- In total, as the chairman of the F.C.C., Mr. Pai released about a dozen actions in the last week, many buried in the agency’s website and not publicly announced, stunning consumer advocacy groups and telecom analysts. They said Mr. Pai’s message was clear: The F.C.C., an independent agency, will mirror the Trump administration’s rapid unwinding of government regulations that businesses fought against during the Obama administration.
- The efforts portend great changes at the federal agency at the center of the convergence of media, telecommunications and the internet. The biggest target will be net neutrality, a rule created in 2015 that prevents internet service providers from blocking or discriminating against internet traffic. The rule, which was created alongside a decision to categorize broadband like a utility, was the tech centerpiece of the Obama administration.
On Friday, the F.C.C. took its first steps to pull back those rules, analysts said. Mr. Pai closed an investigation into zero-rating practices of the wireless providers T-Mobile, AT&T and Verizon. Zero-rating is the offering of free streaming and other downloads that do not count against limits on the amount of data a consumer can download.
I personally am looking forward to the day when I get to pay for packages of internet sites, like current cable tv channel offerings. I can pay for the "Informed" package, and get access to web sites like NPR, NASA, Reuters, and Encyclopedia Brittanica. The fundraising campaign ads before every site loads is a minor annoyance, but ya know, you gotta support these sites somehow. And then I can pay for the "Basic Entertainment" package, and get YouTube (with ads), and FaceBook Basic (no ability to create Events, or make comments longer than 140 chars), and the IMDb "Trailers" site. Oh! And my kids will be able to get access to the Creation Station for free, a religiously-funded history feed, where good, white, Christian kids can do research on history's inevitable progression from unsophisticated dark-skinned cave-people to Modern America's shining pinnacle of the triumph of meritorious equality. It's too bad that you can only get the "Progressive Package" at 128kb/sec, but if you wait long enough, you can get to a network of BBS's that post wild liberal fantasies, like something called "National Parks", and "Polar Bears". The connection is spotty, and images mostly only load in 8-bit, but if you squint you can make out the images pretty well. I sure am happy with my Net Neutrality package! I get all the information I need for a low fee of $120/mo. The internet sure is an amazing modern tool of information!
No, you know what? Go on, do it. Try to tax the internet away from us, slowly. If you don't think there's tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of people who wouldn't devote their lives to seeding the next free internet within a year*, tops, then you're a fucking idiot. No, actually, it's already out there, the need for it just hasn't hit critical mass yet. Take the 'net away completely, and you will sow a near-instantaneous revolution of some sort. Good luck. *Edit: Obviously there exists an entire gradient of severity that necessitates a variety of responses. I think that some people are currently working to determine the best course of "business-based" actions (hint: it's gradual) that may eventually rob us of our lion's share of online autonomy and anonymity.
I think you could encode some ham radio frequencies, but passing the cypher between cities would require someone making the trek. Not sure that this would be sustainable, though. Also, all smartphones have an FM chip, not really sure how hard you could drive it, I'd imagine it just acts like a receiver.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Darknet If we keep losing the right to anonymity and to freely traffic around the internet, we'll build an increasing number of applications for peer-to-peer networks centered around the mobile device, using wifi. That's what I'd do, at least. If anybody can naysay that or come up with something better, I'm all ears.
It's fine, nothing but a business-friendly strategy, guys. Are you guys like, anti-business or something? Guys..
Net neutrality wasn't a rule created by the FCC in 2015. It has been the operating framework of the Internet for decades, which was formally conceptualized as early as 2008. It has only more recently come under threat by monopoly ISPs, necessitating formal regulation to protect it. In a truly competitive marketplace, these regulations wouldn't be necessary. Republicans won't support the regulations that would foster such a business environment though, because they're bought and paid for by the large ISPs.