Ready or not...

[Xairbusdriver]

The "fat lady" is about to sign... oops! Correct characters, wrong order... She's about to "sing"!

The House of "Representatives" voted 215 to 205 to give ISPs total access to use any and everything you do with the web. Another vote for the little guy (formerly known as the poor, down trodden corporation). We have no printable 'smilie' to show my disdain for the main actors in this event.

[jchuzi]

Privacy advocates plan to fight Congress' repeal of Internet privacy rules

[tacit]

QUOTE(Xairbusdriver @ Mar 29 2017, 01:59 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

The "fat lady" is about to sign... oops! Correct characters, wrong order... She's about to "sing"!

The House of "Representatives" voted 215 to 205 to give ISPs total access to use any and everything you do with the web. Another vote for the little guy (formerly known as the poor, down trodden corporation). We have no printable 'smilie' to show my disdain for the main actors in this event.

Under the new law, ISPs may sell any information they wish, including browsing history, on any of their customers to anyone who wants to buy it. (Imagine your search and browsing history being sold to advertisers, private investigators, your employer...)

One group of people is now doing a crowdfunding campaign to buy the complete Internet search and browsing history for every lawmaker who voted in favor of this, which they intend to publish freely on the Web.

[Xairbusdriver]

Why we always need at least two nearly equal parties and a third group who can then represent the people in any discussion of regulations and laws.

FCC Chief Sparks Clash With Call to Repeal Net Neutrality

Write, phone, email, complaint to your Congressman and Senator.

[Xairbusdriver]

Congress has already agreed with the FCC Chief. Apparently others are not having access as they should to comment: FCC Claims DDoS Attack Crashed Net Neutrality Comment System Some say the key word there is "Claims". Of course, there are always some who distrust anything any government says... but some are eager to trust them with 'back doors' in our data...

[Xairbusdriver]

<FCC Vote First Step in Net Neutrality Repeal Process>

QUOTE

...
“Pretty much everyone says they are in favor of net neutrality–the idea that service providers shouldn’t engage in data discrimination, but should instead remain neutral in how they treat the content that flows over their networks,” wrote Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) Legal Director Corynne McSherry in a blog post Thursday. But actions speak louder than words, and today’s action by the FCC speaks volumes. After weeks of hand-waving and an aggressive misinformation campaign by major telecom companies, the FCC has taken the first concrete step toward dismantling the net neutrality protections it adopted two years ago.”

Public comment on the proceedings remains open until mid-August, and comments have surpassed 1.6 million following a campaign by television performer John Oliver and an alleged DDoS attack which temporarily disrupted the FCC’s comment system. Some of those comments have included racist remarks and threats directed against FCC Chairman Ajit Pai, while some appear to have been submitted by spam bots.

<Listing of Comments to FCC on this matter>

[Xairbusdriver]

Any bets on when your ISP raises your rates and/or lowers your speeds?

I'm betting it will be very soon after 14 December 2017, ar lease for those of us in the US of A where 48.9% of us have only one ISP choice.

BTW #1, that date is when Mr. Pai plans to have the FCC vote on undoing the net neutrality rules set up a couple of years ago.

BTW #2, you wasted electrons or postage if you complained or expressed your views to the FCC. They now claim there were so many that they didn't have time to look at them. They basically ignored “thousands of consumer complaints and millions of individual comments that ask the FCC to save net neutrality and uphold the principles that all traffic should be created equal.”

Long live Capitalism greed!  Your opinions may vary, of course.

http://tidbits.com/article/17649

[Dreambird]

QUOTE

Regulators are getting ready to allow rescind limits on what can be done with the data the providers collect on us. They are preparing to rescind the requirement that we must be asked for our permission for our data to be sold in any way.

Now that just plain scares the crap out of me. I do hope there will be some way via firewalls or other software to protect oneself from that! I try the best I can, but still I'm afraid it's obvious just judging from the amount of "junk email" I get sometimes from places or whatever I have never even heard of. I regularly go through everything manually and "unsubscribe" from everything I don't want to hear about or from again.  I find it definitely slows down the amount that comes in by quite a bit.

Of course I suppose if you "block" your info from going out the ISP will punish you by something like slowing down or charging more. The only leverage I have with Shaw cable, my ISP is that I've been a great customer since 1980 and twice now when I've called to say I can't handle the price anymore and will be switching I get passed to customer retention and both times it's gotten me a price decrease of $30 to $40 a month.
Fact is simply that I don't NEED them to live but I do need my utilities etc. so considering how my life is it helps I think for them to know that this particular "bank" does not have flexible funds. I'm sure they couldn't really care less about that but again they know that if backed into the corner there are other places I can go. That being said I don't really want to leave them, I've never had a problem with them really, I've never found myself throttled except if they were having technical issues which is normal. I used to do a lot of P2P and never got hassled.

I have both CraveTV and Netflix... they do cost extra but I have no speed/streaming issues with either. Rates do go up pretty much once a year, however what doesn't these days? I may have to pay that increase but I still won't lose the amount I'm saving from the decreases I've thus far managed to maintain. Just next time I see they are getting out of hand, I'll call them on it again... and just hope for the best. In any case I can always manage just fine with less if need be...

[Xairbusdriver]

All you have to do is live outside the US of A. This is an American government commission.

[Dreambird]

Yes, Jim... I do realize that, plus I read Paddy's comment further up. I just happened to have 2 cents left after I paid all my bills so thought I'd throw them in....  

Also there is a saying up here: "The US sneezes and Canada catches the cold."
What happens down there generally ends up affecting us one way or another to some degree so unless this really is a "closed" issue here... My ISP is only in Canada so...

If I'm being honest, what I'm waiting for is for Trump to come barging in our door demanding our water, our timber, our mineral deposits etc. etc. etc. But one can hope I'm only being paranoid and we'll have to see how well PM Trudeau can stand up to him. It's not a lot different here as to when he may want to do something he gets hammered by the opposition... and Harper made sure to "stack" the Senate before he he got tossed...  

Not wishing to start a political riot... please do feel free to edit this post, just please leave my acknowledgement that I know you are correct about whose issue this is...

[Xairbusdriver]

...I think I may delete all you last post except for the last eight words! Those I'm going to frame so my wife can see themselves!!

[Dreambird]

OK... however I plead innocent to having any responsibility for how those words are used!

[Xairbusdriver]

As expected, the FCC kicked the net neutrality can to the FTC which will have to wait until people start complaining about the antics of the giant web access corporations before doing anything about that. Much safer and comfortable to let consumers be hurt and then ask for forgiveness than to figure out what should happen that is best for them. I think the horse was let out of the barn and the barn was then torn down when Corporations were granted "human rights".

If you're not sure about what is coming, take a read about what Comcast did as soon as Mr. Pai made his intentions known back in April.

How's this for a headline: Goodbye, net neutrality—Ajit Pai’s FCC votes to allow blocking and throttling Dspite many polls showing that the majority of people (regardless of party 'affiliation') supported the net neutrality rules in effect for a few short years, Mr. Pai claims that Internet infrastructure "investment in high-speed networks has declined by billions of dollars". He failed to give any details about how this investment never happened. It's always difficult to prove a negative, I think.

There is a small glimmer of hope, however. State attorneys general line up to sue FCC over net neutrality repeal. I think that is the same group that failed to get tobacco companies to stop getting people addicted to nicotine...

[Paddy]

Just to clarify things a bit for our US friends - Canada has some of the strictest net neutrality laws in the world. It's highly unlikely that we would follow the US example any time soon - in fact, almost every Canadian I know looks at what is going on in the US right now with abject horror. And not just the net neutrality stuff, either. However, that's veering into political territory, so I'll shut up now.

[krissel]

QUOTE(Paddy @ Dec 16 2017, 02:18 PM) <{POST_SNAPBACK}>

... in fact, almost every Canadian I know looks at what is going on in the US right now with abject horror. And not just the net neutrality stuff, either. However, that's veering into political territory, so I'll shut up now.

The majority of US citizens concur, but we...