Why is net neutrality so important?

[Athos_131]

Please tell us more, so fascinating... Thank you. Our Hero!

At least we know now cowardly racists don't support Net Neutrality.

All the more reason to fight for a free an open internet.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

FCC Admits in Court That It Can't Track Who Submits Fake Comments

The FCC’s public comment system is a bloody mess. Over the past two years, it’s become apparent that political lobbyists, usually acting on behalf of the telecom industry itself, are prepared to manipulate the agency’s rulemaking process and impersonate everyday Americans just to create the illusion of public support where, in reality, none exists.

Last week, the FCC was forced to admit in court that its Electronic Comment Filing System (ECFS) was never designed to keep track of where comments originate. Not only is the system not designed to prevent fraud or the use of bots, it said, when incidents of identity theft are widely reported, the system is not equipped to determine who’s responsible.

In response to allegations that millions of comments submitted to the FCC about net neutrality in 2017 were fabricated—using the names and home addresses of Americans without their consent—the New York Times is actively seeking access to the FCC’s internal logs under the Freedom of Information Act. Its reporters have specifically asked the FCC to turn over records that contain every comment and the IP addresses from which they originated. But the commission is fighting back.

For starters, the FCC is denying the Times access to these records on privacy grounds: releasing the IP addresses, it says, would “constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.” It further alleges that releasing the logs would compromise the security of the ECFS, which is essentially a crime scene at this point thanks to concurrent state and federal investigations.

The notion that the system is in any way “secure” to begin with is comical, since one doesn’t need to actually commit a computer crime to flood it with bogus comments. If one were to email the agency and ask for instructions on how to submit comments in large batches, not only will it gladly provide that information, it will load them into the system regardless of whether they’re real or not.

Comments attributed to Americans who have been saying for over a year that their identities were stolen can still be found on the FCC’s website, right next political (and in some cases anti-Semitic) messages that they did not write.

But there’s another reason the FCC is refusing to hand over the logs. In a more technical explanation offered in a motion filed on March 14, the commission argues that producing evidence of where comments originate is a “painstaking process” that would be “highly complicated and burdensome, even if it is possible to do the correlation in the first place.”

“The retracing process would allow the FCC to identify several requests made close in time to the second the comment appears in the database, and guess which one is the actual originating request,” it said. “However, the FCC cannot directly and conclusively correlate one ECFS request with one ECFS comment.”

The process of figuring out where particular comments originate, in the FCC’s own words, is complete guesswork. The system is not designed to prevent fraud, and if fraud does occur, it is not designed to detect it, nor produce evidence of who is culpable.

It is a system that is inadvertently designed to be gamed; though, granted, it was never designed to handle millions of comments at all. (Not until net neutrality was the public at large even aware it existed.)

To a certain extent, Gizmodo can confirm that what the FCC is saying is true. Last month, we reviewed some of the logs sought after by the Times, disclosed in a separate lawsuit by a different agency. Gizmodo reported on multiple sources of fraudulent comments in two articles this year. Each required a considerable amount of time and legwork.

The FCC’s argument that it can’t release the logs on the basis of privacy is undercut by the fact that the General Services Administration, which manages the API system used by the FCC, already released them—or at least part of them. The API system is only one of three ways comments are submitted; the Times is seeking access to logs related to the other methods as well.

The API logs, which Gizmodo has reviewed—and the New York Times and Wall Street Journal both have access to now—do include at least dozens of IP addresses belonging to groups that uploaded millions of comments combined.

Gizmodo was able to trace the origin of known fake comments using the same process that’s being used by law enforcement investigators in New York, and likely at the Department of Justice as well. It is essentially the same “painstaking process” that the FCC says would be too “burdensome” for it to execute in response to a FOIA request. (It is likely correct on this point since the law doesn’t require it to commit vast resources and time to fulfill a single request.)

On a technical level, the issue is that the logs of when comments are submitted do not actually contain the comments themselves; they merely track when comments were uploaded and by whom. To track an individual comment back to its source, investigators have had to compare the timestamps on the comments to the logs identifying the uploaders. But timestamps on the comments and the logs do not match perfectly, likely due to server latency. The timestamps are on average off by a few hundred milliseconds (two seconds at most), indeed making it difficult to confidently ID the source of a fake comment, based on our experience.

The process for tracking down instances of comment fraud at the FCC is, as its lawyers accurately portrayed in court, a fucking headache. But what this really means is, if the commission is going to continue to use the ECFS to solicit public comments—something it is legally obligated to do in a lot of its rulemaking—the system needs to be retrofitted or completely re-built to facilitate fraud detection. FCC Chairman and two-time Courage Award winner Ajit Pai stated himself three months ago that a “half-million comments” about his net neutrality proposal were “submitted from Russian e-mail addresses.”

Going forward, Americans should not have to worry about whether malicious political statements, which they did not write and do not stand by, are being published by their own government, in their name, without their consent. And at the very least, when and if this type of crime does occur, it should be the FCC’s responsibility to ensure that it’s technologically possible to figure out who the culprits are.

If not, its notice-and-comment rulemaking is finished and this is all just administrative theater.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

The Head of the FTC Just Debunked the FCC's Favorite Excuse for Killing Net Neutrality

Two weeks before voting to rollback the net neutrality rules, FCC Commissioner Brendan Carr wrote an op-ed for the Washington Post in which he laid out his case for killing off the policy that ensured a free and open internet. In it, he offered up one widely-disputed argument for doing so: that blocking, throttling, and the use of so-called “fast lanes” by internet service providers would violate antitrust laws. The Federal Trade Commission (FTC), Carr wrote, would handle it. This week, the Chairman of the FTC said that’s not necessarily true.

“Reversing the FCC’s Title II decision will return the FTC to its role as a steady cop on the beat and empower it to take enforcement action against any ISP that engages in unfair or deceptive practices,” Carr wrote. “Federal antitrust laws will apply.” Carr added that if ISPs “reached agreements to act in a non-neutral manner by unfairly blocking, throttling, or discriminating against traffic, those agreements would be per se unlawful.” (Emphasis ours.)

Three days ago, however, FTC Chairman Joseph Simons—a Republican, like Carr, appointed by President Trump—publicly debunked Carr’s claim. “Blocking, throttling, or paid prioritization would not be per se antitrust violations,” he said, in a speech at the National Press Club.

Simons expanded on his view of the matter, comparing the idea of paid prioritization to that of grocery store “coupons” and “Happy Hour discounts.”

Paid prioritization is a type of price discrimination, which is ubiquitous in the economy. For example, think about when you walk into grocery store. Some customers get lower prices because they cut out coupons. Others might get a seniors discount. Others might get 2% off with their credit card. Yet others get discounts because they have a loyalty card with that supermarket. Those of us who go to the afternoon movie matinees will generally pay less, and those of us willing to show up at a restaurant before 6 pm might get the benefit of a lower priced menu. And of course, let’s not forget Happy Hour discounts.

Added Simons: “For those of you who live locally, think about the express toll lanes on interstates 95 and 66. Or think about Amtrak’s Acela service to New York, which is faster and more expensive than the local trains. Clearly, our transportation authorities think that allowing people to pay more for faster service is at least sometimes beneficial.”

Simons’ argument that the FTC can’t (or won’t) penalize ISPs for such schemes isn’t news. Carr’s claim that the FTC would step in and shield consumers from ISPs attempting to manipulate internet speeds for profit—a talking point parroted by the industry itself—was widely refuted by legal experts prior to the vote.

A month before Carr’s op-ed, Ferras Vinh, a policy counsel for the Center for Democracy & Technology, told a House subcommittee that the FTC lacked “the rulemaking ability and the deep subject matter expertise of the FCC to protect consumer rights.”

“Without the authority to make rules, the FTC can only pursue violations of net neutrality and consumer privacy after the fact,” added Vinh.

As FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel explained in her dissent on the day the net neutrality rules were repealed, the scope of FTC enforcement is largely limited to what the law considers unfair and deceptive practices. “But to evade FTC review,” she said, “all any broadband provider will need to do is add new provisions to the fine print in its terms of service.”

Nevermind the fact that average consumers are unlikely to be well versed on what constitutes an antitrust violation, fewer still ever read the terms and conditions of a broadband service agreement. (It’s been repeatedly proven that very few Americans read service agreements, much less comprehend the implications. It has also been found that due to a large number of contracts that internet users must “agree” to, doing so would consume an absurd amount of time. One study found that privacy policies alone would take 76 work days to consume.)

With a member of his own party now debunking his argument for repealing net neutrality—a key agency official, no less, whom Carr assured us would safeguard internet users in his place—Carr’s op-ed for the Post can finally be seen by everyone for what it always was: propaganda aimed at helping ISPs engage in discriminatory practices absent the fear of regulatory reprisal.

The FCC did not respond to a request for comment.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

#Resist

[Athos_131]

House Democrats Pass Bill to Restore Net Neutrality

Democrats in the U.S. House of Representatives made good on a campaign promise on Wednesday by passing legislation that would effectively reinstate, in its entirety, the 2015 Open Internet Order—rules that, for a brief time, ensured that net neutrality was the law of the land.

The bill passed in a 232-190 vote, with only one Republican voting in favor of the legislation.

The Save the Internet Act, introduced by Congressman Michael Doyle Jr. last month, would codify into law consumer protections that existed prior to the Federal Communications Commission’s December 2017 repeal of its net neutrality rules. The bill prohibits broadband-access providers such as AT&T and Comcast from blocking or slowing internet content or offering select apps and services access to so-called “fast lanes.”

The bill would restore the FCC’s authority to govern internet providers under Title II of the Communications Act—the GOP’s primary objection to the bill. Democrats argue that without Title II-based rules, there would be no “cop on the beat” to ensure that the rules are enforced.

“This legislation not only protects consumers from large corporations, but it also strengthens our economy by promoting innovation and small businesses,” said Doyle. “Net neutrality ensures that any business, no matter how small, gets the same internet at the same speeds as giant corporate interests.”

“That’s only fair,” he said. “There should not be favorites.”

Republicans such as Congressman Greg Walden, the bill’s most vocal opponent, have attempted to cast net neutrality as a “heavy-handed” approach to regulation and—hysterically—as a “government takeover of the internet.” The criticisms, however, belie the fact that broadband providers are not themselves “the internet,” and, in fact, the bill grants regulators no authority to control the content users see.

Walden and other detractors have also falsely claimed, even as recently as this morning, that the bill would lay the groundwork for future taxation of broadband access, even though doing so would be illegal. Under the Internet Tax Freedom Act of 1998, federal, state, and local governments are prohibited from taxing internet access.

Promises by the FCC’s chairman, Ajit Pai, that repealing the net neutrality rules would spur a new era of investment in the nation’s broadband infrastructure have also proved false. Since the repeal, network investment has fallen and major telecoms have laid off thousands of workers.

“When the agency rolled back net neutrality protections, it gave broadband providers the power to block websites, throttle services, and censor online content,” said Pai’s Democratic colleague, FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel. “This decision put the FCC on the wrong side of history, the wrong side of the law, and the wrong side of the American public.”

In an era in which Americans seem sharply divided on nearly everything of political consequence, net neutrality is a rare unifying issue. As oft-cited by supporters of the Save the Internet Act, some 86 percent of Americans oppose the Trump administration’s decision to dismantle the Obama-era rules, including 82 percent of Republicans, according to a 2018 survey by the Program for Public Consultation at the University of Maryland.

But as the ability of net neutrality to drive voters to the ballot box on Election Day remains purely hypothetical, Republicans have largely ignored its popularity among constituents, opting instead to carry water for some of the country’s most widely despised corporations.

The future of the Save the Internet Act remains up in the air, as Majority Leader Mitch McConnell has promised the bill will be “dead on arrival in the Senate.” Last year, three Republican senators—Susan Collins of Maine, John Kennedy of Louisiana, and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska—broke ranks and supported a resolution to reinstate the 2015 rules.

“Americans of all political stripes support putting net neutrality rules back on the books, because when you pay your monthly broadband bill, you should be able access all the content on the internet at the same speed without interference or throttling by your broadband provider,” said Senator Edward Markey, who’s introduced a companion bill in the upper chamber.

The White House on Monday threatened to veto the bill. Even with the aid of the Senate’s two independents, Democrats would need to wrangle an additional 10 Republican votes to override a veto.

“As this crucial legislation heads to the Senate, industry lobbyists want people to believe it doesn’t have a chance,” added Craig Aaron, president and CEO of the pro-net neutrality group Free Press. “They want to discourage people from showing up and urging their senators to vote in favor of the Save the Internet Act. That won’t work.”

#Resist

[joan1984]

DOA at U.S. Senate,
so, able to attract many meaningless votes in House.

House Democrats Pass Bill to Restore Net Neutrality

[Athos_131]

DOA at U.S. Senate,
so, able to attract many meaningless votes in House.

joan1984, can you please give an open, honest answer why you oppose net neutrality?

As someone who runs their own website it seems curiously counterproductive.

Thanks in advance,

Athos_131

[Athos_131]

#Resist

[Athos_131]

The Biggest Lies We Heard About Net Neutrality This Week

“Consumer protection” isn’t a phrase you’ll find on the resume of a person who devises dishonest, meaningless soundbites like, “Net neutrality is about government takeover of the internet.” But most Washington lawmakers don’t really care what a soundbite means or whether it’s they’re true. It just needs to be catchy, maybe inspire a little fear and distrust in the other guy.

If they say it loud enough, whoever wrote it might even write them an extra fat check.

What we witnessed this week as Democrats advanced legislation to restore the 2015 Open Internet Order—rules that, for the first time, enacted real net neutrality protections across the U.S.—were some of the worst bad-faith arguments yet uttered by Republicans; among them, that if the rules were again the same as they were in 2016, “the government” would soon seize control of private networks and online businesses.

Despite it being totally against the law, it would also lead to a new federal tax on virtually everyone who owns a computer, Republicans claimed ahead of the bill’s passage in the House Chamber.

“Will this bill provide the authority for a government takeover and management of private networks? We think it could,” said Rep. Greg Walden, displaying not a hint of shame on his face, despite having just said the crazy, incredibly false thing in front of dozens of colleagues and tens of thousands of Americans at home. “Will this bill allow government taxation of the internet? It could,” he said.

The rules Walden favors—which are entirely unenforceable and contain numerous loopholes through ISPs can screw over consumers—would, conversely, not lead to a “government takeover of the internet by Washington bureaucrats,” he claimed.

“I rise in opposition to this bill that would create a government takeover of the internet,” Republican House Whip Steve Scalise chimed in moments later.

“I really believe,” Rep. Bob Latta said assuredly, “that the American people don’t want to have a takeover of the internet.” He then repeated the phrase “takeover by the government of the internet,” two minutes later (for any C-SPAN viewers who tuned in late for the debate).

“This is a wholly manufactured scare tactic,” says Matt Wood, former editor-in-chief of the Harvard Civil Rights-Civil Liberties Law Review, who now serves as vice president of policy at Free Press, a nonprofit that aims to halt media consolidation and preserve a free and open internet.

“I would love for anyone to have Mr. Walden point to the government takeover language, like where they think that power even resides in the text,” he said, referring to the FCC’s Open Internet Order, which was passed in the 2015 and upheld by a federal appeals court the following year. “I don’t think they could even begin to give you a straight-faced answer. You know, I don’t think they care either. It’s just totally unmoored from the text or from the reality we’ve all experienced.”

Notably, during the two years that net neutrality was considered law of the land, the government did not seize control of the internet. (Nor will it ever get around to accomplishing that—the suggestion is patently absurd.)

During the effort to abort net neutrality in 2017, Republicans worked tirelessly to the blur the definition of what constitutes “the internet,” by suggesting that companies such as AT&T and Comcast are the internet, ignoring the rest of the global network. Internet service providers merely exist to connect customers to that broader network, but Republicans are arguing against making them follow net neutrality rules through scaremongering with all their “government takeover” talk.

Your Lyft driver is not your destination, though they are subject to regulations designed to protect their riders and the streets on which they drive: the rules of the road; government-mandated vehicle insurance; anti-discrimination statutes; rules against congesting airport pick-up lanes; pages and pages of rules and ordinances that vary state to state so voluminous it’s nearly impossible for a single person to retain.

No one refers to these myriad restrictions as a “government takeover of the road.” Anyone who did would be considered obnoxious and promptly told to fuck off.

Another soundbite echoed repeatedly in the House chamber was that the law under which Democrats seek to grant the FCC power to keep internet-access providers in check—the Communications Act—was written in the 1930s; the implication here being that the statute is just a relic of an era when most Americans still shit in outhouses and heated their bathwater over a wood-burning stove.

“Instead of working toward 21st-century solutions to moderate 21st-century high-tech companies,” said Rep. Larry Bucshon, “they opted for an antiquated regulatory scheme designed for the monopoly telephone carriers of the 1930s.”

Of course, the Communications Act has been amended and modernized by many acts of Congress, including most notably, the Telecommunications Act of 1996. (Not to mention the Patriot Act of 2001 and the Communications Assistance for Law Enforcement Act of 1994.)

Ironically, the regulations imposed on telephone companies under Title II of the Communications Act didn’t lead to the death of the private telecommunications industry. Phone service remains its biggest source of revenue. AT&T, which traces it’s corporate lineage back to Alexander Graham Bell, the father of the telephone, is among the top 10 most wealthy companies in the United States and, raked in $170 billion last year, and is one of a handful of companies leading the charge to develop the next generation of mobile broadband technology.

“I guess I missed the big government takeover of the phone networks,” Wood jokes.

While Walden carried on Tuesday, characterizing the efforts to reinstate the 2015 net neutrality rules as antiquated or tyrannical overreach, he had other industry-crafted lies in his pocket, too. “Some argue,” he said, “that during that period investment in broadband build-out actually declined.”

The notion that broadband investment declined under the Open Internet Order, or that it increased under its successor, the Restoring Internet Freedom Act—the latter having repealed the former thanks to the FCC’s December 2017 vote—would be nonsensical even if it were true, which it isn’t. There are, however, plenty of ways to skew the numbers to make it seem that way.

One favored method is to combine the broadband investment figures of multiple companies without disclosing which ones are being totaled, a tactic used today by the FCC’s GOP majority. What these aggregated figures don’t take into account is that timetables for massive broadband network expansion projects don’t revolve around the government’s tedious, never-ending policy debates.

Offering a two-year investment snapshot of the industry as a whole is a clever way to conceal the fact that some companies started spending less money while others started spending more. “If AT&T drops its investment by a lot, and everyone else is increasing, that could skew the total. And we’ve seen evidence of that,” says Wood. “The real point is that when AT&T invested less temporarily in 2015, it wasn’t because of some huge regulatory impact.”

In 2012, AT&T announced a three-year build-out, saying it would spend approximately $14 billion expanding its fiber networks. But even as AT&T slowed down its capital investments in 2015, after spending billions of dollars on a project mapped out years in advance, Comcast’s spending soared from $7.2 billion to $8.1 billion months after the FCC net neutrality rules went into effect. By the end of the following year, it had spent $9.2 billion.

But the argument that we can even use dollar amounts to measure whether a certain set of government regulations is helping or hindering broadband development is total bullshit. Companies are always looking for ways to spend less while doing more. It’s called being efficient.

In a quarterly earnings call a few years ago, AT&T chairman Randal Stephenson noted, for example, that the company was looking at fiber options, such as backhaul facilities, for its 5G deployment. AT&T had examined all of its options, he said, and decided “it’s cheaper to buy or build.” The point being, just because the books suggest a company ended up spending less money, it doesn’t mean “investment is down.”

“It’s not the money we care about,” said Wood. “It’s the coverage.”

“There’s really a lot of magical thinking going on. You know, [FCC Chairman] Ajit Pai is responsible for every investment that happened the moment he was named chair. when we say, ‘well there were improvements happening in 2015 and 2016,’ they say, ‘Well those were in the pipeline for years.’ So, which is it?” Woods said. “Are the decision being made years in advance with careful investment planning by the ISPs? Or are they things that with the flip of a switch, or the flick of a voting lever, broadband investment rockets back up?”

“I don’t know how much people care about being consistent or saying stuff that’s true when they’re so dug in on a position,” he adds. “But I think they know it’s nonsense and they’re being asked to peddle it by the powers that be and party leadership and the cable companies, who also know it’s nonsense.”

“They know it’s ridiculous and yet, there they go.”

#Resist

[geezer]

no comment

[Athos_131]

Cowardly racists? Here is a prime reason I wake up every day thanking God that Donald J. Trump was elected President of the United States. I am with Lindsay Graham. I know you want power. I pray to God you never get it.

Unless you're an idiot, a Trumper, or work for a telecom there is no reason to oppose net neutrality.

You've still yet to prove the points you shitposted last time you tried to whine in this thread.

Go Fuck Yourself.

#Resist

P.S. Can't wait for a Yellow Wall support post or karma action.

[Athos_131]

How to Explain Why Net Neutrality Matters to Your Friends -Or Asshelmets And Trolls- Who Don't Get It

Last week, the Federal Communications Commission announced plans to dismantle net neutrality, potentially giving internet providers like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T free reign to throttle speeds, block websites they don’t like, and carve the internet up into slow and fast lanes.

That nightmare scenario alone should be enough to convince most people that net neutrality is worth saving. But if you’re struggling to convince a friend, neighbor or coworker that the FCC is about to make a huge mistake, here are a few talking point to help you make your argument.

1. “Think of it like cable...”

This is the most relatable way to explain the important of net neutrality. Most people have paid for TV at some point, and understand the way cable providers force you to pay extra for channels you don’t want just to get HBO or follow your favorite sports team.

These new rules could do the same thing to the internet by carving it up into bundles. Love Netflix? You might have to pay extra for a bunch of other streaming services you’re not interested in, too. The same goes for social media apps like Snapchat, Facebook, Twitter and Instagram.

If you need a visual aid, use this image of internet package options in Portugal. It’s missing a bit of context, but still gets the point across pretty accurately.

2. “The internet should be treated as a utility, just like electricity or water”

You might not physically need the internet to survive, but for most of us it’s become an absolute necessity. We rely on the internet for work, to communicate with family and friends, and to organize our lives.

Putting such an important tool entirely in the hands of companies that care about profits above all else is a dangerous idea. You wouldn’t let the free market decide the price of tap water or electricity without any regulation. So why should we let it decide to fate of the internet?

3. “Net neutrality protects us from online censorship”

A key aspect of current net neutrality laws is that they stop internet providers from blocking websites they disagree with. Removing these laws would open up the internet to all kinds of censorship.

That might mean stifling innovation, like when AT&T tried to block access to Skype, making it impossible for new companies to compete in the future. It could also mean internet providers censoring articles and websites that are critical of them, or that simply compete with their own media properties.

4. “Investments in internet infrastructure have actually gone up since 2015"
The FCC’s new order is a direct response to laws passed by the same government agency in 2015 under the Obama administration. The argument made by current FCC Chairman Ajit Pai is that these laws stifle innovation and keep big companies from investing in new internet infrastructure.

However, a report from Free Press found that investments in the internet are actually up since 2015. Internet providers have spent more to expand their networks in the past two years than before. Revenue for these companies also continue to grow, outpacing the U.S. economy.

The argument that net neutrality hurts these companies just doesn’t hold up. If anything, it helps by giving internet providers clear laws to follow.

5. “Net neutrality isn’t even an Obama-era regulation”

This last argument should help if you’re arguing with someone who opposes net neutrality simply because of its connection to Barack Obama. It’s true that the current rules were passed in 2015 under Obama’s guidance, but net neutrality actually dates all the way back to 2005 under Republican President George W. Bush.

The roots of net neutrality can be traced back to North Carolina, where a rural phone company tried to block its customers from an internet calling app called Vonage. The carrier was fined by the FCC for anticompetitive behavior, paving the way for today’s net neutrality laws.

Ajit Pai and Donald Trump aren’t just trying to destroy Obama’s work. Their plan could undo everything good about the free and open internet we’ve all come to depend on.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

IF TRUMP FANS LOVE FREEDOM, THEY SHOULD LOVE NET NEUTRALITY

IMAGINE A WORLD where Comcast slows video streaming from Fox News's website to a pixelated crawl while boosting Rachel Maddow—who happens to star on Comcast-owned MSNBC. What if Verizon, which owns the liberal Huffington Post, charged you more to visit right-wing Breitbart. Or maybe Google Fiber bans access to the alt-right social network Gab.

Today, it's illegal to impose tiered pricing on any internet content, thanks to the Federal Communications Commission's net neutrality rules. But if Republicans have their way, those rules will soon disappear, leaving companies like Comcast and Verizon free to block, throttle, or charge a toll to access your favorite websites and apps.

The principle of net neutrality asserts that internet service providers should treat all internet traffic the same way, regardless of a site's content or owner—or its politics. Under the FCC's net neutrality rules, your cell phone carrier can't stop you from using Skype on your data plan. Your home broadband provider can't slow Netflix to a crawl. And neither can stop you from visiting all the conservative websites you want.

Broadband providers probably wouldn't openly discriminate against content on a purely political basis. After all, that wouldn't be politic. But most of them already favor their own content in one way or another, thanks to loopholes in the existing rules. And that should worry the very conservatives actively seeking to dismantle net neutrality now that a Democratic president no longer stands in their way.

To appreciate just how partisan net neutrality has become, look no farther than Ted Cruz. This past week, he once again called the FCC's rules "Obamacare for the Internet."

President Trump, whose rise to power the internet largely facilitated, takes his own issue with net neutrality, sticking to a now-popular conservative talking point against the principle. "Net neutrality is the Fairness Doctrine," Donald Trump tweeted in 2014. "Will target conservative media."

But equating the two gets both wrong. The FCC adopted the Fairness Doctrine in 1949 to require that broadcasters present both sides of news stories. The end of that rule in 1987 enabled the rise of right-wing talk radio shows such as the The Rush Limbaugh Show. But unlike the Fairness Doctrine, the FCC's net neutrality rules don't dictate what content websites or apps can or can't publish. Quite the opposite: Instead of insisting that carriers include specific points of view, it bans them from excluding any legal content subscribers may wish to access. Net neutrality and the Fairness Doctrine are comparable only because of their FCC origins. But the "neutrality" of "net neutrality" hardly requires a politically neutral point of view.

Yes, conservatives also make more traditional laissez-faire fiscal arguments against net neutrality. They worry the FCC's rules will limit the number of ways that telcos can make money, which could drive up internet prices and reduce investment in infrastructure to make the internet better. "The internet has flourished because it is an environment free of meddlesome and burdensome regulation," Cruz said during last week's Senate hearing.

Permission-less Innovation
But the internet is more than just access providers. It's also the live streams and news apps, social networks and podcasts to which the internet provides access. The internet has flourished in large part because the entrepreneurs behind these sites and services could innovate without seeking permission from internet service providers. Once you build your website or app and put it online, anyone with internet access can reach it. You don't have to cut a separate deal with each and every internet access provider in the country.

That model is already under threat today, even under current rules. Most major wireless carriers already allow certain apps and sites to bypass subscribers' data limits—a process called "zero rating." Verizon and AT&T both zero-rate their own video streaming services while allowing other companies to pay to have their content zero-rated. T-Mobile, meanwhile, allows select music and video-streaming companies to zero-rate their offerings for free. Now let's say you're an entrepreneur who just launched a new video streaming service. You want to be the next Neflix, but to be competitive, you have to strike zero-rating deals with each carrier. Even if you have the money, it erects a barrier to entry. So much for permission-less innovation.

The FCC's net neutrality rules don't explicitly ban zero-rating, but the practice offers some insight into the ways that broadband providers can create obstacles that advantage some media companies over others. Suddenly the idea of content unable to break through because of deals struck on the side starts to seem less unlikely.

Conservatives didn't always oppose net neutrality. In 2005, the Republican-led FCC approved a policy statement vowing to protect consumers' ability to access any legal internet content without interference from broadband providers. In 2008, the GOP-led commission ordered Comcast to stop discriminating against BitTorrent traffic on its network. Many conservative critics couch their net neutrality criticism in objections to the FCC's 2015 reclassification of broadband providers as de facto utilities, a decision that gave the agency the legal authority to impose net neutrality rules, saying it was a power grab by the agency. But back in 2002, the late arch-conservative Supreme Court Justice Antonin Scalia argued that broadband should have been considered a common carrier all along.

So what's changed? For one thing, the telco industry has stepped up its lobbying spending since the early 2000s. But the shift also reflects the broader polarization of US politics. Both the FCC and Congress have become more polarized in recent years. President Obama favored net neutrality, which means conservatives have to oppose it. But just as the backlash against plans to repeal Obamacare itself have shown, Republicans may find trying to unwind net neutrality less popular than they think. Americans tend to see internet access as an extension of their First Amendment freedoms—they can say and see what they want online. If they have to start paying more for one kind of political speech over another, they likely won't stay neutral at all.

#Resist

[Katiebee]

Actually, trump supporters seem to not really understand concepts like personal responsibility, equality, freedom, and seemingly many cannot comprehend what the Constitution says and means. Whether this is because they don’t bother to read it, don’t bother to think, have a completely different goal than that put forth in the Constitution, or are simply too stupid to comprehend the concepts is irrelevant. The effect is the same.

[_priapism]

I don’t think there is much intellectual inquiry going on here.  If it requires reading more words than will fit on a bumper sticker, you’ve lost them.

[Athos_131]

Mitch McConnell Called Out for Blocking Vote on Net Neutrality Rules Republicans Actually Like

The consumer protections widely known as “net neutrality” are hugely popular among Republicans throughout the U.S., if only because cable and internet providers are American’s choice example of rapacious corporate gluttony. In Washington, however, things are radically different. Insofar as net neutrality is concerned, the relationship between GOP lawmakers and legendarily despised big cable companies—it’s like watching Peter and Shadow roll around in the leaves at the end of Homeward Bound.

The gulf between the GOP’s agenda and what their constituents actually want when it comes to this specific policy is inconceivably vast. Even so, there is no prominent right-leaning movement to “save the internet.” Even if there were, Republicans are so demonstrably bad at preventing Big Business from usurping their grassroots movements that John Legere would probably fund it by the end of the week.

Due to this, Mitch McConnell, the Senate majority leader, is currently stifling efforts to vote on a net neutrality bill that’s already passed the House. What he knows, and what everyone else knows, is that on Election Day, net neutrality will be the furthest thing from Republican voters’ minds. And given this, he can completely ignore their will.

On Tuesday, Senator Edward Markey and other Democrats did their best to draw attention to this disconnect in speeches on the Senate floor. “The Save the Internet Act does exactly what the American people want,” said Markey. “It restores the rules that ensure families aren’t subject to high prices, slower internet speeds, and even blocked websites because the big broadband providers want to pump up their products.”

Eighty-six percent of Americans do not approve of the Federal Communication Commission action to repeal net neutrality rules, including 82 percent of Republicans,” he added, citing a survey this year conducted at the University of Maryland. (Notably, the pollsters in this case even provided the Republican voters surveyed with the FCC’s own reasoning for repealing the rules.)

“Net neutrality—the free and open internet—says that once you have access to the internet, you get to go where you want, when you want, and how you want,” said Senator Ron Wyden. “That’s the basic principle Senator Markey and I have been fighting for for more than a decade.”

iring back at critics who’ve characterized the Democrats’ concerns as Chicken Little theatrics, Wyden warned that the impact of the repeal would reveal itself slowly. Big Cable isn’t likely to roll out a slew of anti-competitive and predatory practices all at once, he argued. (This is particularly true because an appellate court is still considering legal arguments against the FCC’s net neutrality repeal, some of which focus on potential future harms.)

“Death by a thousand inconveniences,” he called it.

Offering one example, Wyden pointed C-SPAN viewers at home to the so-called “unlimited” data plans offered by most major ISPs. “To understand the complicated limits on internet access in these newfangled plans, you practically need a graduate degree in big-cable legal jargon,” he said. “Consumers might be forced to swallow hard and accept it, but that doesn’t make it acceptable.”

He also drew attention to the “reshaping” of the internet and entertainment industries through “mega-mergers.”

“Some of those new mega-corporations also own the content they distribute, and they want it to reach as many consumers as possible. That means the internet is fracturing,” he said, warning that soon customers of one ISP could be forced to pay additional fees to access streaming services owned by their competitors.

Attention was also drawn to the failed promises of the FCC’s chairman, Ajit Pai, who, in replacing net neutrality with his “light-touch” regulations, promised “better, cheaper internet,” as well as new jobs spurred on by a supposed explosion of broadband investment. None of those promises have materialized. Employees at companies like Verizon have been affected by wave after wave of layoffs this year. AT&T, meanwhile, recently announced a price hike for subscribers of its digital service DirectTV.

Pai said there would be new innovation without regulations in place. That hasn’t happened. He said the level of private investment in telecom infrastructure would boom. Still waiting on that, too,” said Wyden, who also took aim at Pai’s claim that ISPs were capable of maintaining net neutrality voluntarily, without the shadow of government looming over them.

If it’s true that companies like AT&T and Comcast really support net neutrality, he wondered aloud, “why did he need to get rid of it?”

Will we get a trolling post here because someone is absolutely terrified to post in the comprehensive thread on the Mueller Report?

Stay tuned.

#Resist

[Athos_131]

Ajit Pai Is Working Hard to Make Broadband Users Dumb Again

The death of federal net neutrality protections in the United States didn’t only give ISPs license to penalize customers who don’t agree to buy their services. It also pointlessly mystified the process whereby consumers acquire the most basic, unsimplified details about their home internet’s price, speed, and capacity.

Case in point: In April 2016, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) rolled out new labels for mobile and fixed broadband providers to help consumers find specifics about the price and performance of U.S. broadband companies. They mimicked the Nutrition Facts Label, to which consumers were already accustom. They were chiefly designed to help consumers make informed decisions about which broadband service best suited their needs.

In 2018, FCC Chairman Ajit Pai successfully overturned the the net neutrality rules, doing away with the easy-to-read label. It was replaced instead with a system that’s unfriendly to even the average user. Today, broadband providers are permitted indeed to choose where online to publish their own transparency reports. One option for the ISPs is to disclose on their own websites; not a terrible idea, at first blush. No doubt that’s where most people would first check. Invariably, though, any company given leeway to freestyle its own transparency reports will format them conveniently and place them somewhere remote.

AT&T links to it at the bottom of its home page. Comcast’s, which is buried among more than 40 other links, reads: “Xfinity Internet Broadband Disclosure.” Verizon’s is amusingly labeled“Open Internet.”

The details of Verizon’s network practices, unlike its major competitors, whose pages are excessive with text, are entombed under an over-sized ad, which praises its own “commitment to an open internet.”

AT&T’s “broadband information” site includes five separate pages, what seems to be nearly a hundred different links, and dozens of thick paragraphs full of irrelevant information; touting, for example, how much money the company spends managing its networks. One paragraph reads: “As you would expect, our network management practices and our service offerings have evolved over time to benefit our customers and take advantage of the billions we have spent to expand and augment our networks.”

But advertising, of course, is not the purpose of these legally required transparency reports.

And here’s where it gets even worse: ISPs aren’t actually required to display this information on their own websites, even though doing so apparently offers the advantage of being able to obscure it under a mountain of Lorem Ipsum-esque self-laudatory text. Companies may also submit their “transparency disclosures” directly to the FCC.

But whereas the Open Internet Order—the now-repealed FCC rules that established net neutrality—required ISPs to offer consumers quick access to information in a format that’s easy to digest, the method devised by Chairman Pai all but ensures that some consumers will never find it.

“Not only did the FCC’s misguided net neutrality decision do away with efforts to give consumers easy-to-digest information about their broadband service, it left them with an ISP disclosure portal that relies on the agency’s abused and antiquated electronic comment filing system,” FCC Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel told Gizmodo by email.

Saying the Electronic Comment Filing System (ECFS) isn’t simple to navigate would be putting it generously. First-time users of the ECFS will need to read the manual. The disclosures themselves are filed under an FCC docket number (CG Docket No. 18-142), which means essentially nothing to anyone who’s not learned in the commission’s notice-and-comment rulemaking procedures.

The ECFS itself wasn’t even designed for this purpose. Certainly, it was not built to be easily navigable for average consumers. In fact, it was created to be mostly used by lawyers. The actual “ISP Transparency Disclosures Portal” page (below) does not even provide the average user with enough information to locate the ISP disclosures themselves.

While the portal page does list the docket number, the search page doesn’t include a field labeled “docket number.” Among the more than a dozen fields is one that reads: “Specify Proceeding (Optional).” And this is where users are supposed to know to type in the docket number, “18-142.”

The only way for a user to know this is by visiting a third page on the FCC’s website that offers them some clarifying instructions.

The instructions note, of course, that ISPs aren’t required to file their transparency disclosures with the FCC. If they can’t find their ISP listed in the ECFS, it instructs them to “look for your ISP’s disclosure by visiting the ISP’s website, by contacting its customer service, or by conducting a web search.” (At time of writing, 58 ISPs are using the system.)

The search function itself is also rather obnoxious. In some cases, the actual names of the ISPs aren’t visible; some of them, like Packet Layer, which serves an estimated 1.8 million customers in Kansas and Missouri, prefer to use their initials.

Moreover, the filings are all different. Some contain information that others do not. Some are lacking essential information. As opposed to AT&T’s page overflowing with superfluous text, some companies, like Packet Layer, file only a one-page document that includes no details whatsoever about the actual prices or speeds of its broadband service. And there’s no consistency around file format, either. Some of the ECFS documents are PDFs and can be viewed in a browser, while others have to be downloaded and read in Microsoft Word or its equivalent.

“Customers deserve to know the price they will actually pay for a service and to be fully aware of other components such as data limits and performance factors before they sign up for service,” former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler said when his office first rolled out those handy FCC “nutrition labels.” Today’s FCC does not share this view.

As with most decisions over the past two years, Ajit Pai’s FCC apparently now aims mostly to help ISPs do the bare minimum to serve consumers; allowing them, for instance, to hide information from consumers might need to make an informed purchasing decision. Ultimately, this easy access to knowledge is just another casualty of the FCC’s war against a free and open internet.

The FCC chairman did not respond to a request for comment.

“The FCC is telling consumers ‘you are on your own’ when it comes to learning more about just what their broadband service can deliver,” Rosenworcel told Gizmodo. “It’s not right that the agency sells consumers short like this—they deserve better.”

Yellow Wall will probably troll this -mainly because that poster is too fucking stupid to understand how it effects them- but at least it will bump this topic and save a few butterflies from having their wings pulled off.

#Resist

[squirtelguy]

I believe in the Constitution.

Not something, I dare say, most people on the Left agree with. After all, Trump was elected in accordance with it, and they want to #resist.\

Pathetic. Like small children whining.

Grow up.

Oh wait, you cannot. It is funny, really. Here we have the same people who are on the left, as the one's fighting for censorship. It is a laugh riot.

I cannot wait until your leftist overlords get power and decide to go house to house to strip the deplorables of their guns. That will go over as well as the march on Concord.

Not, of course, that you will believe it. Nope. You will believe in your power to dictate to others right up until you provoke a sectarian civil war, and then, you will be astonished at the results. Tyrants always are.

[psiberzerker]

I believe in the Constitution. Not something, I dare say, most people on the Left agree with. After all, Trump was elected in accordance with it,

So was Rashida Tliab.  She was elected, legally, to legislate our country.  So, you "Believe" in the constitution when you think it supports your yellow bellied draft dodger's election, but you don't apply it to his racist attacks, on women elected to tell us how to run our country?  THAT'S THEIR JOB!

Odd, because Congress is in the Constitution too.  Which you would know, if you had ever read it.  Is it that the Constitution only applies to Whites, Men, or alleged Millionaires?

You will believe in your power to dictate to others right up until you provoke a sectarian civil war, and then, you will be astonished at the results. Tyrants always are.

Not sure if you're talking about Goldfinger here, or yourself.  You both seem surprised what happens when you try to dictate to everyone else.

[Athos_131]

Elizabeth Warren Has a Plan To Counter Evil ISPs With Public Broadband

Not everyone in the US has access to the internet, and that’s largely because the internet service providers that govern these systems are money-hungry, discriminatory, and, frankly, evil. Presidential candidate Elizabeth Warren has a plan to strip some of that power away from ISPs through the creation of publicly-owned broadband.

On Wednesday, Senator Warren published a Medium post—My Plan to Invest in Rural America—which included a breakdown on how she hopes to develop a public alternative to internet access. The plan intends to help communities most often disenfranchised by costly and geographically-limited broadband access. These include low-income households as well as rural and poor neighborhoods.

Warren’s plan involves a few moving parts. First, she wrote that she would pass federal legislation that would allow municipalities to build their own broadband networks. Second, she would create an Office of Broadband Access under the Department of Economic Development to oversee an $85 billion federal grant program that builds out the infrastructure needed for high-speed internet. Electricity and telephone cooperatives, non-profits, tribes, cities, counties, and state subdivisions are the only groups that can apply for these funds, emphasizing the push to bring these systems into areas presently underserved.

Warren wrote that the federal government will cover 90 percent of the cost of construction for these grants and that institutions that receive this funding will have to provide public internet to every home in the stated area. What’s more, these grant recipients will also have to have at least one discounted plan. There will also be $5 billion dedicated to grants for tribal nations, specifically to bring broadband internet to Native American lands and build out thousands of miles of internet infrastructure on these lands that are, to date, unserved.

For fiscal hawks, Warren briefly outlined her plan to pay for the initiative, writing:

The cost of each and every one of these investments is fully offset by my plans to make the ultra-wealthy and large corporations pay more in taxes. Those plans include my annual two-cent wealth tax on fortunes over $50 million and my plan to ensure that very large and profitable American corporations can’t get away with paying zero taxes. And the new investments I’m announcing today for universal broadband access and health care options in rural areas can be offset by changing the tax laws that encourage companies to merge and reduce competition.

The plan also extends beyond simply providing funds and construction for broadband internet, it also details a number of ways in which Warren will crackdown on shitty and unjust ISP practices. She said that she’ll appoint FCC Commissioners dedicated to the restoration of net neutrality and transparency around broadband maps—they will require ISPs to submit reports related to internet service, speeds, and aggregated pricing, which will then be made public and regularly audited. The plan also involves ramping up the FCC’s Office of Native Affairs and Policy and passing the Digital Equity Act, both of which invest time and money into bridging the digital divide.

“I will make sure every home in America has a fiber broadband connection at a price families can afford,” Warren wrote in the post. “That means publicly-owned and operated networks — and no giant ISPs running away with taxpayer dollars.”

#Resist