Amazon, Mozilla, Kickstarter, and Reddit Are Staging a Net Neutrality Online Protest (washingtonpost.com) 70
An anonymous reader shares a report: Some of the Internet's biggest names are banding together for a "day of action" to oppose the Federal Communications Commission (alternative source), which is working to undo regulations for Internet providers that it passed during the Obama administration. Among the participants are Etsy, Kickstarter and Mozilla, the maker of the popular Firefox Web browser. Also joining the day of protest will be Reddit, the start-up incubator Y Combinator, and Amazon. On July 12, the companies and organizations are expected to change their websites to raise awareness of the FCC effort, which is aimed at deregulating the telecom and cable industries. Mozilla, for example, will change what users see on their screens when they open a new browser window. Other participants include Demand Progress, Etsy, Vimeo, Private Internet Access, Fight for the Future, EFF, DreamHost, Creative Commons, BitTorrent, American Library Association, ACLU, GreenPeace, Open Media, and Patreon. Find more details here.
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Yawn is right. Anyone who cares already cares, anyone who doesn't care still won't. Anyone who has made up their mind on either side of the issue will not change their mind.
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We DID warn you about putting the government in charge of the definition of 'QoS'...you didn't listen.
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Well, isn't that what the fuss is about? Getting the government out of being in charge of Quality of Service and letting those altruistic corporations do what they do best?
Please stay on the line. Your call is very important to us!
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It's worked up to now without government control of routers.
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That's because no bean counter has yet come up with a way to monetize routers by making them discriminatory.
Yet.
Of course, that could change if, say, Juniper and Netflix cut a deal where you only get the best quality Netflix using a Juniper router. Then Google/YouTube make another one with Cisco. etc., etc., etc. And let's not even think about what Apple could do.
Actually, the government did effectively control routers at one time. Back when the Internet was still the US Government's DARPA net, your router
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Yawn is right. Anyone who cares already cares, anyone who doesn't care still won't. Anyone who has made up their mind on either side of the issue will not change their mind.
that's right, apathy and cynicism. that's not what got us into this mess in the first place or anything...
let me guess, you also didn't vote because you hated both candidates equally.
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Yawned, because this protest is lame.
Now if the internet-powers-that-be started blocking one different site per day - e.g. block completely all access to fcc.gov on Thursday, then to gop.com on Friday, and so on - people would (maybe) start to realize what net neutrality really means.
Waiting for the Mozilla Haters... (Score:5, Funny)
"Mozilla should be spending 100% of its time working on its browser! Why are they wasting time doing anything other than rolling back the GUI to the one in Firefox 4.0? I hate the new Chrome look so damned much I switched to Chrome and never looked back."
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"The popular Firefox Web browser" (Score:5, Insightful)
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Firefox is still the heavyweight in open source browsing, but Chrome has pulled heavily from the "I want performance" and "I want compatibility" pools, while Firefox and Chromium spinoffs have pulled to a degree from the "I want open source" pools. Firefox can fight on performance, has lost the war for compatibility, and probably has lost some trust from the "I want open source" pool that isn't coming back (but could still win back a lot of that with actions- but probably won't).
the popular Firefox Web browser (Score:5, Informative)
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how about worldwide?
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> in November we will be stuck with spyware browsers or
Or maybe getting Iridium, a chromium-based browser that removes the google tracking present in Chromium (and Chrome)?
https://iridiumbrowser.de/ [iridiumbrowser.de]
Or maybe checking out Pale Moon, based on an older baseline of Firefox?
https://www.palemoon.org/ [palemoon.org]
(note that the Pale Moon guy is also going to be building a browser based off of the Firefox baseline that supports the current extensions)
It's true, you'll still need a spyware browser for Netflix, and probably a c
Re:Mozilla needs to focus on "extension neutrality (Score:4, Informative)
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Waterfox follows Firefox very closely. There are plans to continue to support normal extensions in a new codebase, but we'll see. The big thing is, when Firefox throws away its older extension model, some browsers will continue to support that, and others will not, and I think it is a hard prediction.
I'll definitely check out Waterfox around that time though, thanks.
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We shall see. If there are actual notable abuses, then perhaps net neutrality will gain some traction again.
You can't boil frogs by dropping them into hot water, you have to slowly warm it. Expect creeping abuse, not a quantum jump.
Kind of exciting.... (Score:5, Insightful)
It's nice to see a bunch of special interest groups work towards a goal that generally benefits the American citizens of the net (and certain corporations, at the expense of certain other corporations). Watching the right twist hard on this issue has been yet another source of bitter amusement for me over this last year (and believe me, I've had sources of bitter amusement from ALL political sides over the last year or two).
Here's the lowdown: net neutrality used to enjoy a broad coalition of pretty much everyone- the idea that carriers can't charge based on certain qualifications is a pretty appealing one. Some libertarians like it because the carriers are themselves a kind of monopoly (and therefore shouldn't be allowed the same power over their wires as if it was a free market), most liberals like it because it prevents corporations from screwing over the little guy, and some conservatives like it because it prevents conservative speech from being branded separately or upcharged ("CNN is free, Fox News costs extra!" or somesuch). This changed recently and rapidly: in addition to the more strict market libertarians (who were formerly pretty much the only natural philosophical opponents of net neutrality), the broad base of conservatism, led by Trump, are now opposed to net neutrality. Now it's meddlesome government, and (somehow!) the ability to censor data.
The conservative switch on this is not ENTIRELY surprising, given that the most recent action on net neutrality happened under Obama, but why would conservatives not be in favor of common carrier status? Certainly they don't want to pay more for electricity depending on its use (nor would they be ok with the power company monitoring everything in their house to ensure that they pay the correct rate for "television electricity" versus "microwave electricity"), so why the odd position?
The answer appears to be depressingly top-down. This coalition of dudes listed in the summary is pretty much all liberals (I'm not aware of any that even gave Trump credit for smashing the TPP, which they were opposed to), and they pretty much universally supported the losing Hillary Clinton in the election. Meanwhile, those who stand to benefit from the repeal of net neutrality didn't use their bully pulpit to denounce Trump for two years straight, and are broadly more Republican donors. That part I guess is part and parcel of our vaguely corporate Republic, but it is darkly amusing to watch the needs of the donors DRAG THE PHILOSOPHY IN REAL TIME. Just nuts.
Re:Kind of exciting.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Certainly they don't want to pay more for electricity depending on its use...
I don't disagree with anything you said, but wanted to lend some more data to your viewpoint. Here, we DO pay more for electricity depending on its use: https://www.bbec.org/wp-conten... [bbec.org]. Aside from different service charges, the rates are different for each use. For example, Residential is $0.6/kWh while irrigation is $0.03/kWh...for part of the year. I'm sure there are reasons and justifications for all this, but thought you'd find it interesting nonetheless.
On an unrelated note, I'm not happy getting electricity from coal when I could (should) be getting it from hydro where I'm at...
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Certainly they don't want to pay more for electricity depending on its use...
I don't disagree with anything you said, but wanted to lend some more data to your viewpoint. Here, we DO pay more for electricity depending on its use
And here we actually pay more for electricity depending on its SOURCE. We have the option of signing up for "green energy" from a couple of different companies, both of which cost more than the electricity from the normal hydro-based electric company. Nobody I know of complains about this as being a lack of "electric neutrality", even though there is a very strong incentive to buy the electrons from the power company and not from the specialized "content" sources.
My parents also paid different amounts for
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When do we get road neutrality? I'm tired of paying tolls on roads that are deemed "more important". I'm also tired of being told I can't drive in certain lanes due to the contents of my car (HOV lanes for those that don't understand the reference).
Are roads not considered to be a utility? Lack of road neutrality increases the costs for individual people driving as well as the costs of goods sold shipped over the roads.
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What you cannot do is charge more to Bob than Larry to drive over that toll road.
Really? Bob, who drives an 18-wheeler, always pays more to drive on the local toll roads than does Larry, who drives a motorcycle. Kind of like being charged more for more bandwidth.
Re: Kind of exciting.... (Score:2)
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(while both vehicles fall into the same class and go the same distance) , that's what people are up in arms about.
And yet, that isn't what often happens. Netflix traffic crosses at least one border gateway into Comcast's network; Comcast's video services use a non-Internet delivery system and are almost always delivered from the local headend, for example. Very different distances and classes. T-Mobile's zero-rated video streaming is done at 480p and uses a lot less bandwidth than arbitrary video streaming from a non-participating content provider. Different.
In any case, the statement I replied to was that we cannot c
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Packets are all the same size (MTU/MSS) when the traverse a carrier's network.
No, they aren't.
Dog That Isn't Barking (Score:3)
Whither NetFlix?
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Hopefully enough people will do this that the suits will at least notice. Not keeping my fingers crossed or anything...
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like davecb said, they've already solved that problem for themselves.
Solving it for everyone would:
* be a huge headache for them
* reduce their competitive advantage
Yes (Score:2)
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Without Google, Facebook, and Netflix... (Score:2)
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Wish I had mod points, I agree with this sentiment, most people here know the issues, but without Facebook and Netflix it will be tough. Amazon is in the list, so that should help out a bit, but I think many people using Amazon will at least heard of Net neutrality.
You need to get the 'crazy' masses on Facebook riled up and get them posting :) Without Facebook most people will not know what is going on.
Death knell for Mozilla... (Score:2)
Mozilla, for example, will change what users see on their screens when they open a new browser window.
I get tired of Google popping up the notice that I can make Google my default search engine (when it already is) and I can make Google my home page (which it will never be.) Imagine if Mozilla somehow hijacks the "about:blank" home page I have configured so I start seeing crap from Mozilla.org instead of a blank page.
Oh, wait, Firefox ALREADY ignores my home page setting on a regular basis, depositing me at a CentOS welcome, even after being configured to a blank home. And when you first start it up, it au
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> And when you first start it up, it automatically runs home to momma and reports the installation details before you have any option of telling it not to.
I mean, you can down the interface ahead of time. But that shouldn't be default behavior.
Why don't websites team up? (Score:2)
Why can't websites create a pseudo-monopoly of their own? What if all the websites concerned about net neutrality joined a net neutrality pact? If any member of the pact detected that an ISP was throttling traffic to their site, all pact members would throttle their traffic to that ISP. So
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Good idea, but difficult to organize and pretty easy to blockbust. A few years ago this was used to put the squeeze on Netflix. Nowadays it will help Netflix not deal with competitors. Any members of your theoretical coalition not driven by perfectly long term self interest and fairness could get bent over.
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ISPs are able to selectively throttle Internet traffic to/from certain websites because they enjoy a government-granted monopoly.
Not in the US. Where do you live that this happens? (Yes, I am once again pointing out that the government-granted CABLE monopolies that no longer exist do not apply to ISP service and never have. Please stop spreading this misinformation.)