Net Neutrality

[boutons_deux]

Another loss for kakistocrat Pai

Federal appeals court tells FCC its attempt to make Sinclair Broadcasting a monopoly is racist

Over the past two-plus years, Trump’s FCC, headed by former Verizon lawyer and transparent telecom shill Ajit Pai, has tried to do away with all telecom regulations and consumer protections.

they don’t have actual evidence supporting their legal moves.

Pai’s FCC worked diligently to grease the rails in order to grant right-wing Sinclair Broadcasting more and more monopolistic control over the national media landscape.

In 2017, the Republican-controlled

FCC voted to remove a 77-year-old rule requiring localities to maintain a news station,

and also

tried to roll back a cap that prevented any single broadcasting en y from reaching more than 39 percent of the country,

while also

doing away with the longstanding rule that no one en y own more than a single broadcasting business.

The proposed Sinclair Broadcasting and Tribune Media merger would have broken both of those rules,

giving Sinclair more than 70 percent of the national market,

and allowing a single en y to own two news/broadcasting outlets.
Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit ruled that

Pai’s FCC “did not adequately consider the effect its sweeping rule changes will have on ownership of broadcast media by women and racial minorities.

The case against Pai and the FCC came from a coalition of unions, consumer, and media advocacy groups.

Pai and Sinclair will continue to work together to create propaganda—and real evidence and honest reporting will remain the best antidotes.

Earlier this year, an appeals court thwarted the FCC’s attempts at throwing 70% of low-income residents off of Lifeline, the government-subsidized internet program.

https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2019/9/25/1887861/-Federal-appeals-court-tells-FCC-its-attempt-to-make-Sinclair-Broadcasting-a-monopoly-is-racist?detail=emaildksp

As the oligarchy continues to pollute the Federal judiciary with incompetent right wing ideologues through its stooge s MoscowMitch and ing Catholic Leonard Leo, these kids of rulings For The People will become rarer.

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BigNetwork Ajit Pai is using streaming services as an excuse to raise cable rates

The deregulation train keeps rolling

The rise of streaming services could give cable companies

an excuse to raise rates under a Federal Communications Commission order handed down on October 25th.

The order, which comes in response to a pe ion by Charter, finds that

AT&T’s TV Now streaming service qualifies as reasonable compe ion for conventional cable,

opening the door to a massive deregulation in monopoly cable markets.

https://www.theverge.com/2019/10/25/20932391/fcc-charter-att-monopoly-order-raise-cable-rates

"compe ion" ?

Compe ion is Capitalism's Worse Nightmare about reduced amassing of wealth by not be able to fleece customers at will

Repug FCC will NEVER rule to reduce BigCorp from fleecing clients

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FCC Delays Law Banning Your ISP From Charging You 'Rental Fees' For Hardware You Already Own

For the last few years, broadband customers have complained that Frontier Communications, the nation's third-biggest telco, has been

charging its customers a $10 per month rental fee for modems they already purchased and own.

Normally, you're supposed to be able to buy your own modem instead of paying your ISP a rental fee upwards of $10 per month.

To nab some extra dough from captive customers, Frontier basically decided to charge its customers a rental fee anyway, giving them a polite, though giant, middle finger when they complained.

because the Trump FCC is a glorified rubber stamp for the industry's biggest players,

consumers who complained to the agency received little more than a glassy eyed stare.

last January when the problem was fixed, shockingly enough, by the US Congress

a little noticed provision that formally bans the nonsense Frontier has been engaged in.

a clause included in the measure gave the FCC the right to delay the restriction by six months.

So that's precisely what the FCC did.
And the FCC justified the move by claiming that

the pandemic simply made it too onerous for a big ISP to stop ripping people off:

https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20200604/09392344642/fcc-delays-law-banning-your-isp-charging-you-rental-fees-hardware-you-already-own.shtml

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bag Repugs and BigCorp are liars, cheats, frauds

Opposition to Net Neutrality Was Faked, New York Says

The state attorney general’s office reached an agreement that levies millions in penalties on third-party services that generated the comments.

Internet service providers funded an effort that yielded millions of fake comments supporting the Federal Communications Commission’s repeal of so-called net neutrality rules in 2017,

The effort generated roughly nine million comments to the agency and letters to Congress backing the rollback,

almost all signed by people who had never agreed to the use of their names on such comments,

according to the investigation.

Some of the names had been obtained earlier, in other marketing efforts, officials said. The agency approved the repeal in late 2017.

Broadband for America’s members include some of America’s most prominent internet providers, like

AT&T, Comcast and Charter, as well as several trade groups.
https://www.nytimes.com/2021/05/06/technology/internet-providers-fake-comments-net-neutrality-new-york.html