from the 4-corporations-speak-louder-than-4-million-people dept.
BoingBoing - EMERGENCY! Protest FCC sellout on net neutrality across the USA!
The Guardian - Net neutrality advocates to protest against 'hybrid' FCC solution in dozens of cities:
Evan from Fight for the Future writes, "Internet users! It's time to get angry and get active. The FCC just leaked their net neutrality proposal -- and it's TERRIBLE. After nearly 4 million people spoke out demanding strong net neutrality rules against Cable company censorship, throttling, and discrimination, the FCC is pushing rules that would explicitly open the door for that kind of abuse."
Also https://www.battleforthenet.com/:
Cable companies are famous for high prices and poor service. Several rank as the most hated companies in America. Now, they're attacking the Internet–their one competitor and our only refuge–with plans to charge websites arbitrary fees and slow (to a crawl) any sites that won't pay up. If they win, the Internet dies.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by arashi no garou on Thursday November 06 2014, @06:38PM
Unfortunately not nearly enough people will stand up and fight this, and it will come to pass exactly as predicted. Only then will people get angry and become vocal, but they will direct their ire not at the FCC, but at their own ISPs, who will simply offer to charge more for "premium" access just as they do with television access now, all the while blaming bureaucracy.
The cable companies know exactly what they are doing, and it's pure evil.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by edIII on Thursday November 06 2014, @07:10PM
My plan is simple, and I recommend it to everyone.
Purchase the most basic plan, and this is the important part, call up customer service. *COMPLAIN* bitterly. Ask them to put it in the customer notes so that it's on the account prominently.
NEVER pay extra. Ever. For anything.
Enjoy the slowness. Pretend you are on dial-up again. Run TOR and use the time it takes to load pages to go for a walk.
Just. Never. Ever. Pay. Extra. For. Anything.
That's the *ONLY* thing you can do. Not give them your money.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 06 2014, @07:17PM
Purchase the most basic plan
Not give them your money
Truly inspired.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Thursday November 06 2014, @10:30PM
Aside from your snide comment, did you have anything to add to the proceedings...
... like a way to telepathically connect your NIC up to the Internet using Druidic knowledge, a dash of ancient alchemy, and some Astrology?
Other than paying an ISP a minimum for a connection to the Internet, you have no way of connecting to the Internet. They control the gateways. You will have to pay *something* to *someone*.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by khedoros on Friday November 07 2014, @01:35AM
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Sir Garlon on Thursday November 06 2014, @08:36PM
Unfortunately the cable companies' plan is not to charge *you* extra to receive the bits you want. Their plan is to charge the sender. So streaming video, for example, will just break unless the host of the streaming service pays extra for a "fast lane."
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
(Score: 2) by edIII on Thursday November 06 2014, @10:54PM
Then you don't pay ANYTHING.
My point is, they can create artificial quality of service, but that everyone, including the streaming service, selects the minimum quality and refuses to budge. We do this, because the quality of service is not a technical one, but entirely artificial. Therefore any other services that have greater performance, only do so because they simply want more profit.
Deny them the profit across the board. Netflix should have never capitulated as it was negotiating with terrorists. Which it really was. Netflix quickly came aboard with a paradigm of supporting ISPs with a CDN infrastructure at their cost, but the ISPs refused to allow Netflix to compensate them and operate their equipment. Netflix's original recommendation was one that came from the engineers and was efficient and reduced costs, and what ended up happening instead was extortion where Netflix simply paid them. On top of it, Netflix is *still* running their CDN that has been more than double-dipped for costs. That's now SOP.
So let's call it what it really is: One corporation having leverage over another corporation and being able to arbitrarily charge different amounts of profit in very unreasonable ways. It's state sanctioned piracy on the high seas of our free market. Instead of the government protecting the free market, it receives commissions from corporations with these contemporary Letters of marque.
Millions of people were screaming about it and still nothing was done. I'm not shocked at all. If it truly gets as bad where the companies make the Internet too costly and less enjoyable, then just disconnect permanently from your residence and get it at coffee shops or work.
In other words, our greatest tactic in saving the Internet is just to let it die and be reborn with different grass roots technologies. To do that, we need to be able to give up Netflix and Javascript bloated websites and go back to a simpler infrastructure that could accomplish more with less. I find myself on such sites more often ;)
I'm not there yet. I'll still give them the minimum and no more, because the Internet is how I earn my living temporarily. The truth is, I already gave up my smartphone since I don't want to pick up my corporate issued state tracking device anymore, and I'm switching over to farming to eek out an existence while the country is destroyed.
It's pointless to talk about cutting off the financial oxygen supply to these companies. Nobody is really willing to do it like I am with the cell companies now, and we are all dealing with monopolies.
So the best recommendation to anyone trying to live in the world, and not go full activist living in the woods, is to pay a minimum with the impetus to pay them even less in the future.
Google Fiber is our only hope here, and it's perturbing that our hope for a free Internet should rest with such a corporation. At least I doubt Google will participate with such business models on their fiber network.
Technically, lunchtime is at any moment. It's just a wave function.
(Score: 2) by melikamp on Thursday November 06 2014, @11:22PM
Netflix is a spyware vendor. Of course they negotiated. They are even more keen to abuse their customers than Comcast, AT&T, or any other big ISP, and ISPs have simply asked for their slice of the pie.
(Score: 2) by urza9814 on Friday November 07 2014, @06:51PM
People aren't disconnecting because it's really not that bad yet. In fact, it's quite good so far IMO.
My phone has a connection more than twice as fast as the cable internet my parents had when I was in highschool. With no data cap, no rate limiting, free hotspot. And it costs less than my parents paid. I route everything through Tor and block the location data so I can't be tracked so easily (sure, can from the towers, but that's true of any phone at all) And yeah, I'm not that old, when I say 'highschool' I mean 2008. I signed up for Verizon FiOS two years ago, and last week they sent me a letter letting me know that I could upgrade my 50/25 plan to 50/50 for $15/month less, or upgrade to 75/75 for the same price. That too costs less than what my parents were paying for 6/0.75 six years ago. If you had told me three years ago that I'd be considering a 75/75 internet package today, I would have laughed in your face and thought it impossible. If you had told me three years ago I'd have a 15 megabit connection in my pocket broadcasting a wifi hotspot and routing through Tor, I would have though you'd escaped from an asylum somewhere.
Yes, we're way behind most of the world. Yes, we have a LOT of problems. But we're still advancing so quickly that those are often hard to notice.
If they kill net neutrality, we might actually see movement *backwards*. THAT is where people will start getting pissed.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Thursday November 06 2014, @08:43PM
Importantly, the only effect of the election on any of this was that they know the public is looking the other way right now so they know they can get away with it. A hypothetical President Romney or President McCain would have done the exact same thing as President Obama actually did.
The reason for this is that the only party the telecoms support is the Telecom Party. You can see this in the donation patterns:
Comcast [opensecrets.org]
AT&T [opensecrets.org]
Verizon [opensecrets.org]
That means you can't vote against this, and they were just waiting until John Oliver had something else to talk about before making this move.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by mhajicek on Thursday November 06 2014, @11:06PM
What we need is ad-hoc /peer to peer networking that doesn't use carrier companies.
The spacelike surfaces of time foliations can have a cusp at the surface of discontinuity. - P. Hajicek
(Score: 3, Informative) by Blackmoore on Thursday November 06 2014, @06:39PM
From the Wikipedia article:
Michael K. Powell, who served on the FCC for eight years and was chairman for four, was appointed president and chief executive officer of the National Cable & Telecommunications Association, a lobby group. As of April 25, 2011, he will be the chief lobbyist and the industry's liaison with Congress, the White House, the FCC and other federal agencies.[42]
Meredith Attwell Baker was one of the FCC commissioners who approved a controversial merger between NBC Universal and Comcast. Four months later, she announced her resignation from the FCC to join Comcast's Washington, D.C. lobbying office.[43] Legally, she is prevented from lobbying anyone at the FCC for two years and an agreement made by Comcast with the FCC as a condition of approving the merger will ban her from lobbying any executive branch agency for life.[43] Nonetheless, Craig Aaron, of Free Press, who opposed the merger, complained that "the complete capture of government by industry barely raises any eyebrows" and said public policy would continue to suffer from the "continuously revolving door at the FCC".[43]
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Thursday November 06 2014, @07:35PM
> a condition of approving the merger will ban her from lobbying any executive branch agency for life
So she's "officially useless"? No biggie, Comcast doesn't need one more lobbyist. They just need to send a message that people get rewarded.
(Score: 2) by fnj on Thursday November 06 2014, @06:40PM
But deeply, bitterly disappointing.
(Score: 1) by NeoNormal on Thursday November 06 2014, @07:23PM
Has no meaning anymore.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 06 2014, @08:12PM
No. Like supposid democracies in the past they just redefine what 'people' means.
In the united states you are not a person unless you have a bank account in the millions to billions, you're also not a person if you're not a corporation.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Random2 on Thursday November 06 2014, @07:31PM
Would someone happen to know where these could be found? I'd love to spread the news and help but the guardian article (and all the other ones) don't seem to actually link to any substantial proposal; a 1-day warning flash mob won't be nearly as effective if they can't figure out why they need to be there in the first place....
If only I registered 3 users earlier....
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 06 2014, @07:35PM
This is it. The FCC is finalizing its net neutrality proposal right now. The problem? It's a fake plan that won't survive a court challenge.
Can anyone provide a link to the FCC's proposal? I can't find one.
I'm not going to waste time protesting against something I know nothing about. Why doesn't battleforthenet.com provide the full text?
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 06 2014, @07:45PM
> Can anyone provide a link to the FCC's proposal? I can't find one.
No. Because it has not been made public yet. But the rumours are that it is a minor variation on what Mozilla proposed.
Lots of people have been bitching about Mozilla losing their way in recent years, but this sell-out takes the cake.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/08/25/a-top-net-neutrality-defender-is-trying-to-poke-holes-in-mozillas-plan-for-the-open-internet/ [washingtonpost.com]
(Score: 1) by novak on Thursday November 06 2014, @08:12PM
I wonder if this will have any unintended consequences.
I mean, the intended consequences are obvious- for ISPs to form a monopoly as a content provider in areas where they have already monopolized service. Or, to be paid an insane amount of money to not do so. Basically, to be a sort of "cable TV 2.0."
But if you only have one option for say, streaming video, and it is TERRIBLE, what are you more likely to do? Purchase it? Or become more familiar with piracy? Maybe pirates will start selling content to their non-techie friends. Or maybe video stores will open back up as streaming video becomes worse and worse. Out in the middle of nowhere, where I live, they still haven't closed down, but when I lived closer to the city there weren't any within 15 miles of my house.
Here's a good (possible, if very unlikely) unintended consequence: Perhaps users will start flocking to TOR and similar networks (as they increase illegal activity such as piracy) and it will get in the way of the surveillance companies/agencies. Perhaps once enough people move to the "darkweb" we will see a boom in its usage for regular sites that don't want to pay the ISPs, and a second web by and for the users will start to form again. I don't have high hopes, but I can dream.
novak
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Thursday November 06 2014, @08:20PM
You should be ashamed of mentioning piracy on TOR, both because it renders TOR unusable for the people who actually need it (freedom under third-world regimes) and because piracy under TOR is so slow even the non-neutral net will be faster.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 1) by novak on Thursday November 06 2014, @08:38PM
Well we're doing everything we can to reduce our country to a third world regime where we need freedom. I don't mean to advocate piracy, but I don't really consider it an evil action. I was more hoping that TOR would gain widespread adoption, by whatever the fallout from this is.
novak
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday November 06 2014, @09:09PM
I'm waiting for someone to come up with a business model that makes operating tor nodes profitable.
Right now I pay less than $5/month for access to 2000+ different VPN tunnels, each of them faster than 100Mbps, because the MAFIAA pushed 5-strikes on ISPs and thus a market was created. I'm not much of a pirate, but I am a privacy freak so I benefit greatly from this piracy-created market for IP-address obfuscation. Perhaps the right conditions could encourage these same companies that do VPNs to do Tor ingress and exit nodes too.
(Score: 2) by BradTheGeek on Thursday November 06 2014, @09:38PM
Aside from hate speech and threats, no one should be 'ashamed' of their views, correct or not. Shaming is simply a guilt trip used to cudgel people into silence. Instead state your views and logically refute if possible. Technically, you are right that -torrenting- over TOR is a detriment to the network. And perhaps ethically, trading childporn, rootkits, and black market items is a waste of precious bandwidth as well.
Regardless, your argument also assumes that the technology (tor or some other tech) will not adapt to meet the needs of a growing user and requirement base, which technology is find of doing, often in ways we cannot predict easily.
(Score: 2) by melikamp on Thursday November 06 2014, @11:42PM
TOR devs don't get to decide what goes over TOR. If anyone wants to torrent over TOR, so be it. Or are we going to censor TOR now? The very slowness is an assurance that it won't be done on a large scale.
You, on the other hand, should stop calling single acts of sharing "piracy", unless you are also OK with your doctors calling you a "son of a bitch" on a regular basis. It's sharing, and there is absolutely nothing wrong about it. Everything that was done to prevent this sharing, such as all copyright legislation up to now, was clearly directed against our common good. What the Big Content does to people who share is not just more akin to piracy in spirit, but is in fact a text-book extortion racket codified in copyright law. "Piracy" is an undeserved slur. Say "MAFIAA" instead, as it reflects the actual state of affairs.
(Score: 2) by ticho on Friday November 07 2014, @09:29AM
Wow, way to put words in grandparent's mouth. He did not say that someone should control what traffic goes through TOR. He was merely suggesting to use it responsibly, otherwise it will get overloaded.
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Friday November 07 2014, @05:21PM
You, on the other hand, should stop calling single acts of sharing "piracy"
Really? I shared my collection of bullets with some passing sailors once, they shared their boat and a hefty ransom, which I then shared with my fellow buddies.
I only did it once though, so I guess I wasn't a pirate?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday November 07 2014, @06:04AM
Additionally, a bittorrent client may leak your IP even if you use Tor! :/
https://blog.torproject.org/blog/bittorrent-over-tor-isnt-good-idea [torproject.org]
(Score: 2) by PizzaRollPlinkett on Thursday November 06 2014, @08:24PM
Had relatives visiting Frankfurt when the US news mentioned protests going on there - someone wondered if they were impacted - I pointed out Frankfurt is bigger than Atlanta and they probably didn't even know there were any protests - when they got back, they said they didn't know about them. So does this kind of protest accomplish anything?
(E-mail me if you want a pizza roll!)