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Major Websites Are Planning a 'Day of Action' To Block Repeal of Net Neutrality (medium.com)
An anonymous reader writes: Fight for the Future, a nonprofit advocacy group concerned with digital rights, has posted to medium today, revealing that many major websites, online communities, and internet users are planning a "day of action" focused on finding the final vote needed to pass the Congressional Review Act (CRA). "50 Senators have already come out in support of the CRA, which would completely overturn the FCC's December 14 decision and restore net neutrality protections," the post reads. "Several Senators have indicated that they are considering becoming the 51st vote we need to win, but they're under huge pressure from telecom lobbyists. Only a massive burst of energy from the internet will get them to move."
The day of action is scheduled for February 27, and participants include Tumblr, Etsy, Vimeo, Medium, Namecheap, Imgur, Sonos, and DuckDuckGo. "Internet users will be encouraged to sound the alarm on social media and sign up to receive alerts with their lawmaker's position on net neutrality and prompts to take action on the big day, while websites, subreddits, and online communities will display prominent alerts driving phone calls, emails, and tweets to Senators and Representatives calling on them to pass the CRA." The post notes that we're faced with an uphill battle as the fight will elevate to the House of Representatives if the CRA can pass the Senate. From there it will go to the President's desk.
The day of action is scheduled for February 27, and participants include Tumblr, Etsy, Vimeo, Medium, Namecheap, Imgur, Sonos, and DuckDuckGo. "Internet users will be encouraged to sound the alarm on social media and sign up to receive alerts with their lawmaker's position on net neutrality and prompts to take action on the big day, while websites, subreddits, and online communities will display prominent alerts driving phone calls, emails, and tweets to Senators and Representatives calling on them to pass the CRA." The post notes that we're faced with an uphill battle as the fight will elevate to the House of Representatives if the CRA can pass the Senate. From there it will go to the President's desk.
the current administration has ignored everything thrown at them with regards to net neutrality. They've used obviously false & spam comments as proof that people support repeal. They've lied about cable companies expanding. They just plain don't care what anyone thinks.
The thing is, NN is small potatoes to most people. It's gonna mean $10-$20 month out of their pockets for their cable bill, if that. 99% of Americans are never going to start an internet business to compete with established players. They don't have the capital, the skills or the time & energy. For most Americans surviving is all they can do. 40% of us don't have $1k in the bank.
I've said it before and will say it again, if NN is important to you then you have to listen to issues that are important to the rest of Americans. You need to get them health care, jobs and education. One they've taken care of survival and other more pressing concerns then you can hit them up to support your pet freedom project.
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"Several Senators have indicated that they are considering becoming the 51st vote we need to win, but they're under huge pressure from telecom lobbyists."
Jesus.
"We want to do what we know is the right thing, but we can't just say no to a pile of money for doing what we know is the wrong thing!"
This country is so fucked up.
Trump will veto any action to overturn Pai... and I don't think a 2/3rds majority to support such action is likely. Say goodbye to Net Neutrality until Trump is gone.
Yawn.
Nobody cares. Turn your stupid website off. We'll go play video games. You're not that important.
Even if the 51st vote is found, then it heads to the House where it will most likely die. If by some miracle the house passes it, it will go to President Trump and he will surely veto it.
So I guess everyone involved can feel good they did something, but I can't see how this will change the decision on NN.
They're perfectly willing to showboat for something pushed out by the last president, but unwilling to make it the law of the land in the normal "write a bill, pass it by both house and senate, and get the president to sign it".
If they did that, what the FCC chairperson of the week says does not matter. They would have to implement the law.
Why are the idiots multiplying in droves?
Child Tax Credit.
Reddit was covered in net neutrality spam for days, and people have already forgotten about it. People don't remember the SOPA protests either, which was only effective because of Wikipedia, which is now too embroiled by admin abuse to be effective.
Tumblr, Etsy, Vimeo, Medium, Namecheap, Imgur, Sonos, and DuckDuckGo
Those are not "major web sites". This is a list of major web sites. Only one of those is even on the list, and it clocks in at #47.
I'd wager the average dude on the street hasn't heard of a single one of those sites.
Now if you can get Google, Facebook, or Youtube to join, then maybe somebody will notice. You know, the kind of sites you can mention to a random stranger on the street and they know what you're talking about.
Stop playing with yourselves. You ain't gonna do shit.
We don't have to "think" about the definition of net neutrality. We have had a perfectly good one for over a decade:
https://www.eff.org/issues/net...
So maybe you should tell us what you think it is.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Keep the NN rules so the existing big brand monopolies and their paper insulated NN networks can stay in place?
All the federal NN rules did was further protect a few part political connected monopoly telcos and their POTS networks.
Let the innovative private sector move in and create some really great new networks all over the USA.
With no competition and protective federal NN rules nothing is upgraded by the few NN network monopoly telcos.
Someday a wealthy walled community, city, town can build its own new community broadband and bring in new ISP.
Competition at last.
Domestic spying is now "Benign Information Gathering"
Hahahah shut the fuck up you paid shill. Jesus christ i can't believe i spent all my mod points before seeing your post.
Even fucking comcast of all places has *some* support of net neturality. Except for the parts they don't like, naturally.
It's obvious you're not a real person. Why the fuck are you guys posting on slashdot of all places though? This place is just a clubhouse for a few old nerds these days.
are promising them jobs. Good jobs. They're gonna send the Mexicans who took their jobs packing, and punish the companies who outsource jobs. And not just any jobs. Good jobs. The kind they can do. The kind that paid their pappy and their grandpappy enough for a nice house a car and a family.
Meanwhile the folks yelling about NN are promising $10-$20 off your cable bill. Oh, I suppose they also said they'd knock a few points off your kid's student loans. Seriously, that's all I heard from the other side in the last election. It's a whole lot of stuff they either can live without, don't care about or is just plain out of reach. It's meaningless to them.
Americans want populism. That's why Trump won and why Bernie is the most popular politician in America.
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where it counts. If they're concentrated in swing states then it might as well be most people. And they are.
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Are we also supposed to turn our lights off, and not buy gasoline (or anything else) for the day as well?
Because THAT'LL accomplish SOMETHING! I'm SURE of it!
Ow. Need to head to an opthalmologist. I just strained a bunch of things from rolling my eyes so hard...
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Yeah. I pay my ISP for my connection to "the Internet" and my traffic. They pay their ISP for their connection to "the Internet" and their traffic. That's how its 'supposed to work'.
Then some ISPs got the bright idea that even though I'm a their customer and am paying them to deliver packets to me from the servers of my choice; thay they could start a protection racket and charge the operator of the server extortion money not to 'disrupt' or 'slowdown' the packets.
ie... my ISP says to various service providers i use:
"Gee, a lot of our customers are requesting packets from you; you must have a really nice useful service there. Be a shame if anything stopped your packets reaching our customers; maybe if you pay us some protection money we'll make sure they get there safe and sound!"
Obama had no choice but to appoint Ajit Pai to the FCC. A Republican seat was open. The Republicans proposed Pai. Obama had to accept him.
If you want to blame anyone, blame Trump for elevating Pai to the chair.
If it weren't for deadlines, nothing would be late.
Is that lack of net neutrality works both ways. The websites can gang up and do unto the ISPs what the ISPs want to do to them. The major websites (Google, Facebook, Reddit, Yahoo, Netflix, etc) could agree that if they detected an ISP throttling any one of them, all of them would throttle that ISP. Then the ISPs would have the power to throttle websites, but would be afraid to use it for fear of signing their own Internet death warrant.
Their should be no problem to target some of the many people who supported the repeal.
Starting with Pai himself.
Then, if not the ISPs, the GAFA, Tweeter, Facebook, etc, could throttle down their services to show them what "no Net Neutrality" really means. Ideally inserting forms asking for money to get higher grade services.
What about Cloudflare ? They said they were looking for all possible legal action to throttle Pai's Internet ?
Totof
Thank spaghetti monster they are finding the vote! Don’t let those pigs hide it any longer. Find the vote! Find the vote!
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#BringBackOurGirls, for example.
The average American has no idea what Net Neutrality is, and a bunch of D-list websites organizing a 'day of action' that likely won't be reported on the evening news will have close to no impact, and will likely not result in 'flipping' that covered 51st senator, and I can't even begin to imagine the uphill battle this group will face in the House.
BTW, having 51 senators supporting a bill doesn't guarantee it will be brought up for a vote in the senate.
Ken
I'm still not convinced net neutrality is good for the consumer. When you see almost every major corporation spending so much energy defending it, it should make you suspicious. Is having a big bureaucracy going to help things? I would argue the lack of regulation is what made the internet develop so well compared to the telecoms.
What if I want to buy a service that prioritizes time sensitive traffic like SIP? Not all traffic is the same. Streaming video can easily handle a high degree of jitter. My phone call cannot.
Shouldn't the rules instead be around preventing monopolies. Restrict exclusivity agreements in municipalities. Break up Comcast and Verizon. There are plenty of other ways to better handle this. The only thing worse than big business is big government in bed with big business. NN is a huge mistake.
...of participants. If any one of the following participated, it would have an immediate impact:
* Google
* Amazon
* Youtube
* Facebook
* Twitter
* The major porn sites/networks.
* Maybe Ebay and/or PayPal.
Without any of those players, this effort will be forgotten after half a news cycle.
BTW - DuckDuckGo participating is the one search engine that won't make a dent. People that are aware enough of internet-related issues to use DuckDuckGo have likely already written entire treatises about the evils of net neutrality online to spread the word...
"The only argument you pro-NN people ever have is the netflix deal."
I didn't mention netflix.
There are plenty of good examples. Many ISPs are also landline providers, cellular phone providers, and/or in the cableTV business. Many also offer internetTV and/or voip services; or they form partnerships with various providers of those services. And then they have all kinds of incentives to ensure their own (or their partners) telephony and video services work best, including prioritizing them on the network, or even throttling their competitors.
We aren't going to see a lot of big tiffs like Netflix a few years ago, or Amazon and Google fighting over youtube (not an NN issue, but the same type of competing interests are creating that mess.)
What we are going to see is that the ISPs will pick the winners and losers of internet services. And by 'pick' I mean get 'paid for', resulting in the entrenchment of existing large players, which already had the advantage.
Meanwhile the only argument you anti-NN people ever has is ... well... nothing. There is no good anti-NN argument, is there? I've yet to hear one that was:
a) any good.
b) anything to do with NN*
* I have heard lots of great arguments that medical monitoring and voip traffic shouldn't have to be treated like windows updates and bit torrents from anti-NN quacks, and I even agree with that, but that's really got nothing to do with NN.