John Oliver has created the most entertaining—and most informative—13-minute explanation of net neutrality ever, though he has a much more creative term for net neutrality: "preventing cable company fuckery." You have to call it something else, he says because it's soooo boring, and "the cable companies have figured out the great truth of America: If you want to do something evil, put it inside something boring."
So he makes net neutrally anti-cable company fuckery interesting. Oliver on the Federal Communications Commissions Chairman Tom Wheeler's two-tiered internet: "If we let cable companies offer two speeds of service, they won’t be Usain Bolt and Usain Bolt on a motor bike. They’ll be Usain Bolt and Usain Bolted to an anchor." On trusting the cable companies' promises to protect the open internet: "Let me remind you, they also say that they'll be at your house between 2 and 6 tomorrow afternoon, and does any part of you really expect them to fucking turn up?"
He points out that Comcast and Time Warner are the most hated companies in American business, that Comcast already has a history of what's basically extortion with Netflix, and that Comcast is second only to Northrop Grumman in campaign contributions to members of Congress. All that, he says, has caused the most unlikely political alliances, ever, pointing out that Google and Facebook are working with the "dirty hippies": "What's being proposed is so egregious, activists and corporations have been forced onto the same side."
He's got an idea to combat all that evil: Set loose the internet comment trolls to flood the FCC:
Good evening, monsters. This may be the moment you've spent your whole lives training for. […] For once in your life, we need you to channel that anger, that badly spelled bile that you normally reserve for unforgivable attacks on actresses you seem to think have put on weight or politicians you disagree with or photos of the ex-girlfriend getting on with her life or non-white actors being cast as fictional characters. […] We need you to get out there and for once in your lives focus your indiscriminate rage in a useful direction. Seize your moment, my lovely trolls, turn on caps lock and fly, my pretties! Fly! Fly! Fly!
Maybe not so much with the caps lock, but one of the most productive things you can do today is
email the FCC and register your comment. Also, too,
sign and send Daily Kos's petition to the FCC to make the internet is a public utility.
