WTF? The FCC v Net Neutrality

Ever notice how your MesaZona blogger tries to get a point across, sometimes juxtaposing an image with an article from an original source?

That is oftentimes the case when we all get distracted by what used-to-be-called "yellow journalism" or sensational grubbing to baser instincts like the current explosion in sex scandals erupting in politics, hacking gone-wild grabbing all your data whether you know it or not, while we miss or don't pay attention to what's going on in game-changing serious infringements of what we use and share for basic ways we communicate using the internet and the "Internet of Things".

The issue = Net Neutrality. December 14, 2017 is the date.

 

The date for what you might ask? Here's Tech Crunch's take on Net Neutrality:

FCC releases final draft of ‘Restoring Internet Freedom,’ which would not do that

Posted 20 hours ago by Devin Coldewey 

 

The FCC yesterday announced a December 14 vote on “Restoring Internet Freedom,” an order that, far from restoring freedom to the internet, which is already free, would allow it to be restricted in new and harmful ways. Actually, when you think of it as restoring internet freedom to ISPs and cable companies, it makes a lot more sense. At any rate the Commission has released the text of the order ahead of the vote, as promised.
It was just put out half an hour ago and it’s about 200 pages long, so it’ll take some time for me and others to sift through it and find out what kind of changes have been made since the draft circulated in late summer. . .
Although an FCC representative yesterday said that “we addressed all the serious comments,” that can’t quite be true, . . "
Link >  https://techcrunch.com
The Verge headlined this morning with this:

The US net neutrality fight affects the whole world

by Vlad Savov@vladsavov Nov 23, 2017, 8:24am EST

This is serious

"The United States is a nation quarreling with itself right now. Most of the country’s population wants to keep the internet an equitable and free place, embracing net neutrality rules as a necessary guardian against corporate overreach. But the current political administration seems hellbent on dismantling net neutrality and handing internet service providers the freedom to mold, shape, manipulate, and price internet access in whatever fashion they like. The downsides to this regulatory repeal are too numerous and appalling to list, but you don’t have to agree that it’s a bad idea to see something else important about it: whatever the American authorities do with respect to the internet will have major repercussions for the rest of the world as well. . . "

an unregulated US internet would feed directly into a push to instill the same legal environment elsewhere.

Is this really what we want the internet to become?

A place full of ignoble economic incentives driving companies to engage in ethically dubious anticompetitive behavior?
Internet service providers are doing pretty well in the US even with the currently extant net neutrality laws, which exist mostly to curb those companies’ worst impulses.
Why should we distort and disfigure the economics of internet access — something so essential to modern life that countries now treat it as a legal right — just to appease companies that face no threat of going out of business?

The global influence of the United States, and of American online companies, also means that repealing net neutrality within the country’s borders would pose an existential threat to net neutrality around the world.