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Internet Activists Urge Congress to Fire Trump's FCC Chief Ajit Pai (vice.com)
Open internet advocates and Democratic lawmakers are mounting a last-ditch effort to remove Federal Communications Commission chief Ajit Pai over his anti-net neutrality stance, just days before Pai is set to be approved by the Senate for a new term. From a report: Since being elevated by President Trump to lead the FCC in January, Pai has become the bete noire of open internet advocates for a variety of anti-consumer actions, but none more so than his crusade to kill federal rules protecting net neutrality, the principle that all internet content should be equally accessible to consumers. [...] During a blistering floor speech on Thursday, Sen. Ron Wyden, the Oregon Democrat, portrayed Pai, a Republican former Verizon lawyer, as an industry stooge who has worked relentlessly to deliver gift after gift to the nation's largest broadband companies. "Mr. Pai has a long track record of putting big cable before consumers, big corporations above small businesses, and pay-to-play over the free and open internet," Wyden wrote in a blog post accompanying his speech. Free Press, a DC-based public interest group, has also launched a campaign to pressure the Senate to "fire Pai," citing his proposal to kill the FCC's net neutrality policy and other anti-consumer actions. But if reconfirmed, Pai is expected to try to ram through his plan to torpedo the FCC's net neutrality rules before the end of the year. "Rehiring Pai to head the agency that oversees US communications policies would be a boon for the phone and cable companies he eagerly serves," Tim Karr, Free Press Senior Director of Strategy, wrote in a blog post.
Ajit Pai is Trump's sort of guy -- advancing the desires of big business over what's good for the average joe.
They're not even remotely the same thing. What is it with the Right and their utter inability to form a coherent analogy????
And yet one party seems to continually come up with legislation to help the average person, while the other party does the exact opposite every single time.
What good is a neutral isp if you are immediately censored to oblivion downstream?
Seriously?
Without net neutrality, everyone can be censored. With it, each INDIVIDUAL site has to do the censoring. AT&T can do much more censoring than can facebook.
facebook censors some Nazis, whatever. They move on.
AT&T does it, well, that's a different story.
So in other words, with net neutrality, nothing will be "censored to oblivion". All those alt-right folks are still up an running - just not on some websites
Lastly, corporations do not deserve freedom. They are an abstract legal construct. Unfortunately, in our twisted society where profits count more than people, corporations have been given supper-person status: all the rights of a person but without the responsibilities.