- The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) is proposing changes to net neutrality rules, which could allow internet providers to charge tech companies for faster content delivery.
- Net neutrality ensures that all data is treated equally, allowing startups to compete with established brands.
- Abandoning net neutrality would create a two-tier system, where big companies can buy faster internet speeds, leaving others in the slow lane.
- Activists and corporations, including Google, Facebook, Netflix, and Amazon, are against abandoning net neutrality.
- Cable companies have a strong influence in Washington and have spent millions of dollars on lobbying.
- The lack of competition in the cable industry has led to poor service and high prices.
- Despite claims to support net neutrality, cable companies are likely to benefit from its abandonment.
- The government's decision to end net neutrality is influenced by the close relationship between cable companies and Washington.

The piece discusses the need to protect net neutrality and criticizes the use of technical language to hide potentially harmful actions by cable companies. It encourages internet commenters to use their skills to voice their opinions and take action to prevent the erosion of net neutrality. The FCC is accepting public comments on the issue for 120 days.

Cable companies are trying to create an unequal playing field for internet speeds, but they're doing it so boringly that most news outlets aren't covering it. 
John Oliver explains the controversy and lets viewers know how they can voice their displeasure to the FCC.

(www.fcc.gov/comments, for any interested parties)

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-♪ ♪ -♪ -♪ Music playing ♪ -♪ -♪ Music playing ♪ -♪ Our top story tonight concerns the Internet, aka the electronic cat database.

But first, let's take just a moment together and appreciate how amazing the Internet is.

You can use it to file your taxes, apply for jobs.

You can go online right now and buy a case of coyote urine.

Do you know how difficult it used to be to obtain coyote urine?

You literally had to give a Coyote Gatorade and just wait.

But if you've turned on the news lately, you may have heard some worrying references to the Internet changing.

The Federal Communications Commission has agreed to move forward on a proposal that could change the way we use the Internet.

At risk, the basic principle of net neutrality.

The only 2 words that promise more boredom in the English language are featuring sting.

Hearing people talk about it is somehow even worse.

As anticipated, the notice proposes to ground the net neutrality rules in Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

Oh, my God, that is the most boring thing I've ever seen.

I would rather read a book by Thomas Friedman than sit through that hearing.

I would rather listen to a pair of dockers tell me about the weird dream it had.

I would rather sit down with my niece and watch Caillou, a children's show about a bald Canadian child who lives a life devoid of any incident.

Net neutrality is actually hugely important.

Essentially, it means that all data has to be treated equally, no matter who creates it.

It's why the Internet is a weirdly leveled playing field.

And startups can supplant established brands.

That's how Facebook supplanted MySpace, which supplanted Friendster, which supplanted actually having any friends.

Do you remember physically having friends?

You couldn't tap people's faces to make them go away.

The point is, the internet in its current form is not broken, And the FCC is currently taking steps to fix that.

The FCC is endorsing new rules that could clear the way for a two-tier system.

The rules would open the door for the first time for Internet providers like Comcast and Verizon to charge tech companies to send content to consumers more quickly.

Netflix, for example, might pay a premium to ensure that its customers can stream movies more reliably, at a cost a startup competitor might not be able to afford.

How else is my startup streaming video service, Nutflix, going to compete?

It's gonna be America's one-stop resource for videos of men getting hit in the nuts.

You don't even know you want it yet, that's why it's brilliant.

-...ending net neutrality would allow big companies to buy their way into the fast lane, leaving everyone else in the slow lane, although telecom companies would prefer that you put it in a slightly different way.

When you say fast lane and slow lane, it's a good illustration, but what you really should be talking about is a fast lane for everybody and a hyper-speed lane for others.

-♪ ♪ If We let cable companies offer 2 speeds of service.

They won't be Usain Bolt and Usain Bolt on a motorbike.

They'll be Usain Bolt and Usain Bolted to an anchor.

And telecom companies will say they would never slow down a website's speed in order to get more money out of them.

Recently, Comcast was negotiating with Netflix.

This graph shows Netflix download speeds on various providers.

That black line plummeting downwards was their speed on Comcast during the negotiation.

See if you can guess when Netflix agreed to Comcast's demands.

That has all the ingredients of a mob shakedown.

Oh, Netflix, nice show about life in a ladies' prison.

Such a shame if there was gonna be something happen to your connection there.

And it's not just anti-corporate hippies who think that abandoning net neutrality is a bad idea.

The net neutrality movement is leery of big corporate players, but in this debate, it's on the same side as some of them.

Google, Facebook, Netflix, Amazon, all signed onto this letter, supporting net neutrality.

What's being proposed is so egregious, activists and corporations have been forced onto the same side.

That's basically Lex Luthor knocking on Superman's apartment door and going, listen, I know we have our differences, but we have got to get rid of that arsehole in apartment 3B.

And you might wonder, well, look, if everyone is against this, how is it even possibly happening?

Well, consider who would benefit from this change.

Verizon wants a two-tier system so badly, they sued the government to force the rule change that's currently being discussed.

These companies have Washington in their pockets to a conveniently, almost unbelievable degree.

Comcast has spent $18,810,000 in lobbying last year.

That's more than any other company, except for defense contractor Northrop Grumman.

So just to be clear, The ranking of who buys government influence is number 1, military-industrial complex, and number 2, the provider of lizard-lick towing.

-♪ ♪ -♪ Look, I could show you the troublingly cozy relationship between cable companies and Washington in any number of ways.

I could show you the president golfing with the CEO of Comcast, or saying at a fundraiser at a cable executive's house that he'd been there so many times, the only thing I haven't done in this house is have Seder dinner.

But perhaps the most succinct way is this.

The president has picked Tom Wheeler, a former top lobbyist for cable and wireless companies to be the next chair of the Federal Communications Commission.

The guy who used to run the cable industry's lobbying arm is now running the agency tasks with regulating it.

That is the equivalent of needing a babysitter and hiring a dingo.

There's 20 bucks on the table for kibble, so, please don't eat my baby.

...With the fact that They are practically overseeing their own oversight.

It is hardly surprising that cable companies are basically monopolies now.

A federal study found that 96% of the population had access to 2 or fewer cable broadband providers.

It's almost as if they've agreed to stay out of each other's way like drug cartels.

I mean, if hypothetically, a cable company like Comcast were planning to merge with a company like, let's say, Time Warner, it's not like their CEO would sit down and mark out who had which turf, right?

Both in video and in broadband, we don't compete with Time Warner.

You have to start with that very fundamental point.

They're in New York, we're in Philadelphia.

You can't buy a Comcast in New York, you can't buy a Time Warner in Philadelphia.

You can't reduce competition when nobody is competing.

You could not be describing a monopoly more clearly if you were wearing a metal top hat while driving a metal car after winning second prize in a beauty contest.

Maybe it's because of their lack of competition that they get away with providing such shitty service.

We pay more for our internet service than almost anybody else on Earth, and yet, the download speeds we get lag behind Estonia.

Estonia, a country where, from the looks of it, they still worry about Shrek attacks.

--LAUGHTER --Is it any wonder that in a massive recent customer satisfaction surveys, Comcast and Time Warner cable came in dead last.

And when you look at the companies that were scored better than them, people were basically saying, yes, Bank of America took my home.

And sure, GM tried to kill me, But Time Warner and Comcast are the worst.

I know the cable companies will say, oh, they support net neutrality protections, or they remain committed to the open Internet, or just the tip.

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 f***ing turn up?

And yet, our government looks set to end net neutrality and let these companies run hog wild, and we're just gonna let them.

It seeks comment on ways to construe additional language in Section 706, and even suggests using Section 230B to broaden the scope of the commission's usurped authority.

The cable companies have figured out the great truth of America.

If you want to do something evil, put it inside something boring.

Apple could put the entire text of Mein Kampf inside the iTunes user agreement, and you just go, Agree, agree, agree, what?

And that's why advocates should not be talking about protecting net neutrality.

They should call it preventing cable company f-ing-ery.

And it might actually compel people to want to do something.

And the interesting thing here is, there might actually be something you can still do.

The FCC will be taking public comment for 120 days.

The FCC are literally inviting internet comments at this address.

And at this point, and I can't believe I'm about to do this, I would like to address the internet commenters out there directly.

This may be the moment you've spent your whole lives training for.

You've been out there ferociously commenting on dance videos of adorable three-year-olds, saying things like, every child could dance like this little loser after 1 week of practice.

Or you've been polluting Frozen's Let It Go with comments like, Ice Castle would give her hypothermia and she dead in an hour.

Or, and I know you've done this 1, commenting on video on this show, saying, fuck this asshole anchor, go suck your president's dick.

But this is the moment you were made for, commenters.

Like Ralph Macchio, You've been honing your skills, waxing cars and painting fences.

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 that you disagree with, or photos of your ex-girlfriend getting on with her life, or non-white actors being cast as fictional characters.

And I'm talking to you, Ron Paul fan 2016.

And I'm talking to you, 1 Direction sucks balls.

We need you to Get out there and for once in your lives, focus your indiscriminate rage in a useful direction.


Speaker 0: -♪ ♪ -♪ -♪ Music playing ♪ -♪ -♪ Music playing ♪ -♪ Our top story tonight concerns the Internet, aka the electronic cat database. But first, let's take just a moment together and appreciate how amazing the Internet is. You can use it to file your taxes, apply for jobs. You can go online right now and buy a case of coyote urine. Do you know how difficult it used to be to obtain coyote urine?

You literally had to give a Coyote Gatorade and just wait. It was a mess. The system was a mess. But... But if you've turned on the news lately, you may have heard some worrying references to the Internet changing.

Speaker 1: The Federal Communications Commission has agreed to move forward on a proposal that could change the way we use the Internet. At risk, the basic principle of net neutrality.

Speaker 2: Net neutrality. Net neutrality.

Speaker 0: Yes, net neutrality. The only 2 words that promise more boredom in the English language are featuring sting. And... And hearing... Hearing...

Hearing people talk about it is somehow even worse.

Speaker 3: As anticipated, the notice proposes to ground the net neutrality rules in Section 706 of the Telecommunications Act of 1996.

Speaker 0: Oh, my God, that is the most boring thing I've ever seen. That is even boring by C-SPAN standards. I would rather read a book by Thomas Friedman than sit through that hearing. I would rather listen to a pair of dockers tell me about the weird dream it had. I would rather sit down with my niece and watch Caillou, a children's show about a bald Canadian child who lives a life devoid of any incident.

Fuck you, Caillou! Grow some hair and leave the house! Find out what the world's about! Come on! -...

But here's the thing. Net neutrality is actually hugely important. Essentially, it means that all data has to be treated equally, no matter who creates it. It's why the Internet is a weirdly leveled playing field. And startups can supplant established brands.

That's how Facebook supplanted MySpace, which supplanted Friendster, which supplanted actually having any friends. Do you remember physically having friends? It was awful. You couldn't tap people's faces to make them go away. The point is, the internet in its current form is not broken, And the FCC is currently taking steps to fix that.

Speaker 2: The FCC is endorsing new rules that could clear the way for a two-tier system.

Speaker 4: The rules would open the door for the first time for Internet providers like Comcast and Verizon to charge tech companies to send content to consumers more quickly. Netflix, for example, might pay a premium to ensure that its customers can stream movies more reliably, at a cost a startup competitor might not be able to afford.

Speaker 0: No. This cannot happen. How else is my startup streaming video service, Nutflix, going to compete? It's gonna be America's one-stop resource for videos of men getting hit in the nuts. You don't even know you want it yet, that's why it's brilliant.

-...ending net neutrality would allow big companies to buy their way into the fast lane, leaving everyone else in the slow lane, although telecom companies would prefer that you put it in a slightly different way.

Speaker 1: When you say fast lane and slow lane, it's a good illustration, but what you really should be talking about is a fast lane for everybody and a hyper-speed lane for others.

Speaker 0: -♪ ♪ -♪ Bullshit! -♪ ♪ If We let cable companies offer 2 speeds of service. They won't be Usain Bolt and Usain Bolt on a motorbike. They'll be Usain Bolt and Usain Bolted to an anchor. And telecom companies will say they would never slow down a website's speed in order to get more money out of them.

But let me tell you a little story. Recently, Comcast was negotiating with Netflix. This graph shows Netflix download speeds on various providers. That black line plummeting downwards was their speed on Comcast during the negotiation. See if you can guess when Netflix agreed to Comcast's demands.

I'll give you a hint, it's right there. That has all the ingredients of a mob shakedown. Oh, Netflix, nice show about life in a ladies' prison. Such a shame if there was gonna be something happen to your connection there. So frustrating that would be.

And it's not just anti-corporate hippies who think that abandoning net neutrality is a bad idea. The net neutrality movement is leery of big corporate players, but in this debate, it's on the same side as some of them.

Speaker 5: Google, Facebook, Netflix, Amazon, all signed onto this letter, supporting net neutrality.

Speaker 0: What's being proposed is so egregious, activists and corporations have been forced onto the same side. That's basically Lex Luthor knocking on Superman's apartment door and going, listen, I know we have our differences, but we have got to get rid of that arsehole in apartment 3B. He's too loud, Soup. He's just too loud. And you might wonder, well, look, if everyone is against this, how is it even possibly happening?

Well, consider who would benefit from this change. Cable companies. Verizon wants a two-tier system so badly, they sued the government to force the rule change that's currently being discussed. These companies have Washington in their pockets to a conveniently, almost unbelievable degree.

Speaker 6: Comcast has spent $18,810,000 in lobbying last year. That's more than any other company, except for defense contractor Northrop Grumman.

Speaker 0: So just to be clear, The ranking of who buys government influence is number 1, military-industrial complex, and number 2, the provider of lizard-lick towing. -♪ ♪ -♪ Look, I could show you the troublingly cozy relationship between cable companies and Washington in any number of ways. I could show you the president golfing with the CEO of Comcast, or saying at a fundraiser at a cable executive's house that he'd been there so many times, the only thing I haven't done in this house is have Seder dinner. But perhaps the most succinct way is this.

Speaker 2: The president has picked Tom Wheeler, a former top lobbyist for cable and wireless companies to be the next chair of the Federal Communications Commission.

Speaker 0: Yes. The guy who used to run the cable industry's lobbying arm is now running the agency tasks with regulating it. That is the equivalent of needing a babysitter and hiring a dingo. Here, Thanks for stopping over. Just make...

Make sure they're in bed by 8. There's 20 bucks on the table for kibble, so, please don't eat my baby. -...with... With the fact... -...with the fact...

...With the fact that They are practically overseeing their own oversight. It is hardly surprising that cable companies are basically monopolies now. A federal study found that 96% of the population had access to 2 or fewer cable broadband providers. It's almost as if they've agreed to stay out of each other's way like drug cartels. But, hold on, hold on, that's not fair.

That's not fair. I mean, if hypothetically, a cable company like Comcast were planning to merge with a company like, let's say, Time Warner, it's not like their CEO would sit down and mark out who had which turf, right?

Speaker 5: Both in video and in broadband, we don't compete with Time Warner. You have to start with that very fundamental point. They're in New York, we're in Philadelphia. They're in L.A., we're in San Francisco. You can't buy a Comcast in New York, you can't buy a Time Warner in Philadelphia.

So there's no reduction in competition.

Speaker 0: Exactly. You can't reduce competition when nobody is competing. You could not be describing a monopoly more clearly if you were wearing a metal top hat while driving a metal car after winning second prize in a beauty contest. And... -...maybe...

-...maybe... -...maybe... -...maybe... Maybe it's because of their lack of competition that they get away with providing such shitty service. We pay more for our internet service than almost anybody else on Earth, and yet, the download speeds we get lag behind Estonia.

Estonia, a country where, from the looks of it, they still worry about Shrek attacks. --LAUGHTER --Is it any wonder that in a massive recent customer satisfaction surveys, Comcast and Time Warner cable came in dead last. And when you look at the companies that were scored better than them, people were basically saying, yes, Bank of America took my home. Yes, Taco Bell gave me diarrhea. And sure, GM tried to kill me, But Time Warner and Comcast are the worst.

They are the worst. And... And I know... I know the cable companies will say, oh, they support net neutrality protections, or they remain committed to the open Internet, or just the tip. But let me...

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 f***ing turn up? And yet, our government looks set to end net neutrality and let these companies run hog wild, and we're just gonna let them. And you know why? It all comes back to this.

Speaker 3: It seeks comment on ways to construe additional language in Section 706, and even suggests using Section 230B to broaden the scope of the commission's usurped authority.

Speaker 0: Oh, my God, how are you still so dull? And that's the problem. The cable companies have figured out the great truth of America. If you want to do something evil, put it inside something boring. -...Yeah!

-...Yeah! Apple could put the entire text of Mein Kampf inside the iTunes user agreement, and you just go, Agree, agree, agree, what? Agree, agree. And that's why advocates should not be talking about protecting net neutrality. They shouldn't even use that phrase.

They should call it preventing cable company f-ing-ery. Because that is what it is. And it might actually compel people to want to do something. And the interesting thing here is, there might actually be something you can still do.

Speaker 4: The FCC will be taking public comment for 120 days.

Speaker 0: That's right. The FCC are literally inviting internet comments at this address. And at this point, and I can't believe I'm about to do this, I would like to address the internet commenters out there directly. Ahem. Ahem.

Good evening, monsters. This may be the moment you've spent your whole lives training for. You've been out there ferociously commenting on dance videos of adorable three-year-olds, saying things like, every child could dance like this little loser after 1 week of practice. Or you've been polluting Frozen's Let It Go with comments like, Ice Castle would give her hypothermia and she dead in an hour. Or, and I know you've done this 1, commenting on video on this show, saying, fuck this asshole anchor, go suck your president's dick.

You're just friends with the terrorists. Now, I don't know... I don't know what any of that means. But I don't think it's a compliment. But this is the moment you were made for, commenters.

Like Ralph Macchio, You've been honing your skills, waxing cars and painting fences. Well, guess what? Now it's time to do some f***ing karate. 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 that you disagree with, or photos of your ex-girlfriend getting on with her life, or non-white actors being cast as fictional characters.

And I'm talking to you, Ron Paul fan 2016. And you, 1 Direction forever. And I'm talking to you, 1 Direction sucks balls. 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 Rock and fly, my pretties! Fly! Fly! Fly!

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Net Neutrality: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver (HBO)