Internet Slowdown Day is today, September 10th, not tomorrow. The sites that are participating in the protest are using the loading icon and are not actually slowing down speeds (because let's be realistic here, no one would actually be happy with purposely docked speeds).
Oh mann, I totally confused the days gonkemotion_facepalm
. Definitely proof we need to raise awareness. razz
rofl Yeah. But it seems that there was another thread about it in the "In the News" forum. Already signed the letter to the lawmakers but I wasn't too hapy they asked for my adress and zipcode as well.
Hold on, my country is in the middle of an election so I'm late to the party here. Are you saying American politicians are making another law that only Americans can veto against but will effect the whole damn world?
Internet Slowdown Day is today, September 10th, not tomorrow. The sites that are participating in the protest are using the loading icon and are not actually slowing down speeds (because let's be realistic here, no one would actually be happy with purposely docked speeds).
Oh mann, I totally confused the days gonkemotion_facepalm
. Definitely proof we need to raise awareness. razz
rofl Yeah. But it seems that there was another thread about it in the "In the News" forum. Already signed the letter to the lawmakers but I wasn't too hapy they asked for my adress and zipcode as well.
Hold on, my country is in the middle of an election so I'm late to the party here. Are you saying American politicians are making another law that only Americans can veto against but will effect the whole damn world?
I'd say the internet service providers are behind that infernal law cat_evil
I'm a little surprised they didn't even bring this issue to users' attention ahead of time, since it's something that would impact them negatively if bigger and more powerful companies got their way. Gaia would have to practically reach into our pockets to be able to pay the money to get on a "fast lane".
Thankfully, though, the deadline for submitting comments to the FCC hasn't passed yet. That's open until the 15th.
I think Gaia is already a very slow website (if I compare it to other websites I visit). So I can imagine what kind of hell it would be if this would get even worse.
I hadn't heard about this either so I'm glad you said something. I tend to not pay much attention to stuff unless somebody tells me about it. I think Gaia should definitely do something to promote this even if the day has already passed.
Internet Slowdown Day is today, September 10th, not tomorrow. The sites that are participating in the protest are using the loading icon and are not actually slowing down speeds (because let's be realistic here, no one would actually be happy with purposely docked speeds).
Oh mann, I totally confused the days gonkemotion_facepalm
. Definitely proof we need to raise awareness. razz
rofl Yeah. But it seems that there was another thread about it in the "In the News" forum. Already signed the letter to the lawmakers but I wasn't too hapy they asked for my adress and zipcode as well.
Hold on, my country is in the middle of an election so I'm late to the party here. Are you saying American politicians are making another law that only Americans can veto against but will effect the whole damn world?
That's it in a nutshell, though to clarify: it is not actually a law.
The issue in question is being handled by a branch of the government called the Federal Communications Commission (FCC), which is part of the executive branch, which only executes/enforces the laws passed by the legislative branch. Theoretically, the FCC is in charge of regulating (or at least trying to look like it does) communication mediums such as telephones, broadcast spectrum (such as for television or wireless communication (a la cellphones)), and so on. The problem with regulating the internet to ensure net neutrality is enforceable is that, way back about 10-15 years ago, they reclassified internet service as not being a communications medium (blatant evidence to the contrary be damned), which means they have a much more difficult time crafting and enforcing net neutrality regulations. They've twice had to go back and write new net neutrality regulation because what they had was declared unenforceable by the courts.
The obvious and most effective solution is reclassify the internet as a communications medium, but the four companies that control 90% of the internet infrastructure and service in the US are very much against it because it would mean they couldn't gouge more money from their captive customers. These companies have a vested interest in seeing net neutrality dead because they also produce content that they run on their legacy broadcast/cable television sides of their business, and the increasing viewership of that content on the internet is tanking revenues from those portions of their business. They've thus spent huge amounts of money buying politicians as well as members of the FCC (the current FCC head worked for one of the companies regulated by the FCC, and the previous went on to be hired by another), effectively ensuring their interests carry more weight than the millions of normal customers just in the US alone who would be negatively impacted by the death of net neutrality.
I do know a lot of other countries have been looking seriously at building infrastructure to route traffic around the US because of this whole mess, because an inordinate amount of global internet traffic runs through the US. Any slowdown there would affect a sizeable chunk of the internet elsewhere in the world, and with how central the internet now is for global communications, most countries (rightly) view that as unacceptable.
All that said, I ran across a very good point some time back about this: The fight about net neutrality is mainly being carried out between the tech giants. Normal customers have been living with a tiered/non-neutral internet from the start, paying for tiered speeds, dealing with bandwidth caps, and various other sundries. The reality here is that net neutrality is not, and has never been, about providing equal speed and access to everyone, but rather about big businesses providing content indiscriminately to whoever wants it, so long as that content is acquired by buying into their business ecosystem.
I already knew most of this, and have nothing to add, I just wanted to say...that was one of the highest quality and most informative posts I've seen here in quite some time. Congrats to you.
