The Discharge Petition that cleared the Senate in May is struggling in the House (as we knew it would). Read the rest

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. Read the rest

In Washington today, U.S. House Speaker Paul Ryan received a letter signed by 47 Senate Democrats and two independents calling on him to schedule a vote to keep Net Neutrality rules active.

Under Trump's FCC chief Ajit Pai, the Obama-era rules to help keep the internet free, fair, and equal will die next week. 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. Read the rest

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. Read the rest

Here's the third part of my reading (MP3) of Petard (part one, part two), 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.

MP3 Read the rest

Comcast is America's perennial most hated company, so it's hard to imagine how it could get even less popular, but you've got to give the company credit: on the way to growing to never-seen size and profitability, it continues to lead its ever-more-unpopular industry in customer dissatisfaction! Read the rest

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). Read the rest

Two days ago, the Senate voted to overrule Trump FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and restore Net Neutrality; it was an incredible victory, but unless the same motion passes in the House, it's a symbolic one. Read the rest

Why do 87% of Americans hold a favorable view of Net Neutrality? Not because the vast majority of the country has become wonkishly interested in the intersection of competition policy and telcoms regulation: it's because they care about the internet. Read the rest

The Senate has successfully voted to overrule FCC Chairman Ajit Pai and save Net Neutrality (provided that Congress and Trump agree); the vote was a squeaker on near straight party lines: all the Dems and independents voted to keep Net Neutrality, and they won the day thanks to help from three Republicans who split from their party: Susan M Collins [R-ME]; John Kennedy [R-LA] and Lisa Murkowski [R-AK]. Read the rest

The US Senate has just voted in favor of REVERSING the #NetNeutrality rollback which Trump FCC chairman, Ajit Pai put in place. This is a major win for the internet, Net Neutrality, and the American people. Read the rest

Today, Senate Democrats will force a vote on whether to rescue Net Neutrality from the depredations of Vichy nerd Ajit Pai; the debate is streaming now and will continue until 3PM Eastern/12PM Pacific, when the Senate will vote. Read the rest

Andrew Rice's long profile of neutracidal FCC chairman Ajit Pai paints a portrait of a genuine nerd who really loves the ways the internet let him escape his small-town life, who really dotes on memes and Star Wars, and who threw fun parties when he was a young man -- and who is a textbook bootlicker, convinced that corporations will save America from the tyranny of government overreach, and who decided that if Trump was the way to get there, he would carry water for Trump. Read the rest

Net Neutrality is extraordinarily, improbably popular with Americans: 87% of Americans have both heard of Net Neutrality and believe it should be protected; virtually the only opponents Net Neutrality has are telcoms lobbyists and politicians who've had money funneled their way through telcoms PACs and direct contributions. Read the rest

Comcast is a perennial winner of national polls for the most hated company in America, and the bigger it gets, the worse it gets: back in 2011, the Obama administration let the company swallow NBC Universal, teeing it up to powerfully benefit from the destruction of Net Neutrality under Trump; now Trump is poised to let the company buy Fox and Sky, making the company bigger and more powerful. Read the rest

Back when the anti-Net-Neutrality was pretending to have anything like an argument (apart from, "NETWORK NEUTRALITY INTERFERES WITH MY ABILITY TO BECOME LIMITLESSLY RICH, GO FUCK YOURSELF), one of the stupid pieces of spaghetti they threw at the wall was, "The FCC shouldn't regulate telcos, that's the FTC's job." Read the rest