John Oliver asks that you use your vast powers to rescue Net Neutrality. It’s like your whole life has been building to this moment.
Go to fcc.gov/comments and spew. Spew like you’ve never spewed before.
Pharyngula
Evolution, development, and random biological ejaculations from a godless liberal
Oliver’s show is fabulous. Not that I wasn’t expecting it to be, but it’s exceeded my expectations.
(The line about the Apple user agreement was hilarious.)
How will these comments be used? Certainly, no one is going through them all and summarizing Yeah and Nay votes. But are they simply counted? Or, is the entire database of comments just deleted at the end of the comment period by someone with a fat stack of Comcast bucks in his pocket?
One minor quibble – Estonia is actually a very tech-central country. It’s one of the most wired countries in Europe.
It seems like the US often comes in near Estonia in various rankings for some reason, and it’s often used as a punchline like this, which I would find offensive if I were Estonian. It’s not that we really think Estonia is medieval, but most of us know essentially nothing about it.
I haven’t laughed this hard in many months.
Shrek attacks.
Okay, Oliver was never my favorite Daily Show character, but he’s growing on me. This was priceless!
Two Oliver vids in one day (the one mocking our current Australian PM was a joy to behold)!
The city of Atlanta recently had an “open discussion” on $392m of taxpayer dollars being used to fund a new baseball stadium. Yes, a new stadium less than 20 years after the last one was built.
And who, pray tell, was speaking? The entire public, the thousands of people who were against tax money being directed to a white elephant that they would never benefit from?
No. TWELVE speakers in total were allowed. And all were corporate mouthpieces, allegedly “random” but in reality hand selected. The public were prevented from being heard, and some were arrested for protesting that fact.
http://www.boston.com/sports/baseball/redsox/extras/extra_bases/2014/05/against_the_new_atlanta_braves_stadium_plan_too_ba.html
Don’t expect net neutrality discussions to be any different.
@left0ver1under:
If you go to the FCC’s page – they have over 47000 comments on the Net Neutrality thing – nearly all of the ones I’ve read have been against the change. If they can seriously push this plan through, then I will have lost absolutely all faith in the democratic process.
The FCC page is conveniently failing to load.
DDoS?
I haven’t been able to watch the shorter video above, so I watched the whole thing:
Hilarious.
@Kevin, Youhao Huo Mao(#9):
Can’t make this painless but you are going to lose it.
There is this nice little study done that boiled down to the USA isn’t a democracy, or a republic, but an oligarchy. The only way this one gets stopped is if one of the other big players,or group of players that isn’t the general public, ends up putting serious resistance (like when most of the tech industry went apeshit about SOPA).
Also instructive. Comcast and Time Warner Cable have formed a cartel – and patiently explain it on TV! And the new head of the FCC used to be the cable lobbyist-in-chief!!! What kind of failed state is this!?!
Forgot:
“Republic” just means “not a monarchy”.
“Good evening, monsters.”
:D
–
plus most people in Estonia will have access to free WiFi.
@David Marjanović(#15):
Strange thing is that democracy and monarchy are a possible combination.
Which Oliver likens to needing a babysitter and hiring a dingo.
nope.
there are actually several Crowned Republics.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crowned_republic
.but it’s a quibble of semantics really.
Y’all should check out John Oliver’s weekly podcast, “The Bugle,” aka “An audio newspaper for a visual world,” which he does with fellow comedian Andy Saltzman.
http://www.soundcloud.com/the-bugle
These types of comments don’t matter. The FCC rulemaking is not a democratic process, it is an administrative act. It’s complex, but here’s the simple version: the FCC gets power to make rules from Congress. Rules have the power of a law but the rulemaking must follow the directive that Congress has set up. So if Congress says “FCC, you can regulate broadband companies so as to protect consumers and ensure competition” then those are the criteria the rulemaking has to follow in what they do. If they use factors other than those that Congress has told them to use then the rulemaking can be overturned because it is an over-reach of authority. The FDA tried to delay on a rulemaking that would allow Plan B to be sold over the counter because it was politically unpopular, but the courts said that the FDA’s job isn’t to be concerned with politics, they are supposed to be concerned with safety. And if Plan B was safe then the FDA needed to make it over the counter.
The point of doing things via regulation instead of Congressional act is to try and keep politics out of the issue and to focus on the science and policy factors. This is a good thing. But it is the reason why even if 99% of people comment negatively on the issue it does not matter, because the FCC is not a democratic body. It is a group of specialists who have limited rulemaking authority. Comments directly addressing issues within the rulemaking are helpful. This isn’t.
That’s a way of saying “monarchy in name only”.
^^which is why I added: