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The Civ

The Internet Slowdown

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Tonight at midnight, the Internet Slowdown begins. If you don't know about it, read here: https://www.battleforthenet.com/
I hope I don't sound like a spambot or advertisement, but this is serious, this is a very similar situation to PIPA and SOPA a few years back, and we need to stop it.
Imagine big companies having control over how fast sites load, and some control over the content on them, sites just like this.

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It's far more important than stopping SOPA or PIPA. I'm disgusted that Tom Wheeler was appointed to chairman of the FCC.

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Avoozl said:

I really do hope it doesn't succeed.

Knowing how American politics work, it probably will with little chance of failure. God I hope I'm wrong.

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Why can't our tax dollars work towards goals that matter. The FCC within and of itself, is a horrible branch of the government. It should not exist. Or rather, its powers should be drastically reduced.

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Kontra Kommando said:

Why can't our tax dollars work towards goals that matter. The FCC within and of itself, is a horrible branch of the government. It should not exist. Or rather, its powers should be drastically reduced.

No; it needs its power to regulate the greedy telecom companies. The problem is that it's being sabotaged from the inside by the telecom's cronies. It is necessary, it just needs to have good rules to enforce. Gutting net neutrality and enforcing language standards of a bygone era that nobody cares about are the misapplication of the FCC. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.

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Sodaholic said:

No; it needs its power to regulate the greedy telecom companies. The problem is that it's being sabotaged from the inside by the telecom's cronies. It is necessary, it just needs to have good rules to enforce. Gutting net neutrality and enforcing language standards of a bygone era that nobody cares about are the misapplication of the FCC. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.


I'm all for anti-trust laws, against monopolies. But that's ultimately what its main function should be.

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I find it strange how SOPA and PIPA were rid of and yet this is just going on through. The FCC was always kind of a bummer anyways, holding back cellphones and the Amazon delivery bots and all the things.

But this is fucking ridiculous. What the fuck is even going on? People are flat-out calling out Wheeler and he's still mindlessly charging on. American internet is bad enough when some random town in Tennessee has public internet at 1GB per second download speeds while the commercial providers are giving us semi-functional and cheap services at bloated prices.

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Cough up some $ to get your site even show up at all? Yeah, this doesn't reek of lobbying and corruption.

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I don't see what's the problem. ISPs have been using "packet shaping" informally for ages, though it was directed mainly against certain types of revenue-harming traffic like p2p, torrents, and VoIP.

Also, virtually all household ISP contracts have a fine print clause somewhere, which reserves the ISP the right to limit your speed in case of "unfair" or "improper" use.

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Slacktavism at its finest, jesus. Yeah let's change our twitter profile pics, that'll learn em! At least a ton of people are dumping water on their heads for some other issue.

You wanna change something? You want to fix this? Then you'd better be prepared to outspend an entire industry worth over a trillion dollars. Buying legislation in your favor is not cheap.

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Technician said:

It's going to happen. The population has become complacent on the issue.

I just ran around downtown holding a sign pointing people to battleforthenet.com. Surprisingly, I got a lot more positive reception than I expected (there were still occasional idiots that didn't understand or care, even when I tried to explain in the simplest terms possible, politely of course). One guy even honked at me giving a thumbs up. It was mostly the younger people that seemed to get it, the least receptive were the "people of Wal-mart" stereotypical white trash folks who only care about blowing their welfare on corndogs and are allergic to any kind of intelligence or rational thought.

I'm probably gonna be doing this every day until the FCC votes on it.

Maes said:

I don't see what's the problem. ISPs have been using "packet shaping" informally for ages, though it was directed mainly against certain types of revenue-harming traffic like p2p, torrents, and VoIP.

The problem is that they're about to be given explicit power to do so without limit. Sure, they already disrespect the rules, but an official "okay" from the irresponsible and lax "regulators" could make it far worse.

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VGA said:

Why not switch providers?

Despite popular belief, America doesn't have much of a free market. Big conglomerates like Time Warner call the shots. Having government backing like the FCC just makes it worse.

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VGA said:

Why not switch providers?


Not sure if serious, because this is exactly the flawed logic that the suits in charge think is actually an option for anyone. It's either pay out the ass for decent service, or pay slightly less for really terrible service--if another provider is even available because the former corporation has muscled out the competition.

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I was surprised to see how many companies got in on "The Good Fight", Google, Netflix, etc. This'll be interesting.

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Quast said:

Slacktavism at its finest, jesus. Yeah let's change our twitter profile pics, that'll learn em! At least a ton of people are dumping water on their heads for some other issue.

You wanna change something? You want to fix this? Then you'd better be prepared to outspend an entire industry worth over a trillion dollars. Buying legislation in your favor is not cheap.


Everybody wants to change the world, but no one wants to die

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Sodaholic said:

Knowing how American politics work, it probably will with little chance of failure. God I hope I'm wrong.

You're wrong. SOPA, PIPA failed.

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Sodaholic said:

No; it needs its power to regulate the greedy telecom companies. The problem is that it's being sabotaged from the inside by the telecom's cronies. It is necessary, it just needs to have good rules to enforce. Gutting net neutrality and enforcing language standards of a bygone era that nobody cares about are the misapplication of the FCC. Don't throw the baby out with the bathwater.


That's the problem that a lot of people don't seem to understand. Most regulatory branches of the government have been taken over from the inside out, by the same industries they are meant to regulate.

For example the current head of the FCC, Tom Wheeler, was the head of The National Cable & Telecommunications Association and CTIA – The Wireless Association. Both are/where the largest trade groups for there industries.

Michael R. Taylor, the current Deputy Commissioner for Foods of the FDA worked at King & Spalding LLP, one of the law firms representing Monsanto. He also worked for Monsanto as a VP of Public Policy.

It just goes to show how deep the corruption in the Federal government is and in all honesty, I think we all need to prepare for a internet without net neutrality. Sure the FCC might be forced to pass laws protecting it. But, just like regulations put in place to protect us against another bank created financial crisis, the regulations will be slowly but surely overturned.

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doomgargoyle said:

I think the solution to this problem is to launch a satellite to space that provides net service without anyone regulating it.


That would be awful. Spectrum is limited and the FCC's original purpose is to regulate its use. They're good at that. Then there's the fact that satellite connections have horrible latency.

It would probably work better to have governments build networks and license ISPs to use them. For some reason Americans forget their government built the highways. Throw in a provision that people providing service can't provide content. Regulations like that used to be more common. Excuse me while I daydream about pissing on Reagan's grave.

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Not a god damn thing surprises me anymore.

The plan is to just baffle us all on an ever increasing scale, get us more and more used to having things taken away small pieces at a time, until we're entirely maliable/controllable.

They're getting a bit sloppy though, I must say. This one is blatant.

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I'm all for municipal fiber. Chattanooga has been ahead of the curve for a while now (Google tells me that Wilson, NC is also on board with it).

It's a problem that telecom conglomerates have now merged with media conglomerates resulting in corporate entities that compete against themselves (TV vs internet). Not much incentive to offer an unrestricted product if doing so makes your other, more lucrative product look like shit in comparison.

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Doomkid said:

The plan is to just baffle us all on an ever increasing scale, get us more and more used to having things taken away small pieces at a time, until we're entirely maliable/controllable.

They're getting a bit sloppy though, I must say. This one is blatant.


Well said. Unfortunately, I'm not sure this one is as blatantly obvious to most people as it should be. I've mentioned this to my co-workers and not a damn one knew anything about it. If this passes, oh boy...

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