SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
Battle for the Net has the details about what the September 10th Internet Slowdown is and how to participate.
You're our only hope.
This is the time to go big, visible, and strong--that's the only way we can actually win this fight. We all need to get as many people in our respective audiences motivated to do something. We can make this epic, but only if you help. We need companies to be frontrunners, leaders, and heroes on this, that's the key ingredient to raising the bar and making sure everyone goes big.
We realize it's a big ask, but this is the kind of bad internet legislation that comes along (or gets this close to passing) once a decade or so. If it passes we'll be kicking ourselves for decades--every time a favorite site gets relegated to the slow lane, and every time we have to rework or abandon a project because of the uncertain costs paid prioritization creates. Doing the most we can right now seems like the only rational step.
Several top websites -- including Etsy, Kickstarter, Foursquare, Wordpress, Vimeo, reddit, Mozilla, Imgur, Meetup, Cheezburger, Namecheap, Bittorrent, Gandi.net, StartPage, BoingBoing, and Dwolla -- announced that they will be joining more than 35 advocacy organizations and hundreds of thousands of activists in a day of action that will give a glimpse into what the Internet might look like if the FCC's proposed rules go into effect. The protest comes just 5 days before the FCC's next comment deadline on September 15th.
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Friday September 05 2014, @01:14PM
The TFA says that two thirds of the comments received are against Net neutrality. WTF? Are the other third in favour of it or just sending messages calling them "wastes of skin" or something? I have trouble believing they'd actually get 33% of comments in favour of it.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Friday September 05 2014, @01:22PM
There's no rule stating that the cable companies can't pay people to engage in "public" comment. So I wouldn't be surprised to discover that somewhere there's a group of people getting good money to go through Tor and enter in a bunch of comments favorable to the change that appear to be from the general public.
Once this process is done, I'm sure that the cable industry lobbyist and FCC chairman Michael Wheeler will tout the thousands of comments in support of the changes as an excuse for why this should be done.
TL;DR; Astroturfing explains it.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by wantkitteh on Friday September 05 2014, @01:45PM
Highly likely. I went onto the NFL website to see when season started and got a banner asking me to "Save Football On Free TV" by opposing the changes to the lock-out rules. Couldn't care less about that, I'm English and just dabble in watching the Monday Night games when the international Rugby's quiet.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 05 2014, @01:52PM
TL;DR; Astroturfing explains it.
The company I work for has asked its employees to show how the FCC is 'wrong'. Here is a convenient astroturf group to sign up for too and a pre canned letter for you to sign and a couple of email addresses to send it to. Send one thru your home address and work (hint hint wink wink). They do not even bother going thru Tor. That is how brazen they are.
(Score: 5, Interesting) by Nerdfest on Friday September 05 2014, @02:40PM
Care to out your employer? Companies against net neutrality are companies I'd prefer not to do business with.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 05 2014, @06:48PM
As you note, the tiny number who want a slow lane are part of form-letter campaigns, undoubtedly coerced by their employers.
A good page on this by Amy Goodwin: [commondreams.org]
-- gewg_
(Score: 4, Informative) by mth on Friday September 05 2014, @01:51PM
TFA (Ars) actually says two thirds are against paid fast lanes, which means they are in favor of net neutrality:
(Score: 2) by Nerdfest on Friday September 05 2014, @02:38PM
Sorry, I reversed the percentages in the first part of my comment. The surprise still applies, although I can believe that astro-turfing is being done. I'm sure it's worth quite a lot to the ISPs as it would mean that they would effectively have control of he internet.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 05 2014, @05:35PM
we need a "call to arms" to launch more internet infrastructure outside the control of isps and dns... a p2p internet if you will
till then there will never be freedom on the internet and this is all a frivolous waste of time and publicity
(Score: 5, Interesting) by pe1rxq on Friday September 05 2014, @02:27PM
Wouldn't it be more effective if every route to and from Washington D.C. was put through a 28k8 modem for a while?
(Score: 2) by Geezer on Friday September 05 2014, @02:35PM
Please, for Pete's sake, I'm already doomed to an erratic 2.5 Mb/sec DSL line run by a local monopoly.
For the record, I sent personal comments plus signed on to the EFF and Change.org petitions. Everybody should.
It may not sway the oligarchs, but we can sleep with a clear conscience while our games are "Loading...Please Wait."
(Score: 1) by Cactus on Friday September 05 2014, @04:11PM
Loading, Please Wait...
You have entered East Commonlands.
(Score: 1) by Freeman on Friday September 05 2014, @05:46PM
Some of us are stuck on worse crap than DSL, Like 3G internet, "Unlimited", unless you go over 30GB, then we will investigate your usage, and most likely cancel your account... I'm also in Texas and the company I am doing business with is located in Washington State or something dumb like that. It's the only thing I could find that wasn't Satellite.
Joshua 1:9 "Be strong and of a good courage; be not afraid, neither be thou dismayed: for the Lord thy God is with thee"
(Score: 2) by AnonTechie on Friday September 05 2014, @07:47PM
Hey ... I think it has already started for me, for the past week or so. Almost all US Websites load slower than before. Wonder if it is my gummint thats doing it.
Albert Einstein - "Only two things are infinite, the universe and human stupidity, and I'm not sure about the former."
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Rivenaleem on Friday September 05 2014, @02:39PM
Is this a US only thing? What will happen to people outside the US requesting information from a US server? I understand a lot of stuff is delivered locally, like Netflix. But that website is very sparse on exactly what the ramifications for people outside the US are. Where can I read more about this?
(Score: 5, Informative) by Sir Garlon on Friday September 05 2014, @03:22PM
Yes. I apologize for the stupidity of my government.
Nothing directly. The net neutrality rules affect the last mile of the network. Indirectly, companies that want to serve US customers will need to pay twice for their bandwidth, once to send it over the backbone and again so the last-mile network won't slow down the traffic. Domestic or foreign, any server operator who wants his content seen in the US will have to pay the last-mile network owner. Yes, it's an outrage.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation probably has as many articles [eff.org] as a reasonable person would care to read. However if you are specifically looking for the potential impact on non-US persons and companies, I suspect you will have trouble finding much material. The US press, public, and politicians have an almost limitless ability to fixate on a domestic perspective as if the rest of the world STILL didn't exist.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 05 2014, @03:31PM
This is primarily a last mile thing. Last mile providers are holding sites hostage, threatening to slow them to a crawl unless they pay up.
This shouldn't have (much of) an effect on people accessing the internet from outside the US.
(Score: 1) by FuzzyTheBear on Friday September 05 2014, @06:15PM
So basically it's a case of blackmail to the content providers by carriers who want to milk the cow another notch without regard about what's right and what's wrong. This is typical of US businesses. Nothing to see here. Message to customers ? Shut up and pay , big boys need to upgrade their yatchs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 05 2014, @07:17PM
If this happens in the US it will soon be all over the place. We must put an end to this madness now.
(Score: 5, Informative) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Friday September 05 2014, @02:53PM
> We realize it's a big ask, but this is the kind of bad internet legislation that comes along (or gets this close to passing) once a decade or so.
Really? Because I'm pretty sure I remember the entire internet going black to protest this exact same kind of bullshit not 2 or 3 years ago. The people pushing this will try again and again, until the people get bored of defying them. They only need to win once and that's it, game over.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 05 2014, @10:01PM
basically this is a good thing!
however it is inevitable : (
most users don't get the internet.
they think the internet connection is like the electricity plug.
it's where the internet "stuff" comes from, just like the wall-plug is where the electricity comes from.
those that jumped on the internet bandwagon after 2000 don't know that you can send stuff directly from your home
harddisk to your mobile phone "directly" without having to use dropbox or such.
most don't get that you can put ANY PACKET in at some point and tell the internet to route it to another "outlet".
they think the internet is like a "place", like walmart, where you go for your shopping (this not a jab at amazon!).
they don't get the internet, just like they don't get the electrical wall plug, where you can also put electricity IN.
if 90% think the internet is a PLACE then it will turn into that idea and thus "put in a packet here and it will come out over there" paradigm will die (net neutrality) and everything will come from google, facebook, amazon,youtube, netflix and some more (and they will be squeezed) : )
question: when is the last time you made a direct connection to/with a friend or relative over the internet?
as direct connection counts (even if using some dynamic ip tracker like dyndns):
own VPN, own ftp, own webserver, own irc, etc.
probably the answer will be "last year" and thus why lament the death of "net neutrality" if you are not really using it anyways?
you get all your stuff from dropbox and email from google and video from youtube anyways. there's no need for "net neutrality" if your internet connection is only SUCKING!
(Score: 2) by meisterister on Friday September 05 2014, @10:16PM
How about instead of some useless loading graphic, all of the sites throttle themselves to 56k? The first thing to load should be a simple plaintext message that tells the user about what's going on.
(May or may not have been) Posted from my K6-2, Athlon XP, or Pentium I/II/III.
(Score: 3) by darkfeline on Saturday September 06 2014, @05:15AM
On the one hand, that would be extremely effective. On the other hand, that would be too effective. I wouldn't even be surprised if purposefully throttling important services is marginally/completely illegal due to the amount of damage/lost revenue it would cause. Of course, this would further emphasize why net neutrality is so important, but the finger pointing would most likely take priority over the rational response (of supporting net neutrality).
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday September 06 2014, @09:18AM
I agree this is what should be done. A preview if you will.
Want to see how bad it can get? Just sit back and don't do anything and you'll find out...