Americans Plan Massive 'Net Neutrality' Protest Next Week (theguardian.com)

An anonymous reader quotes the Guardian: A coalition of activists, consumer groups and writers are calling on supporters to attend the next meeting of the Federal Communications Commission on September 26 in Washington DC. The next day, the protest will move to Capitol Hill, where people will meet legislators to express their concerns about an FCC proposal to rewrite the rules governing the internet... The activist groups are encouraging internet users to meet their lawmakers and tell them how a free and open internet is vital to their lives and their livelihoods...

"The FCC seems dead set on killing net neutrality, but they have to answer to Congress, and Congress has to answer to us, their constituents," said Evan Greer, campaign director for Fight for the Future, one of the protest's organisers. "With this day of advocacy, we're harnessing the power of the web to make it possible for ordinary internet users to meet directly with their senators and representatives to tell their stories, and make sure that lawmakers hear from the public, not just lobbyists for AT&T and Verizon," she said.
Monday Mozilla and the Internet Archive are also inviting the public to a free panel discussion featuring former FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler on ways the American public can act to preserve net neutrality.

Comments

Re:Just tell me, why not doing another ISP?

[Z00L00K]

And current ISPs will make sure that the competition is erased due to legal obstacles concerning patents and exclusive agreements with towns.

LOL

[Anonymous Coward]

"and Congress has to answer to us, their constituents,"

That's the funniest thing I've ever read...

Define Massive

[Anonymous Coward]

Since most people haven't even heard about it. I learned about it reading this headline. It'll be massive like Trump's inauguration.

Re:Define Massive

[jez9999]

I know right? If only Hillary had got in, I know she would be a much better defender of people's rights and net neutrality. She never caved into lobbying from big corporations.

Guardian is the soruce

[mi]

the hypocrisy of this movement - and this article

This article is a barely disguised advertisement of the event. Guardian's "journalists" are making this story instead of merely reporting it....

Strangely enough, no one complains about this incident of foreign meddling in the America's political process.

Re:Guardian is the soruce

[Anonymous Coward]

This article is a barely disguised advertisement of the event. Guardian's "journalists" are making this story instead of merely reporting it....

You have cause and effect mixed up. The sources cited in the article existed prior to the Guardian citing them. Or perhaps you believe that reporting on North Korea's missile launches are advertising them? "Waah someone is reporting on something I don't like, they must be the cause of it" -- retard logic, go figure.

Re:Guardian is the soruce

[mi]

The sources cited in the article existed prior to the Guardian citing them.

Sure, of course. But their reach was not sufficient — and the article helps the organizers inform far wider audience of their plans.

Re:Just tell me, why not doing another ISP?

[jellomizer]

The problem is the ISP and the communication Infrastructure are one and the same.
Back during the dial-up days, we had hundreds of ISPs in a single aria code, while AOL was the king, they were many ISPs who could provide internet access as well. Most of them were BBSs who added SLIP and/or PPP access.
But this meant that if you wanted to connect to the internet you had 2 bills. Your phone line bill which pays for for the infrastructure, and your ISP where it was the gateway to the Internet.

Now with broadband, as a necessary standard we normally pay a company who controls the wires and the service. In rural areas you may have only one choice usually Cable or DSL. But once you get the communication infrastructure you also have to rely on the whims of the same company for hosting the ISP.

Now governments local, state and federal have a slew of laws around these, because this infrastructure is rather invasive. Running across private property. So even if you were to start you own company you will still need to be politically involved to try to get these laws changed so you can be allowed to distribute your service to your customer base.

This isn't about being whiny liberals, (as the conservatives whine complain and demand they must be treated like special snowflakes on different topics) but needing to protest a system that isn't treating the public fairly.
Yes political protesters tend to come with stupid arguments and often over simplify the problem. But it difficult to post a 300 page thesis on the complexity of the problems, vs just saying AT&T is trying to kill your you tube Chanel.

Re:No net neutrality, so nothing to kill

[known_coward_69]

Yeah, 20 years ago we didn't have ISP's peering with the content networks and had to rely on dozens of middle tier networks and lots of latency making streaming video virtually impossible.

Those were the days

Who gives a shit about Rights again..?

[geekmux]

"...they have to answer to Congress, and Congress has to answer to us, their constituents,"

Before you go spouting off regarding who answers to whom, remember just how much people don't give a shit about Rights anymore. Just last week, Millennial's confirmed they would gladly give up their Right to Vote in exchange for getting some college debt relief.

Re:Who gives a shit about Rights again..?

[swb]

My son is in 7th grade and the US History class is doing a unit on the Constitution.

The teacher gave them a list of 20 rights written in plain language, which included the bill of rights and some others not in the constitution (everyone is entitled to a free education) and they had to pick 10 from the list. I'm pretty sure fewer than half of the original bill of rights wound up in their aggregate list.

Re:"Americans"?

[stealth_finger]

You're either for an open internet for the good of everyone or you can fuck off.

Shout out from the UK

[easyTree]

Don't ruin the internet for the rest of the world either, FCC.

Re:No net neutrality, so nothing to kill

[stealth_finger]

Those were the days

They really were.

A solution

[grasshoppa]

I have a solution. The infrastructure "generally" belongs to the ISPs, right? I'm on board with personal freedom, so I tend to side with property owners to do with their property as they will. Yes, I know that would suck for the customers, but I have a solution for that...

Congress pass a law which allows privately held ISPs to filter and shape traffic however they will. Same bill would explicitly allow city/county/state/fed entities to setup their own infrastructure AND create a federal fund that these entities can apply for to help build out their own infrastructure. ISPs would be barred from making any changes for 5-10 years, during which time they pay a new tax into the "build out" fund.

Private property is private property, and no one should be forced to restrict their use of such. So we make the infrastructure public, and introduce serious competition into the market. :D

Re:A solution

[grasshoppa]

You aren't wrong, and I'll be the first to admit my idea is a pipedream. However, if you think public infrastructure would be any more snooped on than our current infrastructure I have some bad news for you.

If anything, the use of public funds to create a public infrastructure should result in more legal-required transparency, not less. It might actually result in more privacy controls, which would be an interesting side-effect.

Since Google's recent actions I'n not so motivated

[thadtheman]

It's not that I don't think the ISPs should notbe given control of the internet. The ISPs have shown that they shouldn't be given control by their bad behaviour.

I'm just not so interested in fighting the ISPs so that Google can control the internet.

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The greatest trick of Google was proving to the world that it was not evil.