Chronicle opinion

By Rex D. Cain

(NATIONAL)  --  If you've been getting the feeling lately that far right-wing extremists now in control in Washington, DC have been busy selling out your country from underneath you, congratulations. That means you're reasonably perceptive.

As part of that ongoing sell-out to the rich and powerful, get ready to say goodbye to an equal playing field on the Internet and say hello to mega-media corporations and the super-rich pulling all the online strings.

President Trump's had-picked GOP extremists in the federal government are about to hose the American people big time (once again) unless they stand up and stop it from happening.

"The FCC intends to repeal the Obama-era net neutrality rules in a meeting on December 14," notes Salon.com. "Which critics say will create an unequal internet that favors major telecom companies and provides them with the ability to charge consumers more for certain services."

For years the huge media corporations have been drooling like junkyard dogs over the prospect of taking control of the speeds on the "Super Information Highway" - at the expense of all others - in order to make a huge amount of money.

And you know where their campaign donations have been going, yes? Greed, control, the desire for power and friendly well-fed politicians are at the heart of all of this.

Stopping the Internet from being an equal playing field and controlling as much of it as they can has been high on the shopping list of huge communications conglomerates for a very long time. 

So here is information you need to know in order to take action like all good Americans should to stop Trump's FCC from handing over the Internet to the special interests in Washington -- the kind who line the pockets of lawmakers in one way or another and now expect a payback with the FCC handing them control of the Internet.

The fake one million "pro repeal" neutrality comments to the FCC

First off, read this report here by Devin Coldeway over at Tech Crunch who writes: "In May, when the FCC released an early draft of its plan to undo 2015’s strong net neutrality rules, I pointed out that its case rests almost entirely on a deeply incorrect definition of how the internet works. There can be no mistake now that this misrepresentation is deliberate; the agency has reiterated it in even stronger terms in the final draft of the proposal.  I’m not going to go into great detail on it (my earlier post spells it out) but the basic problem is this: broadband has to be defined as either an information service or telecommunications service."

It is important, he says, to understand the difference because those two things are regulated very differently.

Next, check out this new report here by Jeff Kao over at Hackernoon.com. He found that "more than a Million Pro-Repeal Net Neutrality Comments (to the FCC) were likely faked."

He used, "Natural language processing techniques to analyze net neutrality comments submitted to the FCC from April-October 2017, and the results were disturbing," he writes.

A bit more from his report:

"NY Attorney General Schneiderman estimated that hundreds of thousands of Americans’ identities were stolen and used in spam campaigns that support repealing net neutrality. My research found at least 1.3 million fake pro-repeal comments, with suspicions about many more. In fact, the sum of fake pro-repeal comments in the proceeding may number in the millions."

From Salon.com on that issue: "Consumers have written letters to the FCC and claimed that their names, or addresses were used in comments that they had not written, and some were even listed as having come from people that are deceased, according to the Washington Post."

A letter writer to the Washington Post says (Re: a Nov. 22 front-page article “FCC moves to end net neutrality standard”):

"I hope the Federal Communications Commission will reconsider. Ending net neutrality would open the floodgate for monopolistic behavior, as large companies would then have the ability to pay to block competitors and to therefore fix prices.

It would prevent the emergence of new businesses and would clearly not be in the best interest of the consumer. The restraint of trade would probably be in violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act and contrary to the FCC’s mission of “supporting the nation’s economy by ensuring an appropriate competitive framework for the unfolding of the communications revolution.”

Without net neutrality, pharmaceutical companies could also be able to block news of new cures and alternative, lower-priced medicines.

An unethical president or person of considerable wealth could create a news environment filled with falsehoods and propaganda. FCC, please do the right thing and keep net neutrality."

And those sorts of things are just for openers.

Finally, for a look at who the fat cats are that want to roll back net neutrality, and who the lawmakers are who's pockets have been lined by the big Telecom giants, check out this 2014 report from the Sky Valley Chronicle.

You are now well armed with information. Just where you need to be to go out there in the world and put an end to the corporate funded, right-wing extremist desires to kill net neutrality.