Bahnhof is the Swedish free-speech-oriented ISP that was finally forced to block access to Sci-Hub (a site providing principled access to paywalled scientific literature) retaliated against science publishing giant Elsevier and the Swedish Patent and Market Court by blocking access to their
When Trump's FCC Chairman Ajit Pai killed Net Neutrality (by illegally ignoring legitimate comments in support of it in favor of millions of anti-Net Neutrality comments sent by identity-stealing bots), he promised that it would spur growth in the telcoms sector — and of course, he should know, because he used to be a Verizon exec. — Read the rest
We're just a few Congressional signatures short of triggering the Congressional Review Act on Net Neutrality (we've already got the Senate); and that will push Trump to have to publicly reject Net Neutrality (which 87% of Americans, including a majority of Republicans, support) or override the FCC and restore Net Neutrality to America.
Evan Greer writes, "Hey Internet — it's election time, and shills for Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T are going around telling our elected officials in Congress that no one cares about net neutrality anymore. They want our lawmakers to think they can just keep raking in campaign contributions and screwing over Internet users without any consequences. — Read the rest
The Democrats' newly unveiled "Internet Bill of Rights" enumerates ten rights that the party says it will enshrine in law, ranging from Net Neutrality to data portability to timely notification of breaches to opt-in for data collection, the right to see the data held on you by surveillance capitalists, rights to privacy and to be free from surveillance-driven discrimination, pro-competitive measures and so forth.
Competition scholar Tim Wu has described how industries over time become more concentrated and less competitive, as executives move sideways from one giant company to another, creating a web of backchannels that lets the companies unite to pursue their industry-wide goals rather than competing with each other to deliver better service at better prices to their customers.
Ajit Pai called it "illegal." EFF called it "the strongest Net Neutrality measure in the country." The telecoms companies got their employees to demand that California Governor Jerry Brown veto it. Jerry Brown just signed it.
With 41 days until the midterm elections, today is the day to put your lawmaker on notice: vote for the Congressional Review Act, overturn the Trump FCC ban on Net Neutrality, and restore Net Neutrality to America. The Vote for Net Neutrality chatbot is here to help: tell it where you live, it'll tell you who's running in your district and put you in touch with them. — Read the rest
California's best-in-America Net Neutrality law goes a long way to restoring the protections that Trump's FCC Chairman Ajit Pai destroyed when he unilaterally and illegally repealed the FCC's national Net Neutrality rules.
Competition scholar and cyberlawyer Tim Wu (previously) is best known for coining the term "Net Neutrality," but his work ranges over all sorts of issues related to technology, competition, monopoly and innovation; in his forthcoming book, The Curse of Bigness: Antitrust in the New Gilded Age, he makes the case for breaking up the tech giants, starting with Facebook — because the problem with Big Tech isn't "tech," it's "big."
"County Fire has experienced throttling by its ISP, Verizon," wrote Santa Clara County Fire Chief Anthony Bowden a lawsuit declaration. "This throttling has had a significant impact on our ability to provide emergency services. Verizon imposed these limitations despite being informed that throttling was actively impeding County Fire's ability to provide crisis-response and essential emergency services." — Read the rest
The Attorneys General of New York, California, Connecticut, Delaware, Hawaii, Illinois, Iowa, Kentucky, Maine, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Vermont, Virginia, Washington, and the District of Columbia have filed suit in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. — Read the rest
Josh from Fight for the Future writes, "Big news out of Alaska this morning: Local entrepreneur Jennie Stewart of CustomMousePad.com has gone public with news that Congressman Don Young promised he would sign the Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution discharge petition to help restore net neutrality when the two of them met on Capitol Hill back in June. — Read the rest
Rep. Mike Coffman [R-CO] — one of the signatories to the Democrat-led bid to overrule the FCC and restore Net Neutrality — has introduced The 21st Century Internet Act, which amends the 1934 Telecommunications Act to add a new category of regulated service that ISPs will fit into, sidestepping the legal wrangles over earlier Net Neutrality efforts, which hung up on trying to squeeze the internet into categories that were set in the Marconi era.
The Discharge Petition that cleared the Senate in May is struggling in the House (as we knew it would).
California Assembly member Miguel Santiago [D-83/@SantiagoAD53] is the chairman of the Communications and Conveyance Committee, where he is single-handedly sabotaging the state's outstanding proposed Net Neutrality bill.
Here's the fourth and final part of my reading (MP3) of Petard (part one, part two, part three), a story from MIT Tech Review's Twelve Tomorrows, edited by Bruce Sterling; a story inspired by, and dedicated to, Aaron Swartz — about elves, Net Neutrality, dorms and the collective action problem. — Read the rest
Yesterday, the California Senate passed S.B. 822, voting 23-12 on party lines; the bill restores strong Net Neutrality protections to the state by banning ISPs from providing services to government entities if they engage in throttling, paid prioritization, zero-rating or other discriminatory practices.
To call Congresswoman Marsha Blackburn [R-TN] a shill for Big Cable is to insult honest, hardworking shills everywhere: she is so deep in hock to Verizon that she has toshill for new subscribers on weekends at a folding table on the sidewalk in front of the Grand Old Opry.
Trump's FCC Chairman Ajit Pai was so determined to ram through a Net Neutrality repeal that he ignored the fact that the FCC's public comment inbox was flooded with fake comments from anti-Net Neutrality bots — at least a million of them — who indiscriminately stole identities from the dead and alive alike (Pai said he'd treat these fake comments with the same weight that he gave to comments from humans, refusing to help law enforcement track down the botmasters, so that the Congressional Budget Office had to step in).
