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.

Comments

Re:maybe he needs to look in a mirror?

[ArhcAngel]

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.