrality is concerned, this is pointless.
HOWEVER, this is about the midterms and democrats keeping their voters ginned up, not about changing Net Neutrality which is going to take an act of congress to change. Even with the best possible outcome for the democrats in the midterms, it won't happen in the next congress.
Settle in, this is going long term. Net Neutrality is currently dead. Republicans killed it,
Re: Asking for the FCC to censor the web (Score:2)
Hey, DC politicians know better how to run internet networks than network operators do.
Wake me up when somebody is protesting about the lack of pole access for competing last-mile providers.
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exercise in futility (Score:2)
The right is obsessed with "anything that Obama/Clinton touched must be evil and forever killed/dismantled" that it's not possible in the current administration. Plus given the hundreds of millions of lobbyist dollars dolled out in behalf of the communications cabal, there's no chance.
Put effort into things that actually can make changes..
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I was about to say something like this.
Don't people know that the CRA is only for stuff passed under Obama?
Re: exercise in futility (Score:1)
(It was her turn)
I remember when it was Bob Dole's turn. Worked out about the same.
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Given the choice between a 75 year old socialist or Hillary... come Dems, any one else! Please! and anyone else would have won the election and the electoral vote. Trump was nuke the system vote.
Etsy AND Foursquare? (Score:2)
Re: Etsy AND Foursquare? (Score:1)
A big splash page is anticipated at AltaVista. Fire up your Hotmail and spam all your friends about the issue.
What happened to the internet bat signals? (Score:1)
What is the point of the Red Alert exercise? (Score:1)
Whether you're for or against how the Net Neutrality rules by the FCC were implemented, what is the point of backing this "role back". Let's be practical, it isn't going to pass. The only moment of victory might be passing the senate. It will never pass the house, and will get a veto from the president.
Is this just being hurt cause one administration passed some rules and now the next one is clearing them out? Are these rules just being cleared out to spite the last administration.
Yes, there is big mone
WTF? (Score:2)