Internet-Wide Day of Action to Save Net Neutrality

I'm confused. From your point of view, this should actually be better than what was proposed, and vastly better than the regulatory scheme from 2015-2017.

From 2015-2017, regulatory authority was vested in the FCC -- the puritans who fine radio or tv stations if someone uses a swear word, make sure no R rated movies get played over the air, and issue fines for things like the famous "wardrobe malfunction." You know, censoring for content.

Before that (and now) regulatory authority is with the FTC, whose mandate is fair business practices, breaking up monopolies, that kind of thing. If there were some concerted effort to block sites like this one because they wouldn't pay up, the FTC has a pretty solid record of smashing companies doing things like that.

Really, all this does is return the state of the internet back to the state it was in 2015. Terraria was already 4 years old by then, and I don't recall such extortion happening back then...
 
UPDATE: The Battle for the Net is not over yet!

A vote in the U.S. Senate is pending in mid-May on a resolution to reverse the earlier FCC ruling and reinstate the free and open Internet rules that we should be entitled to. The resolution needs one more Senate vote to help ensure that Net Neutrality is brought back.

There is still time to contact your Senator and urge them to vote FOR the resolution to reinstate Net Neutrality - click HERE for a simple way to email/tweet/Facebook post to make your voice heard.

If you are still unsure that this affects you at all or that there is anything that you can do about it, Imgur has a grim reminder of what may happen to your memes if Net Neutrality is allowed to die.

This article has a decent run-down of the events in this issue up to now, and what happens next. There is overwhelming bipartisan support among Americans in favor of keeping Net Neutrality rules, yet the projected Senate votes unfortunately lie along party lines. Let your Senator know that they should represent the interests of their constituents, not the greedy interests of large ISPs and other telecommunications companies.
 
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Today is the day.

Beginning today, it will be legal for ISPs like Comcast, Verizon and AT&T to exert their influence on your Internet. They now have the right of law to block, censor and throttle content or charge extra fees solely on their decisions of what they want you to see, or what makes them the most money.

You won't see a sudden change, but it will be coming.

There is still time to act, and still time to stop this. The US Senate recently passed a Congressional Review Act (CRA) to overrule the FCC policy that ends Net Neutrality, following an aggressive campaign from the American public. Now it is time for the US House of Representatives to take it up and do the same.

Please contact your Congressional Representative and demand action. Every seat in the House is up for re-election this fall, and primary elections are already underway - make it clear that this is a major issue in the fall elections. If you're not old enough to vote, make sure that your parents know what's at stake here.

The battle is not over. Stand up for your rights before they go away for good.

https://www.battleforthenet.com/#bftn-action-form
 
they don't care what we say so long as ISPs will fork over a portion of that extra throttle money.
 
I know we've focused on the U.S.-based issues related to an Internet free of corporate manipulation, but these issues aren't just happening in America.

There is a very similar issue occurring in the European Union, where corporate interests are lobbying governments to allow them to implement the same anti-consumer policies that we're fighting here.

https://saveyourinternet.eu/

For those who've said in the past - "I'd like to help, but I don't live in the U.S." - if you live in the EU, here's your chance to help yourselves avoid the same potential fate as the U.S.

(h/t to @altermaven for posting this on his profile)
 
The Copyright Directive, in its current form, will force those who link websites that also carry small snippets of what to expect to pay what is literally a "link tax" (in Article 11), and provides mandatory filters for material that is about to be uploaded (a.k.a. the Censorship Machine, Article 13). If it's passed, the Internet is about to become 99% less enjoyable for folks in the EU, while efforts to share -- let alone stream -- gameplay, content, art, literature, and all in between can be crushed before it even reaches the site.

(And if you are a code collaborator with others outside the EU -- this also harms open-source developments AS WELL AS commercial endeavours. So that's another big minus.)

It's overly broad and does nothing more than silence your voices. If you live in the EU region, please visit above. If you do not, but know someone who does -- PLEASE, PLEASE, share the site and tell EVERYONE to get in contact with your MEPs. You STILL have a chance to shut this down, but only if you all get loud.

(I am not from the EU, but even I know this is bad.)
 
Well, the only way of affecting german Internet would be blocking content from us. domains. Since we "usualy" only use de. domain-websites, the US would only screw there economy. This cant happen in germany because Internet (or better its personal data usage) is ankered into our humanity-laws.

There is no way, no matter how powerfull the company is, that germans would be forced to this. They would need to unanker the ground-law, which is the foundation our country is build on, and it is restricted within this law to change it. Even if we would get another Hitler (which is, from my point of view, impossible if you look at the current democratic laws we have here), he could just force his will, but he would be unable to change the laws in this case. So good luck with that.

We have a foundation that is made from the majority of people living in our country. There need to be the majority of our people to change that. And this will never happen. (Other then in the US, where you have one guy in power in each state, voting for his people and most of the time dont care what they want, i mean, wtf ? Do you call that democratic ?)
 
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The EU Copyright Directive is out of trilogue and will be headed to the Parliment where the whole thing will be voted on. Do note your MEPs will also be facing elections coming up as well, so what fate they choose may also determine their fate in re-election days.

It's metric tons worse than it originally started, with Article 13 putting major penalties and causing rampant digital rights destruction for:
  • Fan-artists and content creators
  • Multi-country collaborators, whether it be development crews or open-source projects
  • Indie artists and developers, small-scale software and arts companies included
  • Youtube creators, Twitch/Mixer/etc. streamers
  • Imgurians and Redditors
  • News-sharers and reposters/retweeters (thanks to Article 11 a.k.a. the Link Tax)
But in general, if you are someone you know is a content creator, a fan-artist or aspiring streamer in the EU, or likes memes and parody creations, PLEASE have them get in constant touch with their MEPs in defiance of the Copyright Directive. Otherwise, you will have to deal with the Great Firewall of the European Union, with mandatory upload filters, uncircumventable censors and virtually no VPN usage whatsoever.

https://saveyourinternet.eu/act

(I do not live in the EU, but this will have a virtually permanent-lasting impact on people outside of the EU, like me. So get people you know that live in the EU to ACT NOW.)
 
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