The FCC Wants To Kill Net Neutrality - Why You Should Care
In this article I discuss the importance of Net Neutrality protection & regulated ISPs and why you should fight for free and indiscriminate internet access.
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In case you aren't aware of it
The Federal Communications Commission of the United States wants to repeal the Net Neutrality protection. This would give Internet Service Providers the power to control the content browsed through their network.
Is this a big deal?
Well, take a long look at this picture.
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Is this the internet you want?
In many cases the letting the free market competition solve issues is a great approach, it usually yields the most effective outcome. However, Internet Service Providers in the US are already holding a monopoly. The combined Bandwidth of the whole country is shared among few companies AT&T, Charter, Comcast and Verizon.
In areas that are so vital to human prosperity such as internet freedom, open communication and education it is important that we enforce regulations to protect ourselves.
Net Neutrality is the only thing preventing ISPs from blocking access to websites, slowing down internet connections or prioritizing some content over others.
Do we really want to give ISPs this kind of power?
We already had that experiment a few years ago and this is how it went down:
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So why is Ajit Pai (president of the FCC) fighting so hard to kill Net Neutrality?
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Well, an educated guess would be that AT&T and friends have offered him a very decent amount of money to push this agenda through. Good for you, Ajit, good for you.
What can you do about this?
If you are a US resident who cares about what happens to the Internet in your country and doesn't want ISPs deciding what you get to browse, head over to https://www.fcc.gov/ and submit the web form under "17-108" filings, telling them why Net Neutrality matters to you.
Read instructions here on how to do this: https://techcrunch.com/submit-fcc-filing
Here is information on what else you can do: https://www.battleforthenet.com/
If all fails, lets hope Substratum Network can pull us all out of ths mess.
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- Nick ( @cryptonik ) -
Great article! Upvoted and followed ;)
Danke @yoganarchista; Ich bin auch auf deine naechsten Posts gespannt :)
Is it possible to set up our own servers to access the net?
Well first this directly affects only US residents, it is a local issue. We are still more or less protected by the laws of the European Parliament to regulate internet providers.
To answer your question: No. The ISPs are the actual owners of the hardware, cables, data centers, relays, fibre optic links between cities, countries, continents and own the internet access at the root, while you at home as a user control internet access at the branch.
What they filter, you can't access anymore. What you can do use VPN (I recommend PureVPN). Very easy to install and setup in 10 minutes! With VPN you send you data encrypted to a remote secure server first, then it accesses the website. ISPs cant block it because they don't actually get to see which websites you request. VPN offers security at the price of slowing down your connection speed.
Actually I will write post on VPNs :)
Oh and there is a blockchain project that aims to decentralize the internet, it is called Substratum Network, it might be the Solution to all of this! Im a fan.
Hey thanks for the valuable info Nik - I will look into the Substratum - I have heard the name but did not know much about it. -you definitely should do a post on VPNs - there is so much false info on these and it would be good to know what is true and what is not.
It's amazing how these companies cannot help themselves. It reminds me of something I read in an article from many years ago where a guy built these frankenstein robots out of old walkman parts and old solar powered calculator components. It was in a reader's digest i think.
I can't remember the specifics, but these small robots ran off batteries that were solar powered, and had a basic learning ability (like a Rumba vacuum in some ways with an adaptive memory and programming to recharge it's batteries). He has a bright light shining at the center of the room at the floor, and the rest of the room was dark(ish). All of the robots tried to stay in the center of the light to keep charged, and eventually one robot started damaging other smaller robots, and then placing them in a wall formation to keep other robots from getting at the light, despite there being enough room for all the robots to get their batteries charged.
I'm constantly reminded by that story when I think of large corporations and how they interact with the rest of the market, like a super alpha that acts on pure instinct to not only survive, but to absolutely crush and dominate competition. Not in an evil way, but through indifference.
That is an interesting story. Unfortunately, I do think it is in an evil way - how can the maximization of profits be justified when everyone else is getting harmed? The problem of completely unregulated capitalism is that companies seek out every opportunity to max out profits and reduce cost, which means human labor exploitation, outsourcing, lay offs, offshore license shenanigans, environment destruction and all other kinds of lobby-ism that is happening to an alarming extent today, but could get even worse.
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What do you mean @canadianrenegade? :O
It means I didn't have time to read this article last night but didn't want to forget about it either so I left a comment. Sure I could bookmark it but I would forget about the bookmark.
I enjoy your posts and don't want to miss them.
Thank you! I appreciate it :) And I dig your hands-on projects and off-grid tips. By the way since last year we have some chickens completely roaming free in my parents garden and started growing our own vegetables too. It started as a experiment and turned into an endeavor bringing us much joy.
What is your name @canadianrenegade?
Cheers,
Nick
Hey Nick sorry for the slow response. Been busy as usual. My Name is Matthew.
Yeah having ISP's control access to information could definitely be a big problem. Thanks for covering it. I had heard of net neutrality but wasn't sure about the specifics.
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great content!
Are you a bot?
I'm starting to get the impression I'm seeing a python script here.