Media Tech

KEEP Net Neutrality on 12/12

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FIGHT FOR THE FUTURE WROTE:

We’re rolling out our plan to stop the FCC’s vote to repeal net neutrality and we need your help.

Today, we announced a *massive online day of action* for December 12th that we’re calling “Break the Internet,” and we need every website, app, and user to help us make it huge.

For December 12th, we’re asking you to get creative and do everything possible to interrupt everyday experience by symbolically “breaking” your site, app, or social media channel. We don’t actually want to break anything. We want to get people’s attention by showing what an Internet broken by censorship, throttling, and new fees would look like&madsh;then ask them to call Congress and demand lawmakers stop the FCC’s repeal.

If enough of the Internet takes action on December 12th, we can make Congress do the right thing and stop the FCC’s vote. Let’s go all out. Join us, and help save net neutrality.

With the day of action coming just 48 hours before the FCC’s December 14th vote,[1] it’s crucial that users from across the country call Congress and demand that they do everything in their power to stop the FCC.

There is huge momentum to save the open web. The BattleForTheNet.com campaign has driven 750,000 calls to Congress.[2] Tomorrow, over 600 protests are set to take place at Verizon stores across the country.[3] And huge music stars are speaking out in magazines like Rolling Stone.[4] But need to focus this energy to win.

If you run a website or have a large social media community, then your participation is extra important on December 12th.

Here are the most important things you can do right now:

  1. Sign up to ‘Break the Internet’ and hit REPLY to let us know if your site can do more.
  2. Share the protest on Facebook and Twitter. We need to reach as many people as possible.
  3. If you run a website, add a BattleForTheNet widget using this code. You just need to embed a bit of javascript, and your site will empower users to call Congress.
  4. Add a banner to your site or social media profile and link to BattleForTheNet.com.
  5. Blog about the December 12th Day of Action. Tell your followers why net neutrality matters to you, and then send us a link so we can share it!

Please do what you can to protest the FCC’s extreme net neutrality repeal by “breaking” your site, app, or social media profiles on December 12th. We need to get creative and help draw attention to the importance of net neutrality and the open Internet.

And if you have a great idea, share it with us! We want to see what you come up with.

We’re counting on you,

Josh, Evan, Tiff & Holmes and the team at Fight for the Future.

Footnotes:

[1] Techcrunch: https://techcrunch.com/2017/11/21/fcc-officially-moves-to-unwind-net-neutrality-rules/

[2] Fight for the Future: https://www.fightforthefuture.org/news/2017-12-05-former-verizon-lawyer-turned-fcc-chairman-ajit-pai/

[3] Ars Technica: https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/12/net-neutrality-protests-start-thursday-how-to-find-one-near-you/

[4] Rolling Stone: https://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/michael-stipe-tom-morello-support-net-neutrality-in-letter-w513448

 

Fight for the Future works to protect your rights in the digital age.

PO Box 55071 #95005 Boston, MA 02205

Media Awareness Webinar Coming Up!

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FCM Forum this Saturday, Sept. 16, 4-5:30 PM KKFI Annex Room, 39th & Main Rear Door.  Spencer Graves has set up an agenda which will include two items:  

1.  Reports back from people’s efforts to contact their representatives in the US House and Senate regarding net neutrality.

2.  Planning for a monthly webinar series on media and democracy to be cosponsored by the Friends of Community Media (FCM) and the United Minority Media Association (UMMA).  Per the draft minutes of an UMMA meeting earlier today (below), UMMA may meet on the third Saturdays at 10 AM in the KKFI Annex.  This webinar / Forum series might be scheduled to begin after that, e.g. at noon or 11 AM or 11:30 AM.  In July and August, we met later in the day.  These webinars could be live streamed on Facebook and subsequently offered on WorkingJournalistPress.com, broadcasted on KKFI and offered to the Pacifica network of ~200 listener-sponsored radio stations.  With luck, we may be able to get FreePress.net and other groups concerned with media reform to co-sponsor later episodes of the webinar series.  We have expressions of interest from the following three, who could do webinars for us Oct. 21, Nov. 18, and Dec. 16, not necessarily in this order:

2.1.  Lewis Friedland, professor of journalism at the University of Wisconsin and author of important publications on media and democracy (https://journalism.wisc.edu/sjmc_profile/lewis-a-friedland/).

2.2.  Rev. Timothy Hayes, Jr., the Interim President of the United Minority Media Association (UMMA), who is 25 years old and has built a church on social media and can likely help us replicate that success in improving media and democracy here in the greater Kansas City area — and the world.

2.3. David Barsamian, founder and director of Alternative Radio, a Boulder, Colorado-based syndicated weekly public affairs program heard on some 250 radio stations worldwide. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_Barsamian).

For more on Spencer Graves’ thoughts on the webinar series, see “https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Webinars_on_media_and_democracy”.  For more on my thoughts regarding the afflictions that humanity inflicts upon itself, see“https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Net_neutrality_and_%27Restoring_Internet_freedom%27” and “https://en.wikiversity.org/wiki/Winning_the_War_on_Terror”.

Net Neutrality Links

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What is Net Neutrality?

When people use the Internet, they expect something called “net neutrality” This is keeps telecommunications companies like AT&T, Comcast and Verizon from slowing down or blocking any content or websites they don’t like.

In 2015, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) adopted net neutrality rules that keep these companies from censoring the Internet.  A decade earlier, Comcast was caught doing that.  When this was revealed, in 2014, it contributed to activism that generated 3.7 million comments to the FCC about this issue.

On May 18, 2017 President Trump’s FCC approved a “Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM)” “on restoring Internet freedom” to restore the “freedom” of telecoms to censor your Internet.  The deadline for original comments on that NPRM was July 17 with a deadline for “reply comments” of August 16.

No matter what a person’s Internet concerns are, preserving it should be important.   If the new FCC rules are allowed to stand, progress on many issues facing our nation will be blocked.  Net neutrality threatens many of the world’s elites because their attempted control over the media is threatened.

On July 15, FCM hosted a Forum that featured Ernesto Falcon, an attorney and Legislative Council with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a leading citizen advocacy group focused on the law of the Internet.  Falcon was interviewed by FCM’s Spencer Graves and Tom Crane with additional comments Gordon Elliott.

On August 5, FCM will update the audience on the arguments presented on both sides and what they might do to better protect their interest. 

Interesting links about Net Neutrality:

Battle For The Net (Coalition of Freepress.net, Demand Progress, and Fight for the Future)

https://www.battleforthenet.com/    (This has some excellent videos.)

https://www.democracynow.org/2017/7/11/activists_plan_mass_day_of_action

FCC Head Not Amused

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2017/07/ajit-pai-not-concerned-about-number-of-pro-net-neutrality-comments/

Internet Service Providers also not Amused

http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2017/07/14/internet_service_providers_were_not_amused_by_the_net_neutrality_day_of.html

Electronic Frontier Foundation and Net Neutrality

https://www.eff.org/issues/net-neutrality

 

Net-Neutrality Forum

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FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE                                                Contact:  Spencer Graves  (408) 655-4567

 

FORUM ON NET NEUTRALITY EFFORTS TO TAKE PLACE IN ON SATURDAY

            Kansas City, July 10, 2017 – On Saturday July 15th, Friends of Community Media (FCM) will convene the first of a series of forums on the media at 2:30 PM in the annex-room at 39th and Main (rear door) in Kansas City.  This meeting includes a panel with open-media advocate Spencer Graves and (tentatively) Ernesto Falcon, an attorney and Legislative Council with the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a citizen’s advocacy group specializing in Internet law, and possibly others.  Bring your concerns and questions.

This forum will discuss the efforts of the Federal Communications Commission under the Trump Administration to reverse the 2015 Open Internet rules with a “Notice of proposed rulemaking 17-60A1 on Restoring Internet Freedom”:  Trump’s FCC wants to restore the freedom of telecoms like Comcast to censor your internet usage, destroying net neutrality.  The “data” justifying this change were cherry-picked, according to the New York Times, FCC Commissioner Clyburn and others.

Recent polls by Mozilla and Civis Analytica found that 76 and 77 percent of Americas support net neutrality. [1]

The forum will encourage citizens and groups to send comments on this proposed change to the FCC before their July 17 deadline and to your representatives in the US House and Senate.  Perhaps the easiest way to do this is via “BattleForTheNet.com”.

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Friends of Community Media is a Kansas City nonprofit group working to enable citizens to create their own media and influence existing media.  FCM promotes diversity both in media ownership and diversity in views that media portray to the public.

[1]      Sam Gustin, “Most Americans Support the Net Neutrality Rules that Trump’s FCC Wants to Kill”, Motherboard, July 10, 2017.