Originally published at: https://boingboing.net/2017/11/21/failure-to-observe-regular-ord.html
…
9 Likes
_This comment is not available on your internet access plan. Please contact Verizon to upgrade your plan that will allow a little bit more content to be displayed.
32 Likes
FCC Chairman Ajit Pai : Elevated to Supreme Douche bag
15 Likes
The tryptophan will render them weak and docile! (Rubbing my hands with an evil laugh)
9 Likes
Well I guess that means folks are going to have setup their own wireless cooperatives (before corporations get laws to ban those as well).
15 Likes
I hate this administration.
15 Likes
So they think a holiday that consists of literally nothing but sitting around with our extended families eating (probably) dry dinosaur carcass will distract us from politics? Ha! don’t they realize that we are looking for any excuse to avoid this? to the streets! Sorry racist uncle Donny, your anecdote about the woman in front of you in line at the supermarket will have to wait!
6 Likes
I have been boycotting everything but non-taxable food and undergarments since the election (beyond my normal, lifelong boycotts) .
The internet was the only thing I was allowing myself outside of that, after work today it is canceled as of the end of the month.
We are going to have to burn this fucker down to get rid of all these rats.
2 Likes
That was made illegal too, they are trying to get states to crack down on it.
You just know all right-wing media is going to be included in basic plans, right?
2 Likes
Actually, cooperatives are still wholly legal. It’s how rural communities are connected in my home state. Note that cooperatives are not municipal ISPs which are govt owned and only a few states have bans on them. I think in the long run the corporations are going to find it much harder to prop themselves up when entire swathes of society have built parallel private institutions which are wholly legal and defended by the same laws which propel their monopolies. It’ll be quite amusing to see Comcast writing hit pieces calling the Mom and Pop Cooperatives communism.
3 Likes
Convince one of your relatives to check this out and make a single call: https://www.battleforthenet.com/
Just one! It’s not just one more than none, it’s infinitely more.
1 Like
That’s not what I’m talking about. The Net Neutrality state law ban don’t apply to cooperatives. You can 100% legally conform to the concept of net neutrality as a private organization whether or not the FCC supports Net Neutrality. So a cooperative isn’t restricted by law. A cooperative merely is a customer or worker owned institution.
But there’s also a snag on the FCC’s own order: the court already ruled on related matters of state bans on municipal ISPs are wholly legal. So sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander in this situation. Pai is a lawyer so you’d think he know he’s basically screwed on that provision. But it seems even failsons can become lawyers.
2 Likes
Like everything else in this country, industry has the time and money to send lawyers against any problem. It will be chipped away like every expansion of privilege they have fought for in the past couple of centuries.
Chasing the symptoms is getting us nowhere while making them bank. We need to break them.
2 Likes
They can try, but there’s a critical flaw in that tactic: it means they lose power as well. So, they’ll try other ways to make cooperatives seem unattractive but business friendly judges (which are the majority of them) won’t budge on the constitutional and common legal precedents. Cooperatives are businesses, they just happen to have their shareholders as their customers as well. Therefore, any attempt to subvert that aspect of their operation means even small businesses such as sole proprietorships or LLCs would be threatened too. Thus, those businesses will use their own connections at the state level to break the backs of the big corporations.
2 Likes
Might actually make comment sections better.
They should do it the other way: Block them for a fee.
I am an anarchist, of sorts. You don’t have to sell me on cooperatives. I agree with all you are saying, all I am saying is any threat to the current power structures profit model is in danger. There are no standards, morals or ethics in the US legal system, only their profit.
They will easily and completely ( and under the news radar) get themselves reclassified as something different than a coop if it will threatens their profit and growth margins.
There are no easy solutions here, the only solution I see is to stop issuing and renewing corporate charters to the owner/investor and only issue them to employee(position) owned organizations.
Anything else is chasing the symptoms and not the root problems, even to the point of enabling it. About all that happens anymore is enabling it.
6 Likes
A fun little factoid to bring up to your conservative relatives at Thanksgiving about net neutrality
5 Likes
So much for “state’s rights”.
(Oh yeah, that’s only important when it benefits corporate interests or rich white men.)
2 Likes
I particularly love this quote:
“Instead, the FCC would simply require internet service providers to be transparent about their practices so that consumers can buy the service plan that’s best for them and entrepreneurs and other small businesses can have the technical information they need to innovate.”
After all, everybody has numerous ISPs and plans they can choose from, right?
7 Likes
