In Packets, Please, you are the boss of CosmoCast, a corrupt, post-Net Neutrality ISP; your job is to "boost, throttle or disconnect" people based on their activities -- you can boost Trump's tweets, disconnect political dissidents, and throttle rival video-on-demand services, working at breakneck speed to keep the packets flowing in the way that optimizes the internet for your shareholders at the expense of your users.
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Calling the FCC's decision to kill Net Neutrality the "road to serfdom" Senator Ron Wyden [D-OR] introduced the legislation he'd co-sponsored with Senator Ed Markey [D-MA] to restore Neutrality.
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It's CPAC! The annual far-right hootenanny for preppers, false-flaggers, climate deniers, truthers, and the sort of person who closes their eyes and thinks of The Fountainhead, featuring Marion Maréchal-Le Pen of France, Nigel Farage, Sean Hannity, and mass-murder enthusiast Wayne LaPierre.
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Ajit Pai's Net Neutrality-killing order is scheduled to go into effect on April 23, and when that happens, it'll be open season on the free, fair and open internet.
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In a bizarre twist of facts, the FCC has
claimed this week that its annual report proves the repeal of Net Neutrality has made the Internet better for all of us. The report is an exercise in contradictions, claiming that "advanced telecommunications capability is being deployed to all Americans," and quoting the phrase "in a reasonable and timely fashion".
First it was Montana, then New York, then California -- and now New Jersey has become the latest state to enact state-level Net Neutrality rules in defiance of Trump FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, who not only killed Net Neutrality despite the obvious fraud and deceit in the regulatory process, but also insists (as his Democratic predecessor, Tom Wheeler, did) that states do not have the right to override federal communications policy.
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An act of heroic trolling from Net Neutrality advocate Rob Bliss, who "throttled" access to DC's 12th Street by traffic-coning all but one lane, then cycled slowly up and down the remaining lane with a sign offering drivers "priority access" to his "fast lane" for $5/month.
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The FCC's order killing Net Neutrality in December 2016 also includes a prohibition on states making their own telcoms rules that restore it (this is a mixed bag -- if states' rights don't permit them to overrule the FCC, then a future FCC that reinstates a Net Neutrality order could stop states whose governments are captured by telcoms lobbyists from subverting it), and states have fought back though a loophole: the governors of Montana and New York have issued executive orders banning non-Neutral ISPs from doing business with the government; but in California, the State Senate just went further.
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Days after Montana Democratic Governor Steve Bullock signed an executive order banning ISPs that violate Net Neutrality from supplying state government agencies, New York Governor Andrew Cuomo (also a Democrat) has followed suit, with an even stricter executive order.
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Burger King's video on "Whopper Neutrality" (see Carla's earlier post) -- an analogy to explain Net Neutrality that's also obviously a marketing campaign for Burger King -- is a surprisingly great explainer, but even more importantly, it's an important bellwether for corporate America's perception of public support for Net Neutrality.
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Municipal networks are cheaper and faster than the ones that cable and telephone duopolists build after being given exclusive franchises to serve cities, which is why the FCC had to issue an order banning cities to stop building them -- in the absence of such an order, it seems likely that most of America would end up using municipal internet connections (unlike today, when 100,000,000 Americans are served by a single ISP).
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Governor Steve Bullock [D-MT] has signed an executive order banning state agencies from procuring internet service from ISPs that violate net neutrality principles like throttling, blocking and paid prioritization.
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After Trump's FCC Chairman Ajit Pai rammed through an order killing Net Neutrality -- citing easily disproved lies, ignoring millions of public comments -- activists started pinning their hopes on something called the Congressional Review Act, which gives Congress and the Senate the power to overrule the decisions of regulators from the administrative agencies like the FCC.
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After Trump FCC Chairman Ajit Pai killed Net Neutrality -- a deed so indefensible he literally won't defend it -- activists announced their intention to pressure 30 Senators into calling for a vote to overturn it.
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MIT Tech Review's Antonio Regalado rounds up the year's stupidest, worst moments in tech, from the guy who created his own CRISPR-based gene therapy to beef up his muscles and injected it to Donald Trump's Twitter feed to the FCC's Net Neutrality catastrophe. Of course, Juicero rates a mention.
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Last week, I interviewed EFF's legal directory Corynne McSherry about the next steps in the Net Neutrality fight in a 35-minute-long livestream; the archived video is now online for your viewing pleasure. We talk about how we got here, what just happened -- and what we're going to do about it.
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