Tomorrow is the deadline for comments on the FCC's so-called "Restoring Internet Freedom" initiative, which would rescind the Title II classification for broadband under the Telecommunication Act of 1996 -- which just so happens to be the legal underpinning for the FCC's Open Internet Order of 2015, the order that (finally!) codified net neutrality as a principle of law. So why do they call it the "Restoring Internet Freedom" initiative? Clearly because your actual freedom to go where you want to go on the internet, is clearly far less important to the Trump FCC than corporate "freedom" to make you pay more for some websites than others, to make some websites load faster than others, to block and throttle websites that haven't paid the proper tribute to ISPs, and generally herd you into junk news alleys. That's par for the course for people like Donald Trump and Ajit Pai -- a citizen's freedom is meaningless, but a corporation's "freedom" to make money is sacred.
In any case, John Oliver's website, gofccyourself.com, still helps you leave your public comment with the FCC. (Click the "+ Express" button on the FCC's page, and make sure the right docket number, which is 17-108, loads.) I'll be honest with you, though: I hit the submit button on my comment dozens of times back in May and nothing happened, and boy does that seem suspicious! I mean, it could be coincidence, sure but the FCC is the same agency that didn't care whether organizations sent anti-net neutrality comments in the name of people who didn't actually sent them, but whose names were stolen in data breaches, so I'd be a schmuck not to be suspicious. You might honestly be better off mailing your comments to the FCC, being sure to make the number of copies the FCC requests, and also being sure overnight them. I'd make them sign for it, too, but that's just me.
Remember that literally the only people in America who want to destroy net neutrality are the big telecom corporations and their lackeys in Congress. Why, that must comprise hundreds of Americans! And that's not nearly as impressive a number as the millions of Americans who have written in support of net neutrality over the years, so why should the big telecoms get more say than the rest of us? Because they "know more" about the internet? The only thing they "know more" about, about anything, is how to extract money from something. And when you look at the "arguments" the anti-net neutrality crowd deploys -- and you may want to address these in your own comment to the FCC, if for no other reason than that it'll be entertaining -- you will see their rhetorical desperation.
For example, anti-net neutrality proponents constantly claim they want "light touch" regulation, but the FCC's net neutrality regulations are "light touch" regulation! Net neutrality isn't "big government telling us what to do," it's our government preventing corporations from telling us what to do. And their arguments get worse. Why can't you simply get internet corporations to put net neutrality in their terms of service, Chairman Pai has wondered aloud? Oh, gosh, I don't know -- because broadband corporations monopolize markets and can thus dictate terms to consumers? Mr. Pai also likes telling us that all the great innovations of the 2000s didn't happen under a net neutrality regime, but, actually, they did -- under FCC Chair Kevin Martin, net neutrality rules were weaker, but the big telecoms didn't challenge them successfully in court until near the end of his term. And don't brook any rubbish about net neutrality letting "government picking winners and losers." It doesn't -- but the Trump/Pai plan lets corporations pick winners and losers.
This is, sadly, probably the most important communication you'll make to your government all year -- and in all likelihood, Mr. Pai will ignore it and do the bidding of his corporate cronies. And yet it may be a good thing if we see the ill effects of his decision right away -- a lot of folks go absolutely bat-guano if their preferred websites don't load quickly enough, and if big telecom corporations decide to put a crapload of pop-up ads and make us watch Miley Cyrus twerking videos before getting where we're trying to go, that's going to create a lot of angry customers. And how is Donald Trump going to blame Big Gummint for that, when it's his government that caused it? Still, I'd rather not face that trauma -- I'd rather our government did the right thing, and that's why I'm going to encourage them to do the right thing.
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