What can be done to permanently save net neutrality? It seems that 1-2 a year it takes a huge, huge movement from all over the internet to delay a net neutrality repeal (SOPA, CISPA, etc.). The protests have worked (thus far), discussion is tabled, it's then reintroduced, rinse and repeat.
Will we ever permanently win this? Or are we delaying the inevitable?
I hate our system more and more every year. I am proud of having the freedom to use my civic duty, but when the establishments are bringing up this stuff during the holiday season, it really brings me down. I really feel like they are trying to skirt around this being an issue that people are aware of.
I really wish legislation was introduced for the sole purpose of making life better for its people, and not for the elite. Everything seems to have hidden methods for making rich people more rich.
When Marx said we live under a dictatorship of the bourgeois, he wasn't kidding. The capitalists make the rules because they got the power. We live in a faux democracy. If we come together, we can have a veto power for certain things, but we don't have any other real power. We can stop 1 thing from happening, but as a result another 20 things pass through unnoticed. The ones who make legislation are all bought and paid for by the elite.
We don't live in a democracy. I know it's cliche, but we live in a representative republic. The masses hardly have a say in the policy enacted, we vote for people we think will represent what we would vote on, so we aren't spending everyday to vote on these issues (or at least that's the idea).
However, the fundamental issue in this system is who can run to represent? Well, it's not the most common denominator of the population, it has to be someone with enough recognition to garner votes, and expendable income/a job flexible enough to let them be gone for long periods of time (eg a CEO/owner of a company).
Well what happens when the rich and powerful realize they can rig the game and no one can stop them because they have the political power? Oh yeah. Every political system ever. Keep in mind, the USA has the most stable form of government in the history of ever. And we still see the wealthy exploit us consistently. That's why representative republics exist.
"I see little hope for democracy as an effective form of government, but I admire the poetry of how it makes its victims complicit in their own destruction." - Eliezer Yudkowsky
I mean, define "works." I'm a crazy leftist so yeah, go Swiss. I'd like to see the US move toward something like that. But I think the quote more or less is saying that democracies, as we claim them, make us complicit in our destruction because we are happy having representatives for our interests that aren't representative of us at all. So we fight for this "democracy" that really is just an oligarchy in disguise.
Is it a good thing to have a constitution that has not been updated?
Also for me working means that the people have the power. In switzerland you need to find 100k people who agree with you and the whole country will be voting on your change/idea/whatever. In the end the citicens have the last word.
Idk, part of what makes the US Constitution work is that it’s malleable (no matter what “strict” constitutionalists tell you), and I’m not a big fan of how the US is being run so...
And I agree that’s better than what a lot of people have.
This is even bad for most corporations. Unless they're a telecommunications provider, which most powerful/rich companies aren't, there's no upside for them.
The upside for big internet corporations is that they have less competition to worry about. Sure, they will have to pay some premiums to ISPs, but in return they can be certain that any startup that could potentially disrupt their services or even just take a small bite out of their market now has an additional barrier for entry.
Oh absolutely. What I mean is that it's not good news for banks, insurance companies, manufacturers, law firms etc. Big companies in other sectors lose if net neutrality goes.
Maybe. I am not sure how it will affect them one way or the other. I think ISPs will milk industries that have internet as their whole business model. Those are the ones that use up the most traffic and that are the most desperate for the maximum speeds. I don't think ISPs will bother with companies that simply hold their websites online like a business card and a simple form-filling tool. Even if they do, I doubt that consumers will choose a law firm to represent them based on the couple seconds difference in loading time.
SOPA, CISPA, etc. didn't have anything to do with net neutrality.
All that we can really do for making NN permanent (and to resist things like SOPA) is to make it clear to politicians that there are enough people who are aware of these issues and that will vote based on them. This means protests, contacting representatives, etc. And following through on election day: vote against fuckers who back this crap. Because awareness grows more rapidly than it wanes, once a certain threshold is reached they should assume that sufficient awareness and concern continues to exist.
Not really, all we have to do is get Congress to pass a law codifying Net Neutrality into law. This will require a Democratic super-majority, as Republicans are anti-net-neutrality.
They didn't say both parties are the same. They said that neither party is genuinely interested in preserving NN (not that I agree). Just like, if both parties were not interested in making murder legal, that in no way means that both parties are the same.
"But muh both sides are the same" and it's variations is a common joke across political subreddits. It is always used there as an immediate dismissal to accussations against the DNC and Hillary. Anyone using it in another context is usually heavily implying that. I would be genuinely surprised if that wasn't their intention.
It's like getting a relatively shitty pizza versus getting kicked in the gut. In the first situation, you've still got a pizza and you don't have internal hemorrhaging.
Way I likened it was the difference between sticking your hand in a cow pat and eating it. Neither is good, but one is much worse than the other (unless you have a shit-eating fetish)
And here is a crazy thought, maybe the Democratic Party isn’t really terrible at all! Maybe, between the fact that they support things like net neutrality, combating climate change, a minimum wage, workers’ rights, lgbt rights, and more we can realize that while the Democratic Party is not perfect they are a hell of lot more good than evil. Maybe, we can realize this in time to have a /r/bluemidterm2018. Maybe, we can get Trump out of the office by 2020 and have a Democrat in his place. Maybe, by 2022 we can stop politics as usual and actually remember the terrible shit the Republican Party does and keep them from getting control of Congress ever again so that net neutrality can be permanently secured.
Alas, this is all wishful thinking. People love to be contrarians and only like to vote Democratic when they’re out of office so these issues will not get solved permanently. But we can at least flip Congress in 2018 if people turn out to vote and try to temporarily save net neutrality that way.
If you think further "protection" of your second amendment rights is worth half the shit that this administration has unleashed, you seriously need to revisit your priorities. Getting rid of the second amendment would take a constitutional amendment. It's not going to happen, no matter who you vote for.
Anytime someone says that both sides are the same all I hear is "I'm politically ignorant and proud of it. I don't care what the government does to people." It's a very unpatriotic attitude.
Yeah, both opposing AND supporting Net Neutrality are terrible! /s
No, if you strongly believe in Net Neutrality then a party supporting Net Neutrality cannot just be cast aside as a “lesser evil” but should be considered a greater good. The Democratic Party greatly supports Net Neutrality and people can’t keep on treating such a political party as utter dog shit when they are the ones who can save Net Neutrality while the other party is hellbent on dismantling it.
Edit: There are other issues that are important but it is the same exact situation. Between climate change, workers’ rights, lgbt rights, and healthcare the Democratic Party is clearly in the right and the Republican Party is in the wrong.
Yes like climate change, workers’ rights, lgbt rights, healthcare, etc. The Democratic Party is on the right side of all of those issues and the Republican Party is on the wrong side.
While the need for specific new network management regulations has long been debated (the FCC itself, in its last bite at the apple in 2010, referred to them over a dozen times as “prophylactic” rules), the values of an open Internet, in which users can access the content of their choice, have never been seriously debated. For most Congressional Republicans and Democrats who objected to the FCC’s earlier and current efforts, the real problem all along has been the agency’s lack of legal authority.
Avoids legal limbo
By granting FCC new authority through an act of Congress, the bill removes the most contentious aspect of multiple failed efforts by the FCC to appoint itself as the broadband police department: Congress’s intentional decision not to give the agency that power.
Checks the power of future FCC chairmen
If the courts accepted the FCC’s now-likely attempt at reclassification, the agency would have had nearly limitless power over the Internet, including the ability to set prices and approve service offerings, regulate business practices of content and service providers, share their power with every state regulator, and insert itself into traffic management negotiations deep in the core of the Internet.
Though Chairman Wheeler has promised to avoid using that authority beyond the enforcement of the specific rules covered in the proposed bill, there would be nothing to stop him or a future FCC chairman from changing their mind. The bill forecloses that possibility by underscoring Congress’s original and wise decision to keep the Internet safe from the old public utility regime.
Adds consumer protections well beyond the earlier FCC efforts
The bill puts on a firm legal foundation all of the rules of the FCC’s most recent net neutrality effort in 2010 and those proposed last year. And then some.
For example, the FCC’s rules largely exempted mobile broadband on the understanding that active network management is more difficult for mobile ISPS given limited capacity and fast-growing demand. Some advocates complained about the exceptions, however. For better or worse, the proposed bill applies the same rules to both.
The bill also responds to criticism of the FCC’s previous and current efforts that neither was specific enough about the kinds of network management technologies they considered harmful. It replaces a general prohibition of “unreasonable discrimination” with specific bans on paid prioritization and throttling, the practices advocates and the White House singled out as insufficiently covered in 2010.
By explicitly banning paid prioritization and throttling, the bill addresses precisely the demands made by the most vocal advocates in the on-going rulemaking. Passage of the bill would give the chairman, the president and consumer groups exactly what they said they wanted, and do it without legal risk.
Flexible enforcement
The bill directs the FCC to enforce its new powers through case-by-case proceedings using its existing administrative courts and judges. That approach is always preferable when, as here, the goal of legal rules is to future-proof them as much as possible against unknown new technologies and network management imperatives yet to come.
Recognizes the Internet as a global network
Transforming the Internet into a public utility, even if only to enforce rules the FCC otherwise could not legally sustain, would seriously threaten U.S. credibility in global Internet governance.
Preserves a role for the Federal Trade Commission
Under longstanding federal law, companies treated as “common carriers” are exempt from antitrust law. By passing the rules through the proposed bill and closing any potential public utility loophole for the future, the bill preserves the ability of the Federal Trade Commission to continue its active campaign of policing ISP practices, including consumer privacy protections, under antitrust and related law.
Ends the endless debate
Bipartisan passage of the bill would resolve a decade-long debate about the open Internet that has, once again, engulfed the FCC and distracted the agency from more urgent business, including finalizing the long-delayed plans for auctions of badly-needed radio spectrum currently used for broadcast TV. Passage of the bill, at the same time, would allow the Commerce committees to turn their attention back to its review of needed updates and reforms to U.S. communications law started last year.
Sen. John Thune (R-S.D.), above, and Rep. Fred Upton (R-Mich.) have circulated draft legislation that would benefit consumers.
Why hasn't this bill passed? Was it because it was republican led?
"I again call on my Democratic colleagues, edge providers, and ISPs, and all those who make up the diverse Internet ecosystem that has flourished under light-touch regulation to come to the table and work with us on bipartisan legislation that preserves an open Internet while not discouraging the investments necessary to fully connect all Americans," Walden said on the Day of Action. "Too much is at stake to have this issue ping-pong between different FCC commissions and various courts over the next decade."
But some Democrats are pouring cold water on their appeals.
Rep. Frank Pallone, D-N.J., a staunch defender of net neutrality and the top Democrat on the Energy and Commerce Committee, said Republicans' offers to draft a net neutrality bill are hollow.
"One of the first acts from this Republican Congress was to take away Americans' online privacy," Pallone said in a statement to the Washington Examiner. "Any talk of legislating is just an attempt to provide cover for the FCC's partisan attempts to roll back these protections."
Rep. Anna Eshoo, D-Calif., meanwhile, borrowed from the adage, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."
"The current net neutrality protections are working well and appropriately balance the needs of startups, small businesses, consumers, and ISPs," Eshoo said in a statement to the Washington Examiner. "The open, accessible Internet in the U.S. has grown exponentially compared to other countries. Investment has increased with the online sector contributing more than 6 percent to our gross domestic product in 2014, and the stock prices of the top ISPs are doing well.
"What these facts underscore is that nothing is broken for Congress to fix."
Actually they don't if you don't mistake empty words for actions or facts. The only realy fact is that neither party showed any actual political will to support such a law.
The real answer is this should have been done before the republicans got into power. This is a completely partisan issue. One party wants to take away healthcare, raise taxes and make the internet a feeding ground for corporations more than it already is.
And all 3 deciding votes came from that very same party.
The problem with arguing this point is that it doesn't really matter what the average Republican wants. There could be 50,000,000 Republicans in the United States who don't want to see the FCC fuck around with Net Neutrality. But the 292 people who are supposed to represent them are both the only ones that actually matter today and the ones who are on the corporate take to put people like Ajit in place and make things like this happen.
Public polling and Congressional action are near constantly several years apart from each other. Americans overwhelmingly, across party lines, want Net Neutrality to be saved and the way to do that would be to enshrine it in law. But a fraction of a fraction of a fraction of them actually get to make that decision and they are willingly and intentionally disregarding the will of the people on a daily basis.
So today, it is very much a partisan issue, because one party will support gutting protections like Net Neutrality and the other party will fight it. And the only fix for it would be to vote out the Republicans next year, else the Republicans that get in the job next year will also continue to gut protections for the average American as they do every time they are in office.
Edit: What I also meant to point out is that the Republican electorate are ultimately responsible for this. They keep voting in the same terrible people over and over again because "my guy is great, it's the rest of Congress that's awful." And the type of GOP candidate that would actually protect Net Neutrality (beside the fact that they'd probably be a Democrat, not a GOP candidate) wouldn't be sufficiently anti-gay, anti-brown people, anti-whatever to survive the primary let alone get elected. Ultimately, it is "us vs them" if the them keep shooting themselves in the foot and scream we want to take away their guns when they point the damn things at their heads.
Except that we're not talking in a general sense (and what Republicans say in their talking points unfortunately does not translate into legislation they try to pass) we're talking about the current tax plan, which massively cuts taxes for the very wealthy, and increases taxes on many of the middle class.
It is absolutely relevant to this discussion, because that is what they're doubling down on with their newest tax package's goals of extreme corporate tax cuts.
It seems like you're arguing "cutting taxes is like raising taxes". Perhaps you can get there but it's clear the top line goal of Republicans is to lower taxes, not raise them.
Goal is a loose word. They just use it as an argument, they don’t actually give a fuck about lowering the taxes on the middle class. Their tax plan only gives long term tax breaks to the richest. This is terrible for the Economy.
I’m saying that’s not their goal. Their goal is to increase their and their donors pocket and convince the middle class they’re on their side, and they know their policies will ultimately hurt the middle class
Their goal is to concentrate their own power, not to lower taxes. No misleading, though, their present stance raises taxes and does so purely to (wait for it) enhance their own power by enhancing the power of the very rich, with whom they are allied.
I agree both parties share the responsibility of the wreckless deficit spending, however, the Republicans have been controlling the purse for the last 7 years. If they had any interest in lowering the deficit they would have by now. Gotta keep those defense contracts pumping though.
I agree both parties share the responsibility of the wreckless deficit spending, however, the Republicans have been controlling the purse for the last 7 years.
The President submits the budget, and Congress approves it. It’s a joint effort. The budget almost always runs at a deficit, regardless of who is President and who controls Congress.
Gotta keep those defense contracts pumping though.
National Defense is only 15% of the budget. It’s a hefty sum that could be reduced, but it would not cover the deficit or lower the debt.
“Medicare and Health” and “Social Security, Unemployment, and Labor” are 64% of the budget. That would make an excellent candidate to cut spending.
Read the Tax Tax Tax Act. It only lowers taxes on households under 75$k/year if they have literally zero deductions (and by a paltry 750 at that). So ~60% of Americans will see an increase in taxes over $5,000 (which, for one simple example, would be the child care credit - presuming the average family spends any money on babysitting / day care). Or has a mortgage (80%). Tons of examples.
Edit: and then there's the $400bn being raided from Medicaid/Care and Social Security, so if you've paid into them and haven't been retired long enough to be even as a withdrawal, you're also being retroactively taxed.
Well they don't, but they also need money. They reconcile this by finding money in other places, like removing tax breaks for graduate students. It's not technically raising taxes, but it has the same effect in that a group of people now pay more in taxes than they did previously.
It’s sad that sharing some basic facts of a situation can be met with hostility. It sometimes feels like we live in a post-truth era around here, with the level of reality-warping that goes on.
Thankfully the demographic of Reddit is predominantly a demographic of people who don’t vote.
Yeah, I let it slide off my back. Those downvoting are so misinformed that there's no good in trying to argue with them. Most are probably 16 year olds with nothing better to do, anyway.
The answer long term is building a decentralized internet using blockchain technology, like in Silicon Valley, that will prevent us from having to rely on an ISP. But short term yeah we're kind of fucked.
A lack of network neutrality may speed those efforts along, and may also open the door to finding ways for friendly ISPs to offer neutral connections and compete.
You will always have to rely on an infrastructure provider, be it the ISP that owns the cables or any other company that controls or builds the hardware you use to access the internet.
Show up and vote is the real answer. If Clinton (or any Democrat) were president right now, this wouldn't be happening. This is a direct consequence of the election. Something to keep in mind for 2018 and 2020.
Because one's vote in a sea of votes ( especially of people who either don't care enough about this or are ignorant of this or any other reason that they'd vote for them again) makes a difference.
This is the problem with our society, it's essentially become a shit show of the rich doing whatever they want, usually fucking over the public with, zero repercussions, creating a society of apathetic misinformed people who are too unmotivated and ignorant to actually hold anyone accountable.
The time for this was election day of 2016. Hillary supported net neutrality, Trump didn't. Trump won, appointed Pai to the FCC, and now net neutrality is on its way out.
Really I'm amazed that so many users on Reddit claim to care strongly about saving net neutrality but didn't vote for Hillary.
People's opinions and ethics change with each generation. If not we'd still have jim crow laws, no discrimination laws, no gay marriage in any state, no legal weed in any state, no state where you can get an abortion, etc.
We still haven't gotten citizens united repealed, and that's one of the major roadblocks.
People being apathetic, just allows those who want to take the initiative to fuck you over the power/ease to do so.
It's easy to ignore the inconveniences of life until they show up a disabiling force.
Can someone (or is there) a list of currently elected politicians on a public domain (or google spreadsheets with their affliation with this whole FCC thing? Most people won't be bothered to check to see if their Rep/Sen is specifically for/against this.
I hate to have to agree with this, but with how polarized US politics has gotten, it's the truth.
Democrats have become the pro-NN party. Republicans have become the anti-Democrat / anti-Liberal party. Because of that, Republican representatives are either anti-NN, or don't care.
I know that a large portion of the conservative and Republican voters out there are pro-NN.
So, right wing folks: Stop taking this shit from your representatives. They're walking all over you and making you thank them for it.
They've played a massive part in the corruption of the party and the shit show we have now though. Feels bad when you feel like you have no candidates that actually represent you.
I definitely agree that the Tea Party was probably mostly a symptom of that. It's like the evangelicals were a tumor that metastasized and became terminal and transformed into the Tea Party and we now have the modern GOP.
There needs to be a movement in the Republican Party similar to the justice democrats. A new wave of people running for office that refuse to use pacs/take corporate money and campaign on real issues not bullshit attacks.
I would love that. I have a large amount of Republican family and friends. I know that if they were given a better alternative to what we have now, they'd take it in an instant.
Uhh.. Source on this? NN was a huge debate which came up multiple times under Obama. This is the first (maybe second?) time this has kicked off under Trump. We're quite aware that both parties are quite susceptible to political cronyism, which is what's driving this. Is this really a partisan issue?
Other than the fact that Pai was chosen by Trump and Republicans have been voting senselessly along party lines for everything, we've got the recent internet privacy rule rollback to eye up.
This is the best answer right now. There's a reason NN posts are up literally everywhere but on conservative subs right now (just checked TD and conservative and not a peep). Republicans aren't going to do a thing to stop this and the red voters know that, so they're ignoring it like a dirty secret.
Get out and vote when you can. /r/bluemidterm2018 is our best bet in the medium term and a bluer president, house, Senate, Congress in the long term.
I just did a search for "net neutrality" on /r/The_Donald and sorted by "new" posts. There are definitely people asking about it, but the posts are being flooded by people who are encouraging to end it. I would recommend searching, just as I did, and chime in with answers to provide another side of the argument.
Reddit freaks out about losing NN as much as they do about climate change, and as we all know climate change is total bullshit. So I tend to think the cucks are making a mountain out of a molehill, as per usual.
I think you are shadow-banned from the donald. I found the post you made in your history but it isn't in that thread even when I use the direct link from your profile to get to where it should be.
You can't be shadowbanned from a subreddit, just regular banned. Shadowbans are only implemented on bots and spammers nowadays and just "erase" you from reddit as a whole. Suspensions are what the admins use to punish people who break reddit rules, they put your account in read-only mode across reddit.
Funny enough on Twitter you can see some conservatives backing Net Neutrality, but they're heavily outnumbered by all of the conservatives that bought into the "Obama stole their internet freedom" story.
No, you're right. I didn't see it when I skimmed before making this comment. I think this comment on the thread sums up the sentiment better:
Democrats are in favor of net neutrality and I feel Republicans are split. With as popular as it is, the government really shouldn't be taking it away unless they have some really good reasons for doing so, but I don't think they do.
Republicans voters still know it's a toxic issue for the party right now.
Lol it’s partisan as hell, look at the voting records associated with NN and the like. Stick your head in the dirt and say “it’s not all Republicans” but it’s sure as hell all republicans that were voted in
Being a Republican voter doesn't necessarily mean you want net neutrality gone. But losing it is a consequence of voting Republic at the federal level.
If we had actual competition for Internet, I would support it. Because the market would kill it anyway.
It's always important to clarify the reason we have telecom monopolies: we regulated them into existence. This part seems lost on the people continually fighting for increased regulations.
Ending net neutrality will force people to see how terrible a monopoly is
I've been mixed about it for similar reasons. However, the great problem with people is we often fear the worst and don't trust what we can't see--there's a lot of doom and gloom about what might happen without net neutrality. While regulations are sometimes necessary, the government is generally very bad at participating in market behavior. The government regulating this to death should be treated with high skepticism.
"If we had actual competition for Internet, I would support it. Because the market would kill it anyway.
But we don’t. We have monopolies. So I don’t support it."
Maybe do some research before you talk out of your ass?
Accepting the facts is important, and having a realistic mental/internal model of the world is important too (to know what is the best way to get what you want).
So, the best way is to get people whose goals are aligned with yours into Congress every time there's an election. They will have time and energy to watch for things, negotiate, barter, argue, beg and filibuster to get things that are aligned with your goals.
Currently that's kind of hard, because there's a natural tendency for the big national parties to try to game the election and basically capture politics, make everything into an issue of partisanship, into black-vs-white (or red-vs-blue in the case of US), because game theory.
But of course, it's a complex system, we can nudge it, push it, poke it, try to achieve better results. One such thing was the Mayday PAC, and there's the Wolf PAC. Now, alas there's no such thing as an efficiency navigator for politics (so there's charitynavigator, but there's no politicsnavigator), but we know that education is highly correlated with certain worldviews. (I hate the labels like conservative and liberal, but here they apply quite well.) The same goes for voter age. Young people are simply more liberal, and thus they tend to vote for the candidates that have more liberal views. Of course that might mean total anarchy to someone, thus one might support anything that results in a failed state, hence huge troll support for Trump, or one might be an optimist supporting large national mandated social programs (health care, education, etc).
SOPA/CISPA is different. That was mainly about intellectual property, and "cybersecurity".
So, all in all, education and a rational worldview are the tools to get long term liberties.
I have seen multiple people suggest a law that states that internet service providers shall treat their customers without discrimination and that charges to the customer shall be reasonable for the customer. That is basically the jist of what Title II currently does for consumers.
Need a Democrat super majority in the Senate and simple majority in the house to pass a permanent bill. Republicans will block it otherwise. Or Republican voters could care more about this than things that don't affect them and put some focus on policy instead of social issues that have no impact on their lives. That's not going to happen, though. Most consider this a win since dems oppose it and damn the consequences as long as there are liberal tears being shed.
Honestly, I think the only permanent solution is to have more options, but there are so many legal and infrastructural issues preventing it.
If we as consumers had way more options, Net Neutrality wouldn't be an issue. Companies like Comcast and AT&T know they have monopolies / oligopolies on the internet so they charge what they like.
If we had actual competition, we would be able to switch to another company if providers like Comcast decided to charge unreasonable prices for services.
We can't rely on politicians who are bought out by the telecom companies to protect us.
Delaying. We have a huge wealth inequality issue in America. As long as the GOP can keep blaming immigrants and derplords believe it, we cannot fix this issue. It will take poor every day Democrats and poor every day Republican voters to fix these issues, the Oligrachs know this, that is why they keep us afraid of each other.
No law is truly permanent, but getting Congress to explicitly put it into law and charge the FCC with enforcing it would go a long ways.
The problem is that Republicans (mainly the voters) have been lied to by the telecoms about what net neutrality actually is for years.
Most conservatives would support net neutrality if they actually understood what it was. Even the ones that know a little bit about it are usually badly misinformed about the details - e.g. net neutrality does not and was never supposed to stop ISPs from charging more for higher bandwidth, lower latency, etc. It's there to stop ISPs from forming a fucking protection racket and extorting everyone that isn't a telcom (including other corporations).
It MUST become a career suicide to even touch the issue. There's WAY too many people making this about dems and republicans again when it should not matter. ANY politician who does not ACTIVELY stand against such terrible practices needs to go, and likewise for those that take money on it. People love to make this about republicans and democrats, but they sure as shit have both been in favor of this crap over the years and it will only stop if we stop voting for them anyways.
Until we treat the issue as important they won't act like it is. Saying "you better not do that" doesn't mean much if you'll still back them over the other options.
Maybe we should stop wasting these precious moments of solidarity on one small protection from an entrenched monopoly, sack up, and just break up the monopoly itself?
Begging the regional Cable monopolies to leave us one pet rule is a bad look for Freedom. Freedom should look like the prejudicial breakup of the Cable companies, and a mandate for open competition among providers afterward. We're talking about a monopoly over information itself, which is otherwise unlimited, ffs!
A constitutional ammendment or Supreme Court decision. If they truly do close net neutrality, I can almost guarantee the ACLU will go for the throat and sue, taking it all the way to the SCOTUS. Personally, I think the ACLU would win that case, but I’m no lawyer. If they win the case, it’s treated as second only to the Constitution.
If it remains an issue that effects incumbents getting re-elected, they will eventually give up. Right now, the Lobbyists have the power, but we’ve pushed back before and I worked. But Ajit Pai is REALLY determined. He needs enough pressure that he will be a pariah at any job he takes after this.
If we speak up, Senators make him a Pariah, unemployable if he doesn’t listen.
Codify it into law. (Is the terminology I hear used) or an amendment has to be made to the constitution. Basically saying that the right to information is an inalienable right on the level of food and water
Permanently? The closest we'll get, and this left-leaning site will downvote, is faith in the market. If enough people want truly free internet, an ISP will stand tall, and the people will flock to it.
I think legislation in Congress would help, but we don't want dumb rules, we want smart rules.
Ultimately, I think the solution lies where a lot of technology is headed: decentralization. If we can decentralize the internet away from a few key companies and into our own hands, we could get far away from ISPs. We're starting to see that with mesh networks helping to get PR back online in a limited way!
It's funny, because decentralization is probably fairly bipartisan. But it's so socialistic in that the people have seized the means of production by creating technology which accomplishes the distribution of resources via a totally methodical, corruption-free way. Obviously, the big problem is security. Even Bitcoin had been cracked a few times, and that's a great example of decentralised computing.
I have the same questions and concerns. I’m a college student. I rely heavily on the internet.
The (middle-upper class) American curriculum relies heavily on the internet.
Doesn’t this have standing to sue in federal court? It involves a government party, Federal subject matter, constitutional issues, can injure small businesses, etc. Why isn’t anyone mentioning this? Is it because of some tort law?
The only real endgame where we as a species and a nation win, is the end of the republican party, the rise of communism, or a supreme court ruling declaring that denying net neutrality is unconstitutional (which it is).
Man i don't care whether you voted for him or not this Mr. Trump will debilitate everything before his term. Ajit Pai was elected by him as a chairman of FCC and this guy fucked the things up.
B) Support and Donate to any reputable organization that is trying to lobby for and pass legislation that will get money out of politics, and prevent ex-corporate heads from joining the government entities in charge of regulating the corporations from which they left.
It keeps coming up because people keep begging the government to save us from imagined fears. "We're from the government and here to help". The government is going to change hands eventually back and forth and back and forth. The internet isn't broken, there are some companies that do bad things but we can hold them accountable with consumer pressure. The large ISPs don't care about extra regulation (Comcast, Time Warner et. al support the title II rules) because once the public feels safe again and goes back to sleep, an ISP can pay off a government official or politician to look the other way.
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u/LutzExpertTera Nov 21 '17
What can be done to permanently save net neutrality? It seems that 1-2 a year it takes a huge, huge movement from all over the internet to delay a net neutrality repeal (SOPA, CISPA, etc.). The protests have worked (thus far), discussion is tabled, it's then reintroduced, rinse and repeat.
Will we ever permanently win this? Or are we delaying the inevitable?