Go FCC Yourself!

gofccyourself.com

Last Sunday night, John Oliver on Last Week Tonight reminded all internet users - left wing, right wing, trolls, white hats, black hats, everyone - how important Net Neutrality is, and how the newly appointed FCC commissioner Ajit Pay wants to reverse the Net Neutrality rules put into place during the Obama administration.  You see, Pai (pronounced 3.141592654), a former Verizon lawyer,  is an ideologue who believes that  "the more you regulate something, the less of it you get".  What he doesn't understand is that Title I and Title II of the FCC Net Neutrality rules, are not trying to regulate free and unfettered access to the internet, No, Not At All.  What they are trying to regulate is that internet service providers (ISPs) cannot scale back, throttle down your speed, in favor of their own content that may be competing with what you wanted to watch / see / download on the expensive and slow internet connection you have in America, land of the gouging ISPs [Asia's and Europe's ISPs are far better, faster, less expensive, and have multiple choices for hard wired as well as WiFi, while in America we're stuck with basically 5 monopolies who put their customers last].

"Why does this affect me?" you might ask?  Well, if you use an internet connection, it can and will affect you.

The most basic, simple example is as follows:  Say you want to download a show, and binge watch the whole season of it some Friday or Saturday, from Netflix or Amazon.  BUT, you have Comcast as your ISP... and Comcast has a series that is Similar to what you wanted to download and watch, so Comcast could then Easily reduce your download speed (loading.... loading....) for your Netflix or Amazon show while opening up extra fast-pass lanes for their own Comcast series that they want everyone to watch instead.  Your download becomes so frustratingly slow, that you search for something else... and your ISP (who knows that you were Just trying to download one of their competitor's products) SUGGESTS you watch their own 'original content series" instead.

Evil.  Despicable.  Enraging.  Yes.

And it is not just movies.  The same can be said for songs, youtube videos, live streaming, anything that requires data transfer, into and out of your home, your office, your mobile telephone, your iPad.  You THINK you're paying for 30 Gig a minute, or 100 Gig a minute, but every time you test it on a bench mark site, you find that it is 1/10th that speed for downloads... because you're not downloading the "recommended content" that your ISP wants you to see, is pushing at you, promoting to you, and making money from providing to you.

So John Oliver recounted how the first time Last Week Tonight did this 3 years ago, that they crashed the FCC website in minutes once the show aired.  And Oliver went on to state how TODAY, for this new period of public comment, the FCC has made it Much Harder to make comments on their website, requiring a multi-step search and entry process, one which Last Week Tonight streamlined by buying the URL gofccyourself.com - witty, hilarious, and most importantly, Easy to Remember.

So before I started this post this afternoon, I tried out the link.  You have to enter in your name, address, and phone number (perhaps for the re-education camps that 45 will implement in the future?) ... and you have to click on the     "+ Express" blue button on the top right of the page once it loads.  --------------------------------------------->>>>>>>

gofccyourself.com

But then you can write in, how you feel about having your internet speed reduced just because of your ISP monopoly's desire to push preferred content at you, instead of what you want to watch, see, hear, read about, download, upload, or enjoy.

For an example of what you could say, I have partially excerpted my entry here, to help spur creative ideas and other responses:

"Title 1 and Title 2 were created TO REDUCE or make it harder for ISPs to throttle, slow down, and give preferential treatment to content.  Ajit Pai is right when he says "if you regulate something, you don't get more of it, you get less of it". Exactly, Regulate ISPs who throttle content and slow down their competitors.  Get rid of Title 2, and throttling will become rampant, common place, ubiquitous.  Pai is right, but in the opposite way his idealogical mind thinks.  "

You can cut and paste mine, if you like, or create your own version.  But I encourage you, regardless of what part of the political spectrum you believe you are most closely aligned, to make your voice heard.  ISPs want to throttle EVERYONE down, to reduce our already slow American internet speeds even further, and promote their own ISP content preferentially.  This affects EVERYONE who uses the internet in America, except perhaps for ISP executives who have fiber optic nodes installed in their homes and who self-exempt from the throttling.

Take 5 or 10 minutes out of your day today or tomorrow, and let your voice be heard.

gofccyourself.com