Tag: open internet
International power plays are a threat to a stable, open internet. In this environment, building a stable and transnational internet for future generations is a challenge. It requires delicacy and precision. #OpenInternet
As federal lawmakers held a hearing Thursday on broadband equity, a new report details how the internet service provider industry, through hiked prices and disappearing lower-priced offerings, is exacerbating the digital divide. #digitaldivide
Along with allies from across the globe, Sir Tim Berners-Lee—the computer engineer credited with inventing the world wide web—has unveiled a new global plan designed to restore and enshrine some of the key principles of the revolutionary technology that he and his colleagues believe have been subsumed by government censorship and surveillance as well as a rapacious corporate appetite for endless data, monetization, and profit. #DigitalDystopia
While the social media giant wraps itself in the banner of free expression and political speech, it serves more as a scrim to hide its continued spread of political disinformation to tens of millions of voters in advance of the 2020 elections. #facebookpolitics
European Union member states were accused of threatening freedom of speech and online expression and ignoring the will of millions of people after they adopted controversial copyright rules.
Thanks to weeks of sustained grassroots pressure in the form of 16 million emails, over a million phone calls, and nationwide demonstrations both online and off, three Republicans voted with the Senate Democratic caucus on Wednesday to block the GOP-controlled FCC’s net neutrality repeal, clearing a crucial hurdle on the path to saving the web from the greed of the telecom industry.
As internet freedom supporters in the Senate attempt to force a vote to reverse the Federal Communications Commission’s (FCC) unpopular repeal of net neutrality rules, dozens of prominent websites went on “red alert” in support of the protections on Wednesday, hoping to prompt users to flood lawmakers’ offices with phone calls, emails, and other messages pressuring them to reinstate net neutrality.
“The FCC’s dangerous ruling goes against the core values of our democracy, and New York will do everything in our power to protect net neutrality and the free exchange of ideas,” Cuomo vowed in a statement. “With this executive order, we reaffirm our commitment to freedom and democracy and help ensure that the internet remains free and open to all.”
Once the clamping down on individual expression and creation on the internet reaches a breaking point, the population will seek a better alternative. With the growth of peer-to-peer, open-source technology, it is only a matter of time before the internet expands into a number of different, competing webs of information.
Net neutrality defenders have planned a massive online demonstration this week ahead of the FCC’s scheduled vote on chairman Ajit Pai’s deeply unpopular plan to kill the open internet, which critics have denounced as “naked corporatism.” Slated to begin Tuesday—and continue through to the scheduled vote by the Republican-controlled FCC on Thursday—the “Break the Internet” protest is aimed at showing “the world what the web will look like without net neutrality.”
Protesters targeted Verizon because the FCC’s Chair Pai is a former lobbyist for the company, which has—along with major internet service providers (ISPs) Comcast and AT&T—invested heavily in pressuring lawmakers to support policies that benefit telecom companies at the expense of consumers.
Privacy and consumer advocates—and a seemingly endless chorus of Internet users—were expressing outrage on Thursday after the Republican-controlled U.S. Senate passed a bill that will allow powerful media corporations to collect personal data of internet users without their consent and sell that information to the “highest bidder” for profit.
That means the internet will remain a public service classified under Title II of the Communications Act—upholding the FCC’s power to ensure that all carriers, including mobile and broadband, treat all internet traffic equally.
