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To Save Net Neutrality, We Must Build Our Own Internet (vice.com)
In light of reports that FCC plans to announce a full repeal of net neutrality protections later this week, Jason Koebler, editor-in-chief of Motherboard, suggests that it is time we cut our reliance on big telecom monopolies. He writes: Net neutrality as a principle of the federal government will soon be dead, but the protections are wildly popular among the American people and are integral to the internet as we know it. Rather than putting such a core tenet of the internet in the hands of politicians, whose whims and interests change with their donors, net neutrality must be protected by a populist revolution in the ownership of internet infrastructure and networks. In short, we must end our reliance on big telecom monopolies and build decentralized, affordable, locally owned internet infrastructure. The great news is this is currently possible in most parts of the United States. There has never been a better time to start your own internet service provider, leverage the publicly available fiber backbone, or build political support for new, local-government owned networks. For the last several months, Motherboard has been chronicling the myriad ways communities passed over by big telecom have built their own internet networks or have partnered with small ISPs who have committed to protecting net neutrality to bring affordable high speed internet to towns and cities across the country. Update: FCC has announced a plan to repeal net neutrality.
I'd be interested to see how these "communities" manage to afford to lay their own billion dollar T1 backbone infrastructure. Good luck rattling the tin for the funds for that! You might as well say people who are fed up with traffic laws should built their own highways - a dose of realism is needed here people. Infrastructure is NOT cheap.
I believe the subject of the article was written as a bet to see how long it would take for the first reference about blackjack and hookers to be posted.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
This is the real problem to building your own Internet: Comcast and friends make that illegal b/c it kills profits.
Obama's legacy: (N)othing (S)ecure (A)nywhere and (T)error (S)imulation (A)dministration
however, the big issue is the connection to our old friend, The Connected Internet. if you don't live next to a peering point, you are going to have to backhaul to it, or hook to another Tier 1 or 2 provider who is. money, money, money. lighting the glass is not free, either.
pipe dream.
if this is supposed to be a new economy, how come they still want my old fashioned money?
Because what you are now motivated to do, was the only robust solution anyway. Market pain beats political bootlicking. Don't beg for what you want, build it.
Net Neutrality today is not what Net Neutrality was back in the days. These days, we're actually discussing 2015's FCC Title II rules. See :
https://apps.fcc.gov/edocs_pub...
Part of Micheal Orielly's dissent to this (he's an Obama appointee for anyone thinking this is a Trump thing), the part relevant to framing our understanding of old vs new Net Neutrality, is as follows (see page 399) :
The FCC "fact" sheet promised bright line rules, but the reality is that the bulk of this rulemaking
will be conducted through case-by-case adjudication, mostly at the Bureau level and in the courts. To be
sure, there are three bright line rules: no blocking, no throttling, and no paid prioritization. But those are
mere needles in a Title II haystack.
Essentially, Title II is too vast, to burdensome and basically serves as a stiffling mechanism to Internet growth, while failing to promote the 3 essential rules of Net Neutrality we've fought a decade and more for. How anyone just wants to hang out to a 2 year old set of rules that are simply too heavy handed and do not serve our goals is beyond me. It's not like we're discussing repealing 2 decade old rules here. We didn't have Title II prior to 2015 and the Internet was just fine.
True Net Neutrality would be simple as Mr. Orielly points out.
"Not to mention all the idiots who use words like boxen."
Anonymous Coward on Monday August 04, @06:49PM
It's electing people who are committed to CITIZEN'S INTERESTS to Congress. They can actively appoint qualified, and public-interest-minded heads of departments, like the FCC.
During Obama's presidency, we had Tom Wheeler, who ruled (almost universally) in favor of citizens' interests...and, in fact, established the "Net Neutrality" rules in 2015...against the wishes of one of his Commission members, Ajit Pai. When Wheeler retired, Ajit Pai (who is a legal shill who worked at Verizon, who benefits from his decisions) ascended to the Chairman post, and started dismantling the good work done by Mr. Wheeler...mostly (I posit) because he wants that job back at Verizon, when he is replaced in the future.
The Republicans are notoriously favorable to providing more advantages to large corporations (e.g., Verizon) and couldn't care less about you and me. With the Buffoon in the White House, and a Republican dominated Congress, we can expect virtually every government-sponsored benefit to citizens to be abolished or diminished.
So, to my mind the ONLY ONE SOLUTION is to restore our government to attending to benefits for citizens...it's not going to be done by a party that passes legislation to give Fat Cats tax breaks, and make you and I pay MORE taxes to cover the giveaway. Have YOU figured out the solution yet? It's a plain as the nose on your face! Make sure that we elect people who CARE about the citizens' interests, not just lining their own pockets. They will do the work of replacing the people who are engaged in wholesale destruction of every potential good for citizens. I reason that there is NO REASON our country should be favoring large businesses over individual citizens. Others' may believe differently.
Trump voters did this. And worse.
Please, rethink your politics. This is just the beginning of the train wreck.