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John Oliver Gets Fired Up Over Net Neutrality, Causes FCC's Site To Temporarily Crash (fortune.com)
Three years ago, late night comedian John Oliver propelled an arcane telecom topic into the national debate by spurring millions of ordinary Americans to file comments with the Federal Communications Commission in favor of "net neutrality." Among other things, that effort caused the FCC website to crash, which couldn't handle the "overwhelming" traffic. Now Oliver is back at it, and he is already causing the site some troubles. From a report on Fortune: On Sunday night, Oliver devoted a chunk of his Last Week Tonight show to condemning a plan by the FCC's new Chairman, Ajit Pai, to tear up current net neutrality rules, which forbid Internet providers from delivering some websites faster than others. In the clip, Oliver urges viewers to visit a website called "GoFCCYourself," which redirects users to a section of the FCC site where people can comment on the net neutrality proceeding, known as "Restoring Internet Freedom" in Pai's parlance. Viewers took up Oliver's offer in spades -- so much so that the FCC's servers appeared to be overwhelmed by the flood of traffic. The comment page is currently loading with delays and, according to reports from several outlets, the site went down altogether for a while. On Monday, Ashley Boyd, VP of Advocacy for Mozilla, also published a blog post to remind people that the next 10 days are critical for the internet's future. Much like Oliver, Mozilla is also making it easier for people to voice their opinion. The post adds: Add your name to our letter, and we'll deliver your message straight to the FCC. You can also record an impassioned voicemail using Mozilla's call tool. So far, Internet users have recorded more than 50 hours of audio for the FCC's ears.
This is what you get when you DICTATE legislation and policy through regulatory bodies like this -If you politicize the bodies to get your way don't be surprised when another side gets in and changes the rules to the politics they want.
Nothing, I suppose, compared to the Slashdotting to come ...
Wrong. Corporations run the country. Comedians just work for them.
John Oliver Gets Fired Over Net Neutrality ...
One word makes all the difference!
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
It's lovely that people are making their voices heard (literally), but in the end it's too little too late. The people with money want more of it, and you gave up what shreds of rights when you voted a Cheeto into office.
Satire has for quite some time been a useful tool to highlight institutional problems and call people to action.
Trump lost the popular vote, so... people DID vote, it just didn't work.
Liberty - Security - Laziness - Pick any two.
Google does it, Netflix does it, and any ISP that isn't trying to push their own video offering embraces these caches because it reduces the load on their network without them having to invest in more transport.
And this is where the problem lies. Netflix offered to host their "cache" called a Content Delivery Network (CDN) on Comcast's network which would benefit both companies as far as bandwidth was concerned. Comcast refused to let them unless they paid Comcast to put their equipment on Comcast's network. Comcast was also throttling Netflix traffic on their network. Why? Comcast On Demand. Once Netflix paid the ransom traffic suddenly normalized. An ISP should not be allowed to also offer content or internet service should be regulated. This doesn't fall under free market because Comcast is using government granted right of ways for its cabling that smaller ISPs do not have.
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
You made the claim and have nothing to back it up. You can't even come up with an issue that you found his coverage of to be misleading. Not one anecdote or data point. Nothing. Nobody is asking for a dissertation, just some sign that you're not full of it. And you choose to go straight to "you won't even listen to what I have to say, so I'm just going to stop at completely unsubstantiated assertions and declare moral superiority." We've heard that one all too often from people who deal in nothing but lies. If you don't want to be lumped in with them, stop acting exactly like them.
Wrong. Corporations run the country. Comedians just work for them.
This comedian was simply suggesting people exercise their right to comment before rules go into force. You know, democracy, rulemaking. Look it up.
It's actually quite good, just nobody knows about it, except lawyers and lobbyists, I suppose because either people sleep through their high-school civics class, or your state doesn't bother even having a civics class in the curriculum because, you know, wasteful government spending teaching kids their rights as citizens and how to participate in their government. How do most kids even know they have a right to an attorney if arrested? Saw it on TV somewhere.
Take it easy, Charlie, I've got an Angle...