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Ajit Pai Taunts Net Neutrality Critics. Mark Hamill Taunts Ajit Pai (mashable.com)
An anonymous reader writes:
Just days before voting to repeal net neutrality regulations, FCC chairman Ajit Pai introduced a comedy video at the annual gathering of the Federal Communications Bar Association -- and it offered its own self-disparaging version of Pai's tenure as a Verizon attorney in 2003. "We want to brainwash and groom a Verizon puppet to install as FCC chairman," says a real-world Verizon executive appearing in the videotaped skit. "That sounds awesome," Pai responds.
And the day of the vote Pai also appeared in another trying-to-be-funny video on the conservative site The Daily Caller demonstrating "seven things you can still do on the internet after net neutrality." In the first image he's holding a fidget spinner and dressed as Santa Claus, and the unmistakably patronizing video reminds critics that they can still upload photos of their meals to Instagram and "post photos of cute animals, like puppies." He also demonstrated that net neutrality critics can still stay part of their favorite fan communities -- by showing himself holding a light saber. And this unexpectedly drew the wrath of Star Wars actor Mark Hamill, who responded on Twitter by calling him "Ajit 'Aren't I Precious?' Pai."
Hamill also added that "you are profoundly unworthy 2 wield a lightsaber. A Jedi acts selflessly for the common man, NOT lie 2 enrich giant corporations." When U.S. Senator Ted Cruz responded -- likening government overreach to Darth Vader and urging Hamill to "reject the dark side" -- Hamill responded again, complaining that the Senator was "smarm-splaining." Hamill also added, "you'd have more credibility if you spelled my name correctly. I mean IT'S RIGHT THERE IN FRONT OF YOU! Maybe you're just distracted from watching porn at the office again."
The Houston Chronicle reports that the newest meme on Twitter is now Pai's over-sized coffee mug stamped with the logo for Reese's Peanut Butter cups, "which he occasionally sipped from during the widely-criticized reversal." The Dangerous Minds site notes that some angry net neutrality supporters have even taken their complaints to Reese's Facebook page, adding "Perhaps these protester's pleas to the candy company are simply a misguided hope that someone, ANYONE will listen to their frustration."
"Clearly, the FCC wasn't listening to the estimated 83% of Americans who support net neutrality."
And the day of the vote Pai also appeared in another trying-to-be-funny video on the conservative site The Daily Caller demonstrating "seven things you can still do on the internet after net neutrality." In the first image he's holding a fidget spinner and dressed as Santa Claus, and the unmistakably patronizing video reminds critics that they can still upload photos of their meals to Instagram and "post photos of cute animals, like puppies." He also demonstrated that net neutrality critics can still stay part of their favorite fan communities -- by showing himself holding a light saber. And this unexpectedly drew the wrath of Star Wars actor Mark Hamill, who responded on Twitter by calling him "Ajit 'Aren't I Precious?' Pai."
Hamill also added that "you are profoundly unworthy 2 wield a lightsaber. A Jedi acts selflessly for the common man, NOT lie 2 enrich giant corporations." When U.S. Senator Ted Cruz responded -- likening government overreach to Darth Vader and urging Hamill to "reject the dark side" -- Hamill responded again, complaining that the Senator was "smarm-splaining." Hamill also added, "you'd have more credibility if you spelled my name correctly. I mean IT'S RIGHT THERE IN FRONT OF YOU! Maybe you're just distracted from watching porn at the office again."
The Houston Chronicle reports that the newest meme on Twitter is now Pai's over-sized coffee mug stamped with the logo for Reese's Peanut Butter cups, "which he occasionally sipped from during the widely-criticized reversal." The Dangerous Minds site notes that some angry net neutrality supporters have even taken their complaints to Reese's Facebook page, adding "Perhaps these protester's pleas to the candy company are simply a misguided hope that someone, ANYONE will listen to their frustration."
"Clearly, the FCC wasn't listening to the estimated 83% of Americans who support net neutrality."
Let the Intertube Memes begin! This will not be pretty! Well, it will be pretty funny...
I do, however, wonder if there might be legal ramifications in any lawsuits brought on the Net Neutrality issue? An impartial judge might look dimly on this buffoonery...
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
He's a retard.
Mark Hamill seems to forget that, in the Star Wars universe, the light sabre lost to the politicians scheming... Palpatines manoeuvres in the senate got him far further than wielding a light sabre ever did.
Call your representatives and tell them what you want. Congress can pass a law to ensure net neutrality but they have to know it matters to voters. Also, if they won't support it then you need to get involved politically. If your preferred political party does not support net neutrality then you may want to reexamine why you are aligning yourself with them.
Anons need not reply. Questions end with a question mark.
Ajit Pai is not only incompetent... he's also a complete clown.
Exactly. So people are getting their Star Wars analogy wrong when they compare him to Darth Vader. This guy is Jar-jar Binks.
I don't think I'd call Pai incompetent. Earnestly trying to do right by the American people, and failing, that is incompetence. Actively trying to screw us over, and succeeding, that's something else, but not incompetence. You can only consider him incompetent if you think this shitshow isn't intentional.
You want them in chronological order? I mean, you could have just googled it for yourself. https://www.freepress.net/blog...
Here we go, and when this is over I expect you to apologize to the entire class for being such a dumbass...
MADISON RIVER: In 2005, North Carolina ISP Madison River Communications blocked the voice-over-internet protocol (VOIP) service Vonage. Vonage filed a complaint with the FCC after receiving a slew of customer complaints. The FCC stepped in to sanction Madison River and prevent further blocking, but it lacks the authority to stop this kind of abuse today.
COMCAST: In 2005, the nation’s largest ISP, Comcast, began secretly blocking peer-to-peer technologies that its customers were using over its network. Users of services like BitTorrent and Gnutella were unable to connect to these services. 2007 investigations from the Associated Press, the Electronic Frontier Foundation and others confirmed that Comcast was indeed blocking or slowing file-sharing applications without disclosing this fact to its customers.
TELUS: In 2005, Canada’s second-largest telecommunications company, Telus, began blocking access to a server that hosted a website supporting a labor strike against the company. Researchers at Harvard and the University of Toronto found that this action resulted in Telus blocking an additional 766 unrelated sites.
AT&T: From 2007–2009, AT&T forced Apple to block Skype and other competing VOIP phone services on the iPhone. The wireless provider wanted to prevent iPhone users from using any application that would allow them to make calls on such “over-the-top” voice services. The Google Voice app received similar treatment from carriers like AT&T when it came on the scene in 2009.
WINDSTREAM: In 2010, Windstream Communications, a DSL provider with more than 1 million customers at the time, copped to hijacking user-search queries made using the Google toolbar within Firefox. Users who believed they had set the browser to the search engine of their choice were redirected to Windstream’s own search portal and results.
MetroPCS: In 2011, MetroPCS, at the time one of the top-five U.S. wireless carriers, announced plans to block streaming video over its 4G network from all sources except YouTube. MetroPCS then threw its weight behind Verizon’s court challenge against the FCC’s 2010 open internet ruling, hoping that rejection of the agency’s authority would allow the company to continue its anti-consumer practices.
PAXFIRE: In 2011, the Electronic Frontier Foundation found that several small ISPs were redirecting search queries via the vendor Paxfire. The ISPs identified in the initial Electronic Frontier Foundation report included Cavalier, Cogent, Frontier, Fuse, DirecPC, RCN and Wide Open West. Paxfire would intercept a person’s search request at Bing and Yahoo and redirect it to another page. By skipping over the search service’s results, the participating ISPs would collect referral fees for delivering users to select websites.
AT&T, SPRINT and VERIZON: From 2011–2013, AT&T, Sprint and Verizon blocked Google Wallet, a mobile-payment system that competed with a similar service called Isis, which all three companies had a stake in developing.
VERIZON: In 2012, the FCC caught Verizon Wireless blocking people from using tethering applications on their phones. Verizon had asked Google to remove 11 free tethering applications from the Android marketplace. These applications allowed users to circumvent Verizon’s $20 tethering fee and turn their smartphones into Wi-Fi hot spots. By blocking those applications, Ve
You are welcome on my lawn.
Yeah they are. In fact, nearly every ISP is in exactly the same position as the original AT&T.
The part you're missing is that when it comes to consumer impact, it doesn't matter if there's a better ISP in a city a hundred miles away. You still live in your town, and you're not going to pack up, sell your house, and move to another city just to get better Internet service. You're stuck with what is available in your geographical area.
The reason they broke up the Bell system and, in the process, massively regulated the resulting smaller companies, is that geographical monopolies are fundamentally bad, and it doesn't make a dime's worth of difference how big the geographical area is. The critical part of the AT&T breakup was not splitting up the nationwide monopoly on end-user access, but rather splitting the long-distance provider from the end-user access provider, eliminating any real opportunity for the latter (which were regional monopolies) to limit which long-distance carrier you could use. We have almost the exact same problem now, with ISPs also being cable providers and voice telephone providers that can (and often do) unfairly compete with other streaming video and voice providers that operate over the Internet.
As for the equipment thing... well, Comcast won't provide static IP blocks without renting a Comcast Business Gateway from them. So we've kind of gotten back to that problem, too.
In other words, in every way other than the nationwide aspect, we've been at the exact same point that led to the breakup of AT&T for at least half a decade, if not longer. And as I said earlier, it doesn't matter if an ISP has a monopoly only in your town, in the county, or in an entire region. Unless your house has wheels, you're not going to move it to the next town over, the next county over, or the next state over just to get a better ISP. So anybody claiming that regional wire-line monopolies are somehow different from national wire-line monopolies in any meaningful way is kidding him/herself.
Just saying.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
The removal of NN will allow new brands to emerge.
Boy, do you have that backwards.
Search engines that don't derank for US party political reasons.
Nope. Without NN, your ISP can redirect your search requests to their own search engine without even having to tell users that they're doing it. You might not even know that you're getting a substandard experience. Big search engines can, of course, afford to pay those ISPs to avoid that, but those new brands you're hoping will emerge? They won't have the money to do so, so they'll be stillborn.
And the same problem exists with all of your other ill-informed beliefs about net neutrality. Repealing net neutrality doesn't create opportunities for new Internet companies to emerge. In point of fact, the repeal of net neutrality does the exact opposite, providing new ways for existing large companies to become entrenched in ways that keep new players from being able to enter the field at all.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
I know how to use the internet without Google, without Facebook, without Twitter.
How do I do it without an ISP?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.