Kit
Walsh, a staff attorney at EFF, working on free speech, net
neutrality, copyright, coders' rights, and other issues, spoke to
Aaron Mate and The Real News about the latest developments on Trump
administration's attempt to kill Net Neutrality.
Walsh
gave an example of how the corporate cartel on the Internet field
will attempt to sabotage independent websites that are not aligned
with the mainstream media narratives, in case that the plan of the
chair of the Federal Communications Commission, Ajit Pai, will pass
through Congress.
Walsh
also revealed that there is a continuous fierce fight between the
public who overwhelmingly supports free Internet and the corporate
monopolies who seek to impose a covert censorship through a new
McCarthyism in order to silent the truly independent information
inside the Web.
Walsh
describes the kind of blackmail and sabotage against an independent
news website like the Real News:
For
instance, Comcast owns a share in Universal Media Company. AT&T
has its own streaming media platform. Verizon briefly had a news
platform where they said that people were not to discuss net
neutrality or mass surveillance, because that was contrary to their
corporate interests.
So,
what companies can do if this proposed order goes through is they'll
be able to threaten to block access to your website. So they'll say,
"Hey Real News, it would be a shame if you could no longer
reach Verizon customers. Why don't you pay us an extra fee?"
And short of that, they can say, "We're going to speed up our
own news content. It's gonna be a better experience for people. And
your connection is going to be degraded."
That
connection, that internet subscribers are already paying for, they're
gonna put road bumps in the way so, when they go to watch the Real
News, they're not able to get a high quality stream. They have to
make do with less bandwidth or it's less reliable.
In
the previous cycle, back in 2015. We broke records for comments to
the FCC. And the overwhelming majority were in favor of protecting
net neutrality with legally enforceable rules, which ultimately it
did. This cycle, there were a lot of comments from both sides. There
were some form letters, many of which are people legitimately
agreeing with the content of those form letters, some maybe not. And
under any measure, the FCC has acknowledged that the majority favored
net neutrality and keeping the existing scheme. And an analysis that
was done by the ISPs themselves, which you would expect to favor
their side, actually found that of all the people who went to the FCC
website, who bothered to type in their own unique comments, 98
percent favored net neutrality. So, it's very clear that public
sentiment is on the side of keeping these rules. People are not
interested in handing over control of what they're able to read and
do online to their internet service providers.
Yesterday
was the day that Ajit Pai announced his intentions clearly. And just
that day alone, our coalition drove 175,000 calls to Congress.
Congress is the place where the FCC vote can be stopped right now. So
the today's announcement is just a proposed order. They're going to
vote December 14th. FCC votes have been stopped in the past. And if
we keep melting down the phone lines at Congress, that's our best
shot.
Therefore,
what we will see in case that the new plan will pass through
Congress, is a further, official step by the establishment to silence
independent information sources.
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