Via uspirates.org:
The United States Pirate Party is overjoyed that both Net Neutrality and Community Broadband measures passed the FCC today.
The Net Neutrality proposal comes from almost 8 years of wrangling with the FCC, starting from research in 2007 that showed Comcast to be interfering with people attempting to use the BitTorrent protocol, regardless of content. This research, conducted by US Pirate Party Chairman Andrew Norton for the news site TorrentFreak was later verified by both the Associated Press, and the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
“These provisions make for a stronger step forward for citizens of the US,” states Norton. “Despite the plethora of lies and misrepresentations by the major players in the Internet Service Provider (ISP) industry, the FCC has today ruled to take away their ability to fleece consumers and line their pockets at the public trough without consequence.“
The votes strengthen not just protections for consumers, but their ability to build their own community networks where they feel unserved, an activity pre-emptively banned by state laws, prompted by anti-competitive suggestions by incumbent ISPs.
“With these two votes, the FCC has ensured that monopoly ISPs will not stifle competition or prevent small businesses and new startups from accessing the Internet on the same terms as the previously-established companies,” stated Vice-Chair Lindsay-Anne Brunner.
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About the United States Pirate Party
The United States Pirate Party is is the only political party in the US with the objective of defending the Internet as an open resource for all. The US Pirate Party ran four candidates for state elections in 2014, receiving up to 18% of the vote. It is identifying and training candidates to run in the 2016 Congressional and state elections. State Pirate parties are active in Massachusetts, Wisconsin, Georgia, New York and other states.
For More Information
United States Pirate Party
Email: [email protected]
Phone: (+1)352-658-3824
Web: uspirates.org
Twitter: @uspirates
Facebook: facebook.com/uspirates
Cool, let us know.
I’m currently writing a commentary on this subject at Saturn’s Repository. I’ll probably post it in the next few hours.
Thanks! I’ll take a look.
Paulie,
Sorry I missed the question the first time around (I forgot to subscribe to comments on this thread). I see you re-posted the question, and I answer it, at:
https://independentpoliticalreport.com/2015/02/pirate-party-kim-dotcom-to-sell-out-digital-rights-in-the-us/
I know there’s a show comments button at c4ss but I haven’t hit it and besides I want to drive some comments this way too 🙂
Tom – any thoughts on this? “Net Neutrality”: a Net Increase in Statism, or a Net Reduction?
Kevin Carson http://c4ss.org/content/36145
Publicly regulated utilities are more likely to clamp down on politically undesirable traffic. Not that the ISPs didn’t do it before, but I doubt this will appreciably help their party’s interests.
I guess we’ll see as the whole thing gets implemented.
What a shame. While the Pirate Party isn’t always reliably libertarian, this is the first time I’ve seen them go full-bore fascist.