🔥 With your help, we passed Title II net neutrality protections. Now we need to defend it.🔥
On December 14 the FCC will vote on Commissioner Pai’s plan to repeal Title II rules. This week he tried to justify that decision with a “myth busting” explainer where he makes a lot of sweeping claims he doesn’t think you’ll fact check.
So let’s go through his big points:
❌ Mr. Pai claims ISPs won’t block access or throttle content
These are the real facts. Before Title II, the internet was so “free and open” that…
AT&T blocked Skype from iPhones (Fortune) and, later, wanted FaceTime users to pay for a more expensive plan (Freepress).
MetroPCS blocked all streaming video except YouTube (Wired).
In today’s media market where the same huge companies make and deliver content, Commissioner Pai wants us to trust that corporations won’t use their dominance to bury competitive content or services.
❌ Mr. Pai claims Title II keeps ISPs from building new networks
Here’s another claim Commissioner Pai doesn’t want you to fact check, but:
AT&T’s own CEO told investors that the company would deploy more fiber optic networks in 2016 than 2015 when the FCC passed Title II protections (Investor call transcript).
Charter’s CEO said “Title II, it didn’t really hurt us; it hasn’t hurt us” (Ars Technica).
And Comcast actually increased investment in their network by 10% in Q1 of this year (Ars).
❌ Mr. Pai claims repealing Title II won’t hurt competition
As we mentioned above, ISPs tried to interfere with the services their customers could access and courts had to step in to stop them.
The FCC tried to craft net neutrality rules in 2010 called the Open Internet Order but the ISPs sued and won. The courts told the FCC that the only way to guarantee a free and open internet was using their Title II authority. Without those protections, any of these things would be legal:
Your ISP launches a streaming video service and starts throttling other streaming services until they’re unusable.
Your phone company cuts a deal with a popular music streaming service so it doesn’t count towards your data cap but lowers your overall data limit. If a better service comes along (or your favorite artist releases new tracks somewhere else) you can’t use it without incurring huge data fees.
A billionaire buys your ISP and blocks access to news sites that challenge their ideology.
Repealing Title II would be like letting a car company own the roads and banning a competitor from the highways.
❌ Mr. Pai claims there won’t be fast lanes and slow lanes
Let’s break this down: We won’t have fast lanes and slow lanes, we’ll have “priority access” and…non-priority access? Well gosh.
🚨 Please help us protect Title II one more time! 🚨
This week we co-signed a letter with more than 300 other companies—businesses Mr. Pai gleefully ignores—urging the FCC to retain the Title II internet protections. Now we need you.
Go to 👉 Battle For The Net 👈 to start a call with your representatives in Congress. Tell them to publicly support Title II protections.
The FCC votes on December 14.
We’re only powerful when we work together.
Oh, also: that post about automatically unfollowing the #net neutrality tag—it’s not true. It’s really not. That’s not who we are. Whatever happened, we haven’t been able to reproduce it. We tried. A lot.
But if it were true—which it’s not, we feel compelled to say again—THAT’S EXACTLY WHY YOU SHOULD CALL YOUR REPRESENTATIVES and demand a free, open, and neutral internet.
We can do this one more time, guys! ❤️
A current post about Net Neutrality from Tumblr? Ooooo
Yesterday afternoon the House subcommittee that provides Congressional oversight for the FCC held an important hearing about the agency’s current plans, including current Chairman (and former Verizon lawyer) Ajit Pai’s move to gut Title II net neutrality protections that prevent ISPs from controlling what we do online with throttling, censorship, and extra fees.
With Capitol Hill’s attention now on the FCC, and Pai’s final plan to gut net neutrality protections expected in the coming weeks, it’s extra important that Congress gets flooded with phone calls from Internet users telling them to stand up and defend the open Internet.
You’ll see a script on your screen, or you can say something like this:
“I support Title Two net neutrality rules and I urge you to oppose the FCC’s plan to repeal them. Specifically, I’d like you to contact the FCC Chairman and demand he abandon his current plan.”
You can also just call this number directly and enter your zipcode to get connected to your legislators: 202-930-8550.
If you run a website, blog, tumblr, or forum, help spread the word by putting up a sticky post, or use one of these widgets, ads, or banners: https://www.battleforthenet.com/#join
Ajit Pai is expected to circulate the text of his rule killing net neutrality on November 22, the day before Thanksgiving. Once that happens, it will move to a vote at the FCC’s open meeting in December, and it will become much much harder to stop him.
It’s clear that the FCC remains set on killing net neutrality. But Congress can stop the FCC from gutting the rules that keep the web open, affordable, and awesome.
Idgaf if this isn’t my theme we’re losing this fight tell your family tell your friends l e t ‘ s g o
I can’t stress enough how important this is. I rarely deviate from my surreal meme theme but this is something that can’t be ignored. This decision will affect the whole world!
But along with many other arguments from Pai’s camp—like the frequently disproven assertion that net neutrality rules have stifled telecom investment—this belief that the FTC will be able to fill in for the FCC doesn’t hold much water. When it comes to net neutrality, the FTC is ill-equipped to regulate the industry in a number of ways, and all we have to do is look at the the way ISPs used to act.
“Before we had rules, we did see ISPs blocking things like VoIP, blocking tethering applications so they could extract more from consumers in monthly fees, blocking peer-to-peer sharing applications,” Laura Moy, the deputy director of the Georgetown Law Center on Privacy and Technology, told the House Committee on Energy and Commerce Wednesday during a hearing on consumer privacy. “We certainly have seen examples in the past of ISPs using their power as gatekeepers to prevent users from using services that they may well want to use.”
There was the time AT&T tried to block its subscribers with iPhones from using Facetime unless they paid an additional fee. Or the time Comcast used covert technology to limit users from accessing peer-to-peer sharing networks, including BitTorrent. Or when Verizon blocked texts from a pro-choice organization to supporters. There are multiple examples of ISPs sidestepping or ignoring net neutrality prior to the regulations, which is what we would return to if the FCC scraps the rules.
Supporters claim these examples only bolster their argument, because in each case the FTC or another entity stepped in to correct the company, which is true, but a far departure from having established, enforceable rules upholding the most basic ideals of net neutrality: no throttling, no censoring, and no fast lanes.
One would hope that the federal agency tasked with policing net neutrality would be able to create new regulations in response to new indiscretions. But unlike the FCC, the FTC has little to no ability to create its own regulations. It also, by design, only acts after the fact, which hardly protects consumers, particularly if the shady behavior isn’t noticed right away by the powers that be. And in almost all cases, the FTC only cracks down when a company has deceived its customers, which won’t always apply in net neutrality cases.
“As a practical matter, the FTC almost never enforces unless it determines that there is deception that has occurred,” Moy said. “There’s very little in the way of teeth when it comes to the FTC’s authority.”
If that’s not convincing enough, there’s also the tricky matter of the fact that nobody’s even sure if the FTC is allowed to regulate ISPs at all. A pending case in the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals between the FTC and AT&T will determine if common carriers—which currently includes ISPs—should be regulated under the FTC or the FCC.
The FCC is actively ignoring all emails and calls from bots; you have to either email or call them yourself for your efforts to matter!
the resistbot twitter has debunked this rumor!!
this isnt true, and resistbot is used to contact your reps not the fcc. i’ve gotten replies from my reps after using resistbot as well. do not spread false information !!
Angry Internet users will demand that members of Congress oppose Verizon-controlled FCC’s attack on the open web
Internet users outraged by Verizon-lawyer-turned-FCC-Chairman Ajit Pai’s plan to gut net neutrality are planning to protest at Verizon retail stores across the country on Thursday, December 7th, one week before an expected vote at the FCC. In some cities, protesters will march from Verizon stores to lawmakers’ offices.
The protests will highlight the company’s role lobbying to kill rules that prevent telecom giants from charging extra fees, engaging in censorship, or controlling what Internet users see and do through discriminatory throttling. Protesters will carry signs calling on their members of Congress to speak out against Verizon’s attacks on net neutrality and publicly oppose the FCC’s plan, which is expected to be released this week.
Ajit Pai’s plan is expected to contain a “total repeal” of net neutrality protections, posing a grave threat to the future of freedom of expression, access to information, and small businesses particularly for communities of color and low income communities.
The December 7 protests represent growing grassroots backlash to the FCC’s plan, which polls show is wildly unpopular with people from across the political spectrum. The events are supported by Team Internet, a grassroots network of nearly half a million volunteer activists spearheaded by Demand Progress, Fight for the Future, and Free Press Action Fund, three of the groups behind the massive July 12 net neutrality day of action that drove millions of comments, emails, and phone calls to the FCC and Congress. Over recent months the groups behind the protests have organized thousands of constituents to attend more than 600 town halls and meetings with lawmakers to demand their support for net neutrality. A phone call campaign through BattleForTheNet.comhas generated nearly 250,000 phone calls to legislators offices.
At the protests participants will be encouraged to take a group photo and tweet it at their local members of Congress. Where possible, protesters will march to a nearby lawmaker’s office and deliver petition signatures.
Protests are currently planned in Phoenix, Denver, San Francisco, New York City, Indianapolis, Miami, Boston, Seattle, and several other cities across the country. They’re being organized by volunteers in a grassroots manner using email, texting, and social media. Local Internet users can volunteer to host a protest, and then connect with other volunteers in their area and encourage them to attend. There will be a special protest event in Washington, DC, details are TBA.
“This is the free speech fight of our generation and Internet users are pissed off and paying attention” said Evan Greer, campaign director of Fight for the Future, “Ajit Pai may be owned by Verizon, but he has to answer to Congress, and lawmakers have to answer to us, their constituents. The corrupt bureaucrats trying to kill net neutrality are hoping to avoid public backlash by burying the news over the Holiday weekend. We’re taking our protest from the Internet to the streets to make sure that doesn’t happen,” she added.
“While FCC Chairman Ajit Pai has been busy meeting with industry lobbyists and greedy Verizon executives, he should not ignore the millions of people who are joining together to reject his plan to kill off Net Neutrality,” said Free Press Action Fund Field Director Mary Alice Crim. “People in almost every state across the country have been meeting with hundreds of members of Congress and their staff, organizing others in their communities, and speaking out on behalf of the open internet. They know that the open internet is essential for accessing everything from elder care to mental health services and they’re willing to fight for it. This momentum of popular support for Net Neutrality will spill into the streets beginning Dec. 7 as people protest Pai and his corporate cronies outside Verizon stores nationwide. Our message to Pai and Verizon is clear: people everywhere will not sit idle as you destroy the free and open internet.”
“Americans are sick and tired of lawmakers placing the profits of monopolistic companies like Verizon and Comcast above the interests of ordinary people,” said Mark Stanley, Director of Communications for Demand Progress. “Outside Washington, support for strong net neutrality is widespread, regardless of political affiliation. Now, with what would be a catastrophic vote by the FCC to repeal net neutrality looming, people are ready to take to the streets in protest and to offer Congress one last chance to answer the question: ‘Do you stand for your constituents’ ability to communicate and connect, or do you stand for Verizon’s bottom line?’”
Here are some things you can do in the next 3 weeks to save Net Neutrality. Make it a fucking shitstorm. Do NOT be silent about this. It will not only affect your ability to access the internet, but it will kill small buisness, encourage censorship, and affect so many people internationally (taken from the article;
1. Sign up to volunteer with Team Internet, a grassroots group of connected Net Neutrality supporters run by Demand Progress, Fight for the Future and Free Press Action Fund. It takes five minutes to sign up for a special volunteer text-team shift to message other open-internet supporters about the news and invite them to take action. Get texting from the comfort of your own home!
2. Call Congress and tell your lawmakers to save Net Neutrality. We need to do all we can to get as many members of Congress as possible to speak out against FCC Chairman Ajit Pai’s plan to gut the open internet. But we’re hearing from lawmakers who are on the fence that they need to hear from more constituents in order to act on this. Make their phones ring off the hook.
3. Attend a protest at a Verizon store near you on Dec 7. On that day — exactly a week before the FCC votes on Pai’s terrible plan — internet users will gather to highlight Verizon’s role in locking down and controlling our internet. (Did we mention Pai used to work for Verizon?)
4. Don’t see a protest near you? Set one up! It’s easy, fun and we’ll support you every step of the way by providing you with training, tools, recruitment … even signs!
5. If you’re on the East Coast, save the date and join us for a big Net Neutrality rally in Washington, D.C., on Dec 14, the day the FCC will vote on Pai’s plan. This event is organized by the Voices for Internet Freedom Coalition — 18 Million Rising, the Center for Media Justice, Color Of Change, Free Press Action Fund and the National Hispanic Media Coalition — which fights to protect the digital rights of communities of color.
6. Tell your friends! Send them to organizations like Free Press Action Fund, Center for Media Justice, Demand Progress, Fight for the Future and Color Of Change, which will give them everything they need to take action right now. Find all of these organizations on social and post using #NetNeutrality and #TeamInternet.
7. Don’t have time for any of that but still want to help? Donate! Every little bit helps, and at Free Press Action Fund, a generous donor will match every dollar you give by Dec. 31.
SliceOSunshine 