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posted by martyb on Tuesday December 12 2017, @12:12PM   Printer-friendly
from the spread-the-word dept.

[Ed note: Some important context for this submission appears in this c|net article: Internet sites to protest Trump Admin's net neutrality plan

A group of activists and websites including Imgur, Mozilla, Pinterest, Reddit, GitHub, Etsy, BitTorrent and Pornhub are planning a campaign Tuesday to draw attention to an upcoming FCC vote that could radically reshape the way the internet works.

[...] Tuesday's campaign is the latest effort by activists to dissuade the FCC from repealing Obama-era rules that effectively classified internet service providers as utilities. The classification, known as Title II, forced companies like Verizon, AT&T and Comcast to treat all internet traffic equally. Last week, protesters marched outside Verizon stores around the US.

Earlier, a handful of tech trailblazers -- including Vint Cerf, a founding figure of the internet Steve Wozniak, a co-founder of Apple; and Tim Berners-Lee, the inventor of the World Wide Web -- posted an open letter on Tumblr criticizing the proposed repeal of net neutrality.

"The FCC's rushed and technically incorrect proposed order to abolish net neutrality protections without any replacement is an imminent threat to the Internet we worked so hard to create," the letter said. "It should be stopped."

Imagine if all sites defaulted to, say, dial-up or ISDN speeds unless they paid extra for full-speed internet. The large, incumbent sites on the net could easily absorb such costs. Smaller, new, or niche sites (such as SoylentNews) could not afford to pay for faster access. If this is not what you want, then contact the FCC and/or your elected representatives and let your view be heard.]

takyon writes:

Ajit Pai jokes with Verizon exec about him being a "puppet" FCC chair

On Thursday night in Washington, DC, net neutrality advocates gathered outside the annual Federal Communications Commission Chairman's Dinner to protest Chairman Ajit Pai's impending rollback of net neutrality rules.

Inside the dinner (also known as the "telecom prom") at the Washington Hilton, Pai entertained the audience with jokes about him being a puppet installed by Verizon to lead the FCC.

Pai was a Verizon associate general counsel from 2001 to 2003, and next week he will lead an FCC vote to eliminate net neutrality rules—just as Verizon and other ISPs have asked him to.

At the dinner, Pai played a satirical video that showed him planning his ascension to the FCC chairmanship with a Verizon executive in 2003. The Verizon executive was apparently Kathleen Grillo, a senior VP and deputy general counsel in the company's public policy and government affairs division.

The speech was apparently not supposed to be public, but Gizmodo obtained footage of Pai's remarks and the skit. You can watch it here.

The vote is currently scheduled for Thursday, Dec. 14. The FCC and Federal Trade Commission announced that they will work together to punish ISPs that don't keep their promises (assuming they make any).

Previously: Washington DC Braces for Net Neutrality Protests Later This Month
FCC Plans December Vote to Kill Net Neutrality Rules
FCC Will Reveal Vote to Repeal Net Neutrality This Week
Comcast Hints at Plans for Paid Fast Lanes after Net Neutrality Repeal
More than a Million Pro-Repeal Net Neutrality Comments were Likely Faked


Original Submission

 
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  • (Score: 4, Interesting) by bzipitidoo on Tuesday December 12 2017, @04:04PM

    by bzipitidoo (4388) on Tuesday December 12 2017, @04:04PM (#608763) Journal

    Should the Post Office be an ISP? Delivering information reliably and fairly is, after all, supposed to be the reason they are part of the government. Private entities were not trusted with such a delicate and vital function.

    AT&T was allowed to monopolize telephony for decades; the Post Office never got into that business, and see what came of that. Telegraphs weren't much competition for AT&T. Who remembers the agonizingly slow 100 baud acoustic coupling modem, because at first AT&T had the power to forbid the use of a direct connection, the only reason that abomination was ever created? Trying to keep AT&T from finding out that you have and use modems, so that they wouldn't seize on that fact as an excuse to raise your rates? You couldn't even have a long cord for your handset without AT&T adding another monthly fee for that. (In the 1970s, one of my father's business trips took him to Canada and he brought back a long cord for the handset, which wasn't available in the US. He admonished us kids to keep quiet that we had it. With it, Mom could actually move around in the kitchen while on the phone.) A second phone on the line? Better turn that ringer off so Ma Bell doesn't detect it when they send that trickle of current down the line at 1am to detect how many ringers you have, and try to charge you extra if it's more than one. You want to upgrade from pulse to touch tone so that you can dial numbers 10 times faster? Oh, such luxury, now pay for it, every month! What's that, you want a phone with a wireless handset?!? Never! A redial button? Can't have that either, buzz off. There was a lot of hate for Ma Bell over their unreasonable greed and refusal to keep up with technology. They were the Ticket Bastard of those times. It is little wonder that the government finally broke them up in 1984.

    The Post Office could treat IP packets with all the same protections that snail mail has. Then private ISPs such as Comcast can compete with the Post Office same as FedEx and UPS must. I suspect they'd back away from this anti-customer crap real fast, lest they go out of business.

    Meantime, it seems the only way to escape the ISP oligopoly is move. There are a few places in the US served by cooperative, member owned or public utility ISPs that survived all of the private ISPs attempts to kill them off. But that's not a practical solution.

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