Save the 'Net

[ImGod]

Now that the net has been reduced to facebook, youtube, memes, and twitter, I think it's time to burn it down and start over.

Kill the 'Net

[The Man]

you have got to be fucking kidding me

Stop SOPA 2014. | We the People: Your Voice in Our Government

[Watser?]

The European Parliament takes important step to enshrine net neutrality into law

[Dingfod]

Fucking FCC goes into reverse on the information highway, causing wrecks and traffic jams galore, decide to back Big Net's desire to throttle most of us and let Big Business have the fast lane.

[The Man]

Originally Posted by Dingfod

Fucking FCC goes into reverse on the information highway, causing wrecks and traffic jams galore, decide to back Big Net's desire to throttle most of us and let Big Business have the fast lane.

Eric Idle - FCC Song

Looks like he's going to have to write a sequel.

[The Man]

Google and Netflix join the fray against the FCC's new rules.

[Crumb]

officials inside the companies who follow government policy say they are considering mobilizing a grass-roots campaign to rally public opinion around the idea that the Internet’s pipes should be equally open for all.

I'm not sure what function the word "grass-roots" has in this sentence...

[lisarea]

I think it means they're not going to pay us.

[lpetrich]

Originally Posted by Crumb

I'm not sure what function the word "grass-roots" has in this sentence...

Seems like astroturfing, after that fake grass.

[The Man]

Comcast Kabletown continues to be terrible:

Comcast plans data limits for all customers | Money - Home

I'm not sure Verizon is much better, though. I'm convinced they're throttling my torrent uploads.

[Janet]

Comcast is apparently going to be selling me off to Charter soon so it can get approval of a merger. I'm mostly annoyed that it means I'll be losing the CBC because Charter doesn't seem to get the fact that it's considered a local channel by Michiganders. I'd like to believe they can't be worse than Comcast, but I don't want to tempt fate.

[The Man]

John Oliver discusses net neutrality. He actually manages to make this funny, which is quite a feat. He also suggests the term "Preventing cable company fuckery" to replace "net neutrality", which I strongly agree with.

[erimir]

There ought to be a punchy way to get across the notion that they want to do this to slow down your Netflix, basically.

"Cable company fuckery" is both too vague and well... not useful politically for obvious reasons.

[The Man]

Beware the Dangers of Congress’ Latest Cybersecurity Bill: CISPA is back under the new name CISA. : news (tw: reddit link)

can we just start executing these fucking congresspeople who are responsible for these abominations please

[lisarea]

Happy internet slowdown day!

And because it's really important that people understand what this stuff is all about, here is a p. good and fairly recent explanation of what is happening:

Net Neutrality in the US: Now What? - YouTube

[Watser?]

Netflix even linked to the campaign

[slimshady2357]

What is happening over there scares me. If it goes ahead like the cable companies want it to, it won't be long before the same shite starts happening here too.

STOP IT! Please.

[lisarea]

Obama says FCC should reclassify internet as a utility | The Verge

There was some new horrible development just the other day where the FCC was doing something sketchy in the middle of the night or something and I didn't even read it because I was just tired of reading all the back and forths and weird manipulations and emergency action alerts and all that shit.

It just needs to be fixed and settled for good and the only way to do that is to reclassify it and I'm not even going to baseball about Obama or anything. It matters that he's saying it (again, kind of).

[Ari]

The Oatmeal's response to Senator 'totally not bought off by telecom companies' Ted Cruz's claim Net neutrality is Obama care for the internet.

[lisarea]

Cruz is well into not even wrong territory, though, too, because Obamacare also isn't that.

Also, yes! That 'conspiracy theory' thing. People who do not understand technical subjects are always weirdly assuming that things they don't understand are 'conspiracy theories.' I understand thinking things are gobbledegook or whatever, but why conspiracy theories?

[The Lone Ranger]

I suspect that -- at least partially -- it's a way to reconcile the fact that you don't understand something with the belief that you aren't stupid.

After all, a conspiracy -- more or less by definition -- is designed to be difficult to understand. So if you claim that there's a conspiracy to "hide the truth," you can admit that you don't truly understand what's going on without having to admit that you're just too dumb (and/or too lazy) to understand it.

[Ari]

It also feeds into the 'they are all out to get me, I am the lone sane voice in the wildneress' fantasy that seems pretty prevalent especially in the white male conservative audience he's speaking too. I mean just look at how many Fox News viewers totally buy the claims of the largest media company in the world that they are stating things counter to what the 'main stream media' would say, as if owning a major chunk of common news outlets doesn't make them mainstream.

While this is probably getting off topic for this thread, conspiracy theories seem to form with a combination of unfocused anger/fear, general distrust, our internal justifications and our pattern forming monkey brain. Our brains connect events and then the combination of fear and distrust take over to weave them into a mighty tale. It's effectively the modern version of blaming the meddling of Greek Gods in our daily affairs. Only the Gods have been replaced by demons or witches or spirits or black helicopters. It's why complex conspiracies are pretty common in schizophrenics, it's their pattern brain and their fear and distrust coming together to make sense out of random and scary garble.

[ceptimus]

Economix Comix

[lisarea]

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler: This Is How We Will Ensure Net Neutrality | WIRED

The vote is on the 26th, so they've got three weeks to fuck it up.

[Dingfod]

I like the overruling state laws against cities setting up their own intarweb service.