Another Day Of Decision

I'll get to Doug Jones later.  But right now . . .

The Federal Communications Commission will kill Net neutrality tomorrow.

We're about to get hit with a Pai in the face.

There's only one way to stop FCC Chairman Ajit Pai from imposing a rollback on Internet regulations keeping the network open and free. and that way is to urge Congress to enshrine Net neutrality into law.  Pai is one of three Republicans on a five-member commission, and that's a majority.  This is what Republicans have always wanted to do - get rid of Obama-era Internet rules.  Oh, sure, there will be lawsuits to stop Pai after the vote goes through, but congressional intervention is the best and only way to stop this once and for all.

I shudder to think what a neutrality-free Internet, governed by Internet service providers, might look like.  I know that this blog could be blocked due to all of the hard-hitting political commentary I've written here.  I'm even concerned that my beautiful-women picture blog could be affected.  Suppose a woman running an ISP has a problem with any blog or site celebrating women with feminine beauty as the main focus?  She might even have a problem with the preponderance of fashion models on my blog - "My God," she might say, "who is this jerk to celebrate women who are only famous because of their looks?"  Now, that's obviously an extreme case, but here's another problem; this blog is on a service owned by Google. What if my ISP has a problem with Google because it's competing with its own search engine? How about people who use Flickr, owned by Verizon subsidiary Yahoo, but don't have Verizon as their ISP?  Does that mean Flickr customers who use an ISP other than Verizon will have to pay more money than they already do to use it, if not every site is treated equally?  And what about social media?  Are Facebook and Twitter suddenly susceptible to user fees imposed by ISPs because you're using the ISPs' network to access those sites?

And of course, if I say anything bad on this blog about content provided by an ISP - say, a TV show on a channel owned by an ISP - that could be blocked as well.  I'm just glad I don't stream movies and TV shows online, because anyone who does will have to pay through the nose and the mouth to do it. 

It's easy to blame Trump for this, and it's an equally easy shot to say that this is part of his quest to have total control over everything, but the truth of the matter is that this rollback of Net neutrality would have happened even if another Republican presidential candidate from 2016 - Marco Rubio, Jeb Bush, John Kasich - had been elected to the White House, because any one of them would have put Ajit Pai or someone like him in charge of the FCC.  Especially if Ted Cruz had been elected President.  The Texas senator declared Net neutrality to be "government control of the Internet," as assertion so laughable it would be funny if it weren't serious.     

I will not be posting tomorrow.  I want to show everyone tomorrow what my blog will be if my ISP moves to silence me with Uncle Charlie's blessing.

That is, nothing.