Progressive groups are using the hot-button issue of abortion rights to push for the confirmation of FCC nominee Gigi Sohn, who has had three nomination hearings in the Senate, two separate nominations from President Joe Biden and a vote in the Senate Commerce Committee, but whose nomination has yet to make it out of that committee to a Senate floor vote.

On its face, the abortion connection would appear to be a stretch, but the nexus is online access to abortion information and network-neutrality rules eliminated by the previous Republican chairman and expected to be restored by a Democratic Federal Communications Commission majority.

Last month, almost four dozen groups, including some reproductive-rights groups, wrote Senate leaders saying that installing a fifth commissioner and third Democrat on the five-member FCC was necessary for it to help protect “the safety and rights of people seeking, providing and facilitating abortion care.”

Also: Gigi Sohn: FCC Should Investigate OAN, Newsmax Deplatforming

In the two years Sohn’s nomination has been stalled and the FCC has been at a 2-2 political tie, the groups said, “telecom giants and Big Tech have only scaled up their collection and retention of an astonishingly unnecessary amount of customer data, including the locations and search histories of individual people.”

That “mass surveilance,” they said, combined with a lack of constitutional privacy protections, is allowing for the “mass-scale tracking and criminalization of those seeking abortion healthcare.”

Given Sohn’s history of defending privacy rights, they argue, she would be in a position to help the FCC reduce the amount of personal data being collected and retained, while her absence — and more broadly the lack of a Democratic voting majority — has led to a data free-for-all.

Fight for the Future, one of the groups signing on to the letter, also pointed to a report this week about a proposed Texas law that would require ISPs to block websites with information on how to get an abortion.

FFTF says that restoring the net-neutrality rules would prevent such laws by not allowing ISPs to block websites “unless they contain content that’s federally illegal.” ■

Critics of the Ring doorbell surveillance technology have written MGM asking it not to debut its new syndicated reality series, Ring Nation, hosted by Wanda Sykes.

The show is a Ring take on Candid Camera and other video-clip shows that have a long history on TV.

In a letter from Fight for the Future and over 40 groups including Media Justice, the Stop LAPD Spying Coalition, and the Tech & Immigration Policing Project, they asked Mark Burnett, chairman of MGM Television, and Barry Poznick, president of MGM Unscripted Television, to pull the plug on the show before it debuts later this month.

They said that while the show does get the consent of those appearing on the program, that “in no way protects against the harms stemming from Ring’s surveilling communities at large, especially marginalized communities targeted by police.”

Ring Nation is a synergistic play from MGM parent Amazon, which also owns the Ring product.

Amazon had not returned a request for comment at press time. ■

Fight for the Future, a group pushing new regulations on Big Tech, is taking the fight to the home(s) of Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.).

Over the weekend, the group parked billboard trucks outside Schumer’s homes in Washington, D.C., and Brooklyn, New York, looping a segment from HBO's Last Week Tonight with John Oliver on regulating Big Tech.

Oliver was famous for pushing the Federal Communications Commission to impose network-neutrality regs on internet service providers, but like many Washington legislators on both sides of the aisle, he has turned his attention to the power of edge providers.

Also: Sponsors Urge Action on Bipartisan Big Tech Competition Bill

The video billboard also directs passersby to Fight for the Future’s website, the aptly named MakeSchumerWatchJohnOliver.com, which will allow them to tweet the segment directly to the senator as well.

Fight for the Future is looking to fight fire with fire, as it were, given that Big Tech backers have blanketed media in Washington with ads arguing the bills represent a parade of horrible from allowing dangerous malware, to essentially breaking Amazon Prime's free two-day delivery.

The bills they want Schumer to advance to a floor vote are S. 2992 and S. 2710.

S. 2992, the American Innovation and Choice Online Act, is billed as preventing online favoritism.

Specifically, it would:

• 1. “Prohibit dominant platforms from abusing their gatekeeper power by favoring their own products or services, disadvantaging rivals, or discriminating among businesses that use their platforms in a manner that would materially harm competition on the platform; and 
• a. “Prohibit specific forms of conduct that are harmful to small businesses, entrepreneurs, and consumers, but that do not have any pro-competitive benefit, including: 
• i. “Preventing another business’s product or service from interoperating with the dominant platform or another business; 
• ii. “Requiring a business to buy a dominant platform’s goods or services for preferred placement on its platform; 
• iii. “Misusing a business’s data to compete against them; and 
• iv. “Biasing search results in favor of the dominant firm."

Reading like an app net neutrality rule for Apple and Google, S. 2710, the Open Apps Market Act, would prevent a covered company from restricting the use of alternative in-app payment systems; or from favoring their own terms of distribution, pricing or conditions of sale; or penalize developers for using different pricing terms or conditions via another in-app payment system.

It prevents a Google or Apple, for example, from using info derived from a third-party app to compete with that same app.

The bill passed the Senate Judiciary Committee with overwhelming bipartisan support (21-1) back in February and was backed by the odd couple pairing of liberal Connecticut Democratic Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.) and conservative Tennessee Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn.

“We know as soon as Schumer watches the John Oliver segment he’ll understand why S. 2992 and S. 2710 are so important, stop stalling, and move them to the floor for a vote,” said Fight for the Future.

Democratic legislators are also pushing Schumer to hold the votes.

In a press conference earlier this month, Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-Minn.) and other  2992 sponsors and supporters said they need to get a vote ASAP, before the August recess. She pointed out that the leaders of both the House and Senate [that would be Schumer] need have promised a vote and need to schedule it. Sen. Klobuchar pointed out that it has been over a year and there has been no vote on the bill. She also said that Big Tech has spent some $70 million on ads in the past year and employed thousands of lobbyists. ■

Fight for the Future (FFTF) is fighting mad over a second Senate Commerce Committee hearing on the nomination of Gigi Sohn to the open Federal Communications Commission seat and has directed its anger at the powerful committee‘s chairwoman, Sen. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.).

The group sent a letter to Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) calling on him to remove Cantwell as chair over what it said was “her refusal to advance [President Joe] Biden‘s highly qualified nominee to the FCC, Gigi Sohn.”

Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.), the ranking member of the Senate Commerce Committee, had suggested the need for a second hearing over issues related to Sohn's association with former TV station streamer Locast.

The committee had already held a hearing on her nomination back in December, but because no vote had been taken — likely because there were not enough Democratic votes at the time — her nomination had to be resubmitted by the President in the new year, but that did not necessarily mean she had to have a new hearing.

There is no indication that Cantwell is purposely trying to slow-roll the nomination. 

More likely is that she was making sure the vote would be favorable, and there has been some talk that Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.) might need persuading after progressive Democrats hammered her — including paying for a billboard in her home state branding her "corrupt"--during the net neutrality debate for not voting to repeal the 2017 FCC decision to eliminate the net neutrality rules, rules that Sohn stumped for under then-FCC chairman Tom Wheeler. According to sources, supporters of Sohn have reached out to Sinema to tell her Sohn had no part in the billboard incident.

Cantwell had not granted the hearing but instead scheduled a vote on Sohn's nomination this week. After Democratic committee member Sen. Ben Ray Luján of New Mexico suffered a stroke, though, that vote was put off due to a lack of Democratic votes for Sohn's and two other nominations with which Republicans had some issues, including a fifth Federal Trade Commission member.

Following that announced delay, and with Lujan still recovering in the hospital, Cantwell granted the second Sohn hearing for February 9.

Cantwell's office had no comment at deadline on the letter. ■

What's in a name? Fight for the Future suggests that Facebook's rebranding to "Meta" reveals the company's sinister "end game" of trying to control the future of the 'net.

FFTF, which helped launch the HowToStopFacebook.org web site, and may have to rebrand to howtostopmeta.org to keep pace, was not buying the repositioning as more than an effort to distract from what the man behind the curtain was planning next.

Also: Blumenthal Says Facebook Chronically Ignores internal Alarms

In the midst of a political firestorm of criticism over its handling of data and its impact on young people and the use of its platform to spread disinformation and hate speech, Facebook this week rechristened itself Meta, and because it said the next iteration of the internet as the "metaverse."

For a company being criticized as too dominant, putting its new name at the center of what it predicts will be the new online universe was arguably not doing anything to downplay the centrality of its position.

In a "founders letter," CEO Mark Zuckerberg certainly sounded like the company was staking its claim on making that future in its own image.

While Zuckerberg said that the "metaverse won't be created by one company, but by "creators and developers making new experiences and digital items that are interoperable and unlock a massively larger creative economy than the one constrained by today’s platforms and their policies," he went on to say Meta's role in that "journey" would be to "accelerate the development of the fundamental technologies, social platforms and creative tools to bring the metaverse to life, and to weave these technologies through our social media apps."

Zuckerberg said his company is expanding beyond social media to future platforms of connectivity.

Fight for the Future director Evan Greer fired a warning shot about that expansion in a lengthy statement that staked out his group's position, and made clear changing the name will not change FFTF's mission:

“It’s tempting to view Facebook’s rebranding as nothing more than a cynical attempt by the company to distance itself from endless scandals and the real-world harm caused by its surveillance capitalist business model. But it’s actually much more sinister than that. With this announcement Mark Zuckerberg revealed his end game: he’s making a play to control the future of the Internet.

"Fight for the Future has long advocated for decentralized, community-driven alternatives to Big Tech monopolies and their abusive business practices. Decentralized tech projects––ranging from Matrix to Filecoin––are often broadly referred to as “Web 3,” the next iteration of the World Wide Web. With his push for Facebook to build and dominate the “metaverse,” and colonizing forays into digital currencies and NFTs [non-fungible tokens], Zuckerberg is co-opting the terminology of decentralization and attempting to solidify his stranglehold on the future of human attention and interaction.

"We urgently need to enact policies that reduce the harm that Facebook’s surveillance-driven algorithmic manipulation product is doing right now––first and foremost by finally passing a real Federal data privacy law in the US. And we need to reject misguided proposals like gutting Section 230, which would further entrench giants like Facebook and Google while trampling on the basic human rights of marginalized communities.

"But most importantly, we need to stop looking backward and recognize that the Internet is changing. We are heading toward Web 3 whether we want to or not, and we need to fight tooth and nail to ensure that the policies governing this next generation of the Internet are carefully crafted to protect vulnerable communities, free expression and human rights––and that they don’t undermine the potential of truly decentralized technologies, which could help finally end the era of Big Tech surveillance capitalism.

"There is no guarantee that the next iteration of the Internet is better than the last. It’s fun to dunk on Zuck and laugh about overpriced NFTs and doge coin bros, but if those who care about human rights and democracy don’t engage with the transition to the next generation of the web in a serious way, it’s almost guaranteed that Web 3 will be worse, not better for humanity. We are at a crossroads. It’s time to decide what we want the future of the Internet to look like. And then it’s time to fight for that vision. Before it’s too late.”

With Congress trying to figure out what to do about Facebook, a bunch of civil society groups have banded together to point the way.

Forty-plus groups including the Fight for the Future, the Center for Digital Democracy, National Hispanic Media Coalition and Public Knowledge have launched a new campaign to get Congress and the Biden Administration to crack down on the social media giant in particular, and Big Tech's use of data “surveillance” in general.

That comes in the wake of the whistleblower revelations about Instagram that have prompted bipartisan pushback on the social-media giant and promises of investigations and new privacy legislation, or what more than one legislator called Big Tech's ”Big Tobacco moment.“

Also Read: Rep. Eshoo Pushes for Subpoena of Facebook Documents

The groups want “a full investigation” into Facebook, including subpoenaing documents, a federal data privacy law, and Federal Trade Commission to take enforcement action against surveillance-driven algorithms and data harvesting.

The groups agree that there remains “a fair amount of disagreement,” “both in Congress and among civil society groups,” over how to regulate algorithms, but said there is still a way to get to a federal data-privacy law that could reduce the harms.

Fight for the Future did not give new President Joe Biden much of a honeymoon.

It has already launched a petition drive to try and keep Big Tech execs out of the new administration.

Also Read: Amazon Hammered Over Election Day Security

The group cites media reports that Biden "is planning to install Silicon Valley executives and lobbyists into key positions in government."

FFTF has been fighting the rollback of net neutrality rules and the roll out of high-tech government surveillance, among other issues.

FFTF said it can't let that happen and is demanding that Biden and his administration officials who will, instead, take "meaningful action to reign in the power of Big Tech," though that does not extend to attacking social media's Sec. 230 immunity from civil liability for third-party content.

Also Read: Amazon Suspends Sales of Facial Recognition Software to Police

President Joe Biden has said he favors eliminating that Sec. 230 immunity, but it is not clear whether that remains his position. 

Fight for the Future and some other civil society groups used Zoom for a teleconference to call on Zoom to institute end-to-end encryption (E2EE) for its teleconferences given its use to bridge physical distancing in a socially distanced COVID-19 reality.

The groups, which also included the Media Alliance, Color Of Change, praised security improvements that Zoom has made, including stronger encryption and greater control over the Zoom room, like being able to lock meetings, after security flaws were put under the magnifying glass of the pandemic.

Still, they said Zoom did not go far enough.

“While zoom has improved their security, we need end-to-end encryption to talk with our friends and loved ones without second guessing everything we say and worrying that someone else may be listening," said Surveillance Technology Oversight Project executive director Albert Fox Cahn. "Encryption has always been indispensable to secure communication, but today it’s more crucial than ever.”

“Zoom has an opportunity to lead the way in video conferencing security. But to do so, they have to implement default end to end encryption. Implementing end to end encryption is the only way to guarantee user security and the most important thing Zoom could do to keep people safe," said FFTF deputy director Evan Greer.

Net neutrality activists are gearing up for a last-ditch effort to drum up support for repealing the FCC's deregulation of net neutrality rules before the Dec. 10 deadline for passing the Congressional Review Act (CRA) resolution.

It would be just the latest in a series of such "days of action."

The resolution already passed in the Senate, but is dozens of votes short in the House as the deadline nears, geared to the June 12, 2018 trigger date for the FCC's Restoring Internet Freedom order, which eliminated the rules against blocking, throttling and paid prioritization that had been established in the Open Internet Order of 2015.

Related: CRA Fans Plan Net Neutrality Protest

On Nov. 29, the groups plan to to collect signatures on what they bill as a heartfelt plea to Congress, along with an "I support net neutrality" photo to put a human face on the effort.

Fight for the Future, which is spearheading the effort, says it already has a couple thousand photos already submitted and activists plan to "flood" lawmakers social media feeds between now and Thursday.

Related: Activists Push Hill on Net Neutrality Rollback

FFTF says Etsy and Tumblr are backing the effort.

The CRA is a way for congress to nullify and agency decision within six months of its adoption. Republicans used it to successfully repeal the FCC's online privacy framework, but with Republicans still in control of the House through the end of the session, the deadline will almost certainly pass without passage of this CRA.

Fight for the Future is launching arguably a last-ditch campaign to pressure the House to repeal the Federal Communications Commisson’s deregulatory Restoring Internet Freedom Order, though it seems at this juncture a lost cause.

Speaking of Lost, actress Evangeline Lilly has been recruited to help drum up support and dollars.

With the House turning over at the first of the year, a Congressional Review Act resolution to re-regulate internet access might well have passed in January. But the deadline for House passage of a CRA to nullify rules that went into effect in June is next month — when Republicans will still have control.

The Senate already narrowly passed the CRA, but it would take House passage and President Donald Trump’s signature, all before Congress adjourns at the end of the year. There are only a few days of legislative sessions left.

There are currently 179 House members pledged to support the resolution, well short of the 218 simple majority total needed. More than a dozen Democrats are yet to sign on. The plurality of those are in Pennsylvania where the nation’s largest ISP, Comcast, is headquartered.

FFTF is crowdfunding its campaign and says it has found a number of companies and a few high-profile donors for its matching grant effort, including actress Lilly (Lost, Ant-Man and the Wasp, The Hobbit). “This is not a partisan issue, the battle for the net is a fight for our most basic freedoms,” Lilly said in a statement. “People from across the entire political spectrum can agree that we don’t want anyone to control or manipulate what we see and do on the internet.”

The FCC’s deregulatory Restoring Internet Freedom order took effect June 11. ISPs have pointed to the fact that there was not suddenly a rush on the blocking, throttling and paid prioritization. But groups like FFTF and Demand Progress have argued that is a political and business strategy.

“The Internet as we know it won’t end overnight,” Fight for the Future said on its website. “But with each second that passes until net neutrality is restored, it will be slowly dying as Internet providers like AT&T, Verizon and Comcast raise prices, prioritize data, and eliminate competition.”

ISPs point out that the Federal Trade Commission, now the primary net neutrality regulator, is still empowered to proscribe any conduct that is anticompetitive, backstopped by the Justice Department.

Forces are amassing for mass net-neutrality protests Thursday (Dec. 7), one week out from the planned Dec. 14 vote on FCC chair Ajit Pai's order eliminating regulations against blocking, throttling and paid prioritization.

That is also the day that the Federal Communications Bar Association will host a roast of Pai, which will likely see protests as well, if past is prologue -- former FCC chair Tom Wheeler took some heat at a chair's dinner before he decided to propose Title II-based rules.

More than 600 protests are planned at Verizon stores and congressional offices across the country, Evan Greer of protest organizer Fight for the Future said.

Additionally, more than 150 musicians, artists, actors and comedians have signed a letter to Congress endorsing the protests; they include Alyssa Milano, Rage Against the Machine guitarist Tom Morello, Against Me!, Graham Nash, Amanda Palmer, Michael Stipe, Downtown Boys, Talib Kweli and Wil Wheaton.

"We support the people from across the political spectrum protesting across the country on Dec. 7, and we echo their call for our members of Congress to do their jobs and take action to stop the FCC vote that’s planned for Dec. 14," the letter read.

Hill Democrats have been trying to delay the vote, invoking fake comments in the net-neutrality docket and suggesting, like Russian interference in the presidential election, it needs more investigating, and unlike the case with the election, before any vote is taken.

Pai signaled this week the vote would proceed as planned, and the item would be adopted. He said he is confident he has two other Republican votes, while Democrats will be vociferously in opposition.

He also said in an op ed Wednesday (Dec. 6) that those suggesting his reg rollback would be the end of the internet were trying to "whip Americans into a frenzy by making outlandish claims" and "silly accusations."

FCC chair Ajit Pai has told Fox & Friends that net-neutrality protesters have "crossed a line" with hateful signs that target his children.

Fox News Channel reported Monday (Nov. 27) that demonstrators had been gathering outside Pai's home after last week's release of the order to reclassify ISPs as information services not subject to mandatory access regulations and to eliminate most of the bright-line network-neutrality rules.

Signs posted on the street outside the FCC chair's home included some naming his children and asking how his kids could look him in the eye as he was "murdering Democracy in cold blood," according to a tweet by one of Pai's neighbors that was cited in the Fox & Friends story.

I have a friend that lives near @AjitPaiFCC. Net neutrality "activists" posted these signs, featuring his children's names, outside his house. Pizzas also reportedly sent to his house every half-hour last night. pic.twitter.com/jWI4gV6Hvc

— Brendan Bordelon (@BrendanBordelon) November 25, 2017

“It certainly crosses a line with me,” Pai said on the show. “Families … should remain out of it, and [protesters should] stop harassing us at our homes. ... It was a little nerve-racking, especially for my wife, who’s not involved in this space.”

Former FCC chair Tom Wheeler also had protesters outside his home before he switched to a Title II approach to net-neutrality rules -- the approach Pai is now moving to roll back -- but the demonstrators were not threatening, and Wheeler even spoke with them and posed for a photo at one point.

Protesters had taken to Pai's street back in May, as well, after the FCC voted to propose the Title II rollback, but the tone of the newest protest had an uglier edge.

Pai chief of staff Matthew Berry also condemned -- by way of retweets -- some of the hateful and even racist messages aimed at Pai and his family by opponents of his proposal, including one that said he should get cancer and his family should be executed so they could not pass his genes on.

Former FCC chair Michael Copps, now a special advisor to Common Cause, is one of the strongest critics of Pai's proposal, but he told B&C that, as he tweeted over the Thanksgiving Day weekend, there is not a place for such hateful speech in the net-neutrality discussion, and anyone who directs it toward the current chair is no ally of his.

Copps added that when he was on the commission, he was concerned about hate speech and would like to see more done to rein it in, adding that given how much uncivil dialog is going on these days, the problem should be a little more obvious.

Fred Campbell, president of Tech Knowledge, which backs Pai's Title II rollback, stood up for the chair and against the protests.

“The repeated racist attacks against FCC chairman Ajit Pai and his family in their own home during the holiday weekend are horrific," he said. "The perpetrators of this villainy should be ashamed. These attacks aren’t net-neutrality advocacy. They are terrorism.”

Free Press president Craig Aaron distanced his group, which is strongly opposed to the Title II rollback, from the attacks on Pai and condemned the tenor and tactics.

Should go without saying, but we'll say it again and again. #NetNeutralitypic.twitter.com/LiiYCgDC3e

— Free Press Action (@freepressaction) November 27, 2017

"We don't condone this type of harassment. We believe in rigorous public debate," said Evan Greer, campaign director at Fight for the Future, which called for protests of the pending vote to roll back Title II. "People who care about this issue should be channeling their anger productively and calling on their lawmakers to take action to stop the FCC vote."

On the eve of the net-neutrality activist groups' Day of Advocacy on Capitol Hill, one of those groups, Fight for the Future, was circulating a letter that had been sent to the Hill from more than 200 international companies and groups, including Reporters Without Borders.

The letter said the FCC's "rollback" of net-neutrality provisions would grant ISPs like Comcast, Verizon and AT&T "new powers to control the internet."

They cited paid prioritization as one of those new powers--there is currently a ban on paid prioritization in the Open Internet order, but the FCC is rethinking all the bright-line rules.

Paid prioritization, they argued, would create a "patchwork of new monopolies" rather than an open market.

"We are companies and organisations headquartered outside the United States of America," they told Congress, "and we are concerned about how the rollback of U.S. Title II net-neutrality rules could negatively impact the world’s shared Internet ecosystem."

The FCC reportedly received millions of comments sent from outside the U.S. on the proposal to roll back Title II.

Network-neutrality activist group Fight for the Future has crowdfunded enough contributions to erect a half-dozen billboards targeting members of Congress who were early backers of Republican Federal Communications Commission chairman Ajit Pai’s proposal to roll back Title II regulation of broadband internet providers and review its 2015 Open Internet rules.

The idea is to try to discourage other legislators from jumping on the deregulatory bandwagon.

The billboards, erected in members’ home districts while Congress is in August recess, include ones targeting Senate Commerce Committee chairman John Thune (R-S.D.) and House Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.).

Some of billboards take aim at various hometown ISPs as well. The Ryan billboard (in Janesville, Wis.), for example, says: “Want slower, more expensive Internet? Rep. Paul Ryan supports Charter’s plan to destroy net neutrality. Ask him why.” Another includes Comcast in the message.

House GOP members have been talking with stakeholders and getting input on possible legislative approaches to clarifying the FCC’s network neutrality authority, but Democrats have signaled they have not been part of those conversations, and FTTF and other net neutrality supporters are skeptical.

“With no viable legislation on the table,” FTTF said, “net-neutrality supporters remain opposed to any attempt at legislation that would undermine the strong rules at the FCC.”

Other members — all Republican — getting the billboard treatment are Communications Subcommittee chair Rep. Marsha Blackburn of Tennessee, who was previously the target of a net neutrality billboard call-out given her leadership position; Rep. Kevin McCarthy of California; Rep. Tom Graves of Georgia and Sen. Roger Wicker of Jackson, Miss.

“Going forward, we plan to add more billboards for other representatives who come forward to support Pai’s plan,” an FTTF spokesman told The Wire.

Activists pushing back on FCC Chairman Ajit Pai's plan to roll back Title II classification of ISPs and rethink the rules against blocking, throttling and paid prioritization in the 2015 Open Internet order say they have added a bunch of backers, including YouTube star Phillip DeFranco.

DeFranco is launching his own, independent, online news network (his Monday-Thursday YouTube show has been associated with Discovery Digital Networks), called DeFranco Elite funded by fans through Patreon.

Among the other new sign-ups according to Evan Greer, executive director of Fight for the Future, include the Writers Guild, West, and venture capital firm Union Square Ventures.

RELATED: Pai: 'Net Neutrality' Is About Government Dictates

July 12 has been dubbed an Internet-Wide Day of Action to Save Net Neutrality, which means saving the Title II classification, which they argue is the necessary legal framework to protect "online speech and innovation."

“It’s like déjà vu. The last time Net Neutrality came before the FCC, internet users across the political spectrum swamped the agency with comments demanding strong Net Neutrality protections," said Free Press Campaign Director Candace Clement. "The internet won’t go down quietly in 2017 and on July 12 people, companies, organizations and websites will let everyone know that the Trump FCC lacks a public mandate to take away our online rights. We will make it impossible for Chairman Pai to continue to cling to the sorts of alternative facts against Net Neutrality that we’ve proven to be wrong time and again.”

Fight for the Future says that July 12 will be a "day of action" on net neutrality, similar to the previous internet slowdown and SOPA blackout, part of the successful campaign to stop the Stop Online Piracy Act, not the first time that similarity has been invoked in the present pushback on FCC chair Ajit Pai's play to reverse the Title II classification of ISPs. 

RELATED: Senate Democrats Declare War on Title II Rollback 

Amazon, Reddit, Mozilla, Etsy and others are planning to participate in what they are dubbing an "Internet-Wide Day of Action to Save Net Neutrality," according to Fight for the Future campaign director Even Greer.

RELATED: The Surprisingly Narrow Title II Decision

Rather than a slowdown, Fight for the Future suggests it will be a speed up of actions to fight against the Title II rollback, saying the effort will focus on grassroots mobilization including public interest groups energizing their members and web platforms providing tools for the public to contact the Hill and the FCC.

RELATED: AT&T: Blocking, Slowing Appear Allowable Under Title II

"The Internet has given more people a voice than ever before, and we’re not going to let the FCC take that power away from us," said Greer.

The FCC has already received almost 5 million comments in its network neutrality docket, driven in part by efforts of Fight for the Future and other pro-Title II groups and individuals--including HBO's John Oliver.

RELATED: FCC's Open Internet Docket Explodes

The FCC has voted along party lines to propose rolling back Title II, eliminating the general conduct standard for reviewing potential net neutrality violations, and reviewing whether to retain rules against blocking, throttling and paid prioritization.

Companies participating so far include Amazon, Kickstarter, Etsy, Reddit, Mozilla, Vimeo, Y Combinator, GitHub, Private Internet Access, Pantheon, Bittorrent Inc., Shapeways, Nextdoor, Patreon, Dreamhost, and CREDO Mobile. Organizations participating include Fight for the Future, Free Press Action Fund, Demand Progress, Center for Media Justice, Internet Archive, World Wide Web Foundation, Creative Commons, National Hispanic Media Coalition, Greenpeace, Common Cause, ACLU, American Library Association, Daily Kos, OpenMedia, The Nation, PCCC, MoveOn, OFA, Public Knowledge, OTI, and Color of Change.

More than a dozen people who say anti-Title II comments were submitted to the FCC under their names even though they did not submit or authorize them have called on the FCC to remove all fraudulent comments, which they suggest could actually number close to a half million.

The FCC's Restoring Network Freedom docket -- the proposal to roll back Title II classification of ISPs and rethink the rules against blocking, throttling and paid prioritization -- currently has more than 2.6 million comments.

"Our names and personal information were used to file comments we did not make to the Federal Communications Commission," the group wrote in a letter to the FCC posted on the Fight for the Future website, an organization that backs Title II and has been calling for the FCC to explain and fix problems with its comment system.

Related: Fight for the Future Seeks Net-Neutrality Docket Investigation

The letter's signatories -- 14 in all, from across the country -- were identified through Fight for the Future's Comcastroturf.com site, which encourages the public to investigate what Fight for the Future says are fake anti-net neutrality comments filed in the FCC docket.

"We are disturbed by reports that indicate you have no plans to remove these fraudulent comments from the public docket," the letter said. "Whoever is behind this stole our names and addresses, publicly exposed our private information without our permission, and used our identities to file a political statement we did not sign onto. Hundreds of thousands of other Americans may have been victimized too."

The letter writers want the FCC to remove all the fraudulent comments immediately; disclose any information it has on who was behind what they allege are 450,000 fake comments; and call for an investigation into any laws that may have been broken.

"Nearly half a million Americans may have been impacted by whoever impersonated us in a dishonest and deceitful campaign to manufacture false support for your plan to repeal net-neutrality protections," the letter said.

An FCC spokesperson was vetting the letter at press time.

The Comcastroturf.com website was in the news earlier this week after Comcast first filed a cease-and-desist letter about using its name, then said it would take no further action, suggesting the MSO had thought a cybersquatter was behind the site.

Fight for the Future is claiming Comcast is trying to censor pro-network-neutrality website Comcastroturf.com. Comcast counters that it is just trying to protect its brand.

The new site encourages users to investigate what Fight for the Future says are fake anti-net neutrality comments filed in the FCC docket and "likely" funded by the company, though it does not elaborate on that assertion.

The public-interest group, which has been actively protesting FCC chair Ajit Pai's proposal to roll back Title II classification of ISPs and review the net neutrality rules, published a copy of a cease and desist letter that appears to be from a legal representative of Comcast.

RELATED: FCC's Pai Launches Effort to Repeal Title II Classification

The letter claims the domain name violates Comcast's intellectual property rights because it is "identical or confusingly similar" to Comcast's protected mark because it "sounds the same, looks the same and is spelled similarly to Comcast."

The letter says Comcast is ready to resolve the issue amicably and "without pursuing its claims for damages," but only if the domain is turned over to Comcast ASAP.

The notice cites the Anticybersquatting Consumer Protection Act in signaling that the site is out of bounds.'

Comcast defended sending the letter and trying to protect its brand, but said that it had no plans for additional action and doesn't block content.

“Comcast  supports strong, legally enforceable net neutrality rules and does not and will not block websites or content. Title II does not equal net neutrality," Comcast said in a statement. "Like most major brand owners, Comcast protects our company and brand names from being used improperly on the Internet by third parties. We use an established outside vendor to monitor for websites that use our name and brands without authorization, and the vendor routinely sends out notices to those sites. That is what happened here. This particular site also raised other legal issues supporting further investigation (for example, the site appears to collect personal information and has no posted privacy policy). After reviewing the site further, we do not plan additional action at this time.”

According to a source familiar with the letter, it was sent on May 17, only three days after the Web site was registered and before the site actually went live, so there was no way for Comcast to determine whether the site was trying to profit from its name.

Comcast had no comment on whether "no additional action" meant it was dropping its demand that the domain be turned over, though the letter was sent before it became clear that the site was not trying to monetize the Comcast name.  

Fight for the Future disputes Comcast's characterization of their Web site's privacy protections.

"The function that searches the FCC's docket does not collect any personal information, it just takes people to the FCC site directly," said Fight for the Future campaign director Evan Greer told B&C. "If you click "Contact your Attorneys General" it takes you to a standard petition page where there is a privacy policy clearly linked."

Net-neutrality activist group Fight for the Future says it is "extremely skeptical" about the FCC's claims of a distributed denial of service (DDoS) attack Sunday night (May 7).

Related: FCC CIO Says Agency Hit by DDoS Attack

The FCC said the attack happened at midnight, which would be just after comedian John Oliver's Last Week Tonight segment calling on viewers to flood the FCC with comments calling for retaining the Title II classification for ISPs that FCC chair Ajit Pai wants to reverse.

Fight for the Future is calling on the FCC to release logs on the attack to an independent third party -- a security researcher or media outlet -- to independently verify the attack.

"The agency has a responsibility to maintain a functioning website to receive large numbers of comments and feedback from the public," said Evan Greer campaign director for Fight for the Future. "They can't blame DDoS attacks without proof, they need to fix this problem and ensure that comments on this important issue are not lost."

Fight for the Future said that the FCC is reportedly suggesting that the same thing happened in 2014 after Oliver took aim at then FCC chair Tom Wheeler, likening him to a dingo babysitter, which it points out was not widely reported at the time -- instead the reports were that the site had crashed from the weight of comments from Oliver-inspired net-neutrality supporters -- and makes them even more suspect of the current claim.

FCC spokespeople were not available for comment at press time.

Fight for The Future was celebrating Tuesday on reports that the Trans-Pacific Partnership was now dead after members on both sides of the aisle in Congress signaled it would not get a vote in the lame duck session.

President-elect Donald Trump has been a big opponent of the deal, and threatened to drop out of the agreement in the first 100 days of his Administration. But even though most reports were giving Trump at least some credit, Fight for The Future, which has been organizing protests of TPP for years, wasn't handing him the laurel.

"Let’s make one thing clear," said Evan Greer, campaign director for Fight for the Future, "Donald Trump didn’t kill the TPP. We did...An unprecedented grassroots movement of people and organizations from across the political spectrum came together to spark an uprising." fight for the Future had branded it a rigged deal struck in secret.

The Motion Picture Association of America had said it would "allow the U.S. film and television industry to better compete in foreign markets and create even more economic growth and American jobs."

There was much industry celebration a year ago at the news that an agreement on the TPP trade deal had been struck after years of negotiations.

TPP was a historic Pacific Rim agreement with 11 other countries that TV and film producers have been pushing as a way to expand trade and access to Asia-Pacific markets.

It was signed last February but Congress had to sign off on it and never did.

Fresh from celebrating a U.S. federal appeals court's decision to uphold the FCC's Open Internet order, Fight for the Future, a digital rights group that advocated, and protested, in support of the FCC, is moving its focus to the European Union with plans for a 'net slowdown event.

The group said it has created www.savenetneutrality.eu and plans on calling for an EU Slowdown on June 28, similar to the Web protests for strong Title II-based net neutrality rules and the protests against the SOPA/PIPA legislation several years ago. 

"We are providing a line of code that websites, blogs, and Tumblr users can use to protest, with symbolic “slow loading” icons (in the style of the EU flag!) that drive comments to BEREC, the EU regulator that will decide net neutrality," said a spokesperson for the group.

"In the US, campaigns like this one were instrumental in driving the 3.7 million comments that paved the way to victory. Now, the groups behind that win are helping to bring the same tactics to Europe," he said. 

The Body of European Regulators of Electronic Communications (BEREC) is currently considering their own net neutrality rules, the group points out, and it sees loopholes that need closing before any final ruling is issued.

WASHINGTON. D.C. -- Among the riders that made it onto the omnibus budget bill accord reached lateTuesday (Dec. 15) was a version of the Cybersecurity Information Sharing Act (CISA), which would provide liability protection for companies, including ISPs, who share cyberthreat information with the government and each other.

ISPs supported the bill, but various public interest groups and a number of legislators have argued it guts privacy protections and allows government surveillance overreach. The issue is obviously a hot-button one in an age of growing terrorist threats. Republican presidential candidates debated the issue in their Dec. 15 face-off on CNN, with the candidates divided. Rand Paul, for example, is particularly concerned about government surveillance.

The Obama Administration supports granting the limited liability, though critics of CISA say the budget bill version essentially provides blanket, not narrow, liability protection.

After the bill was added, the American Civil Liberties Union, Fight for the Future and Access Now all criticized the move, calling it an usurpation of the Democratic process, an attempt to expand government surveillance and a failure to protect the Internet.

Fight for the Future said President Obama should veto the budget bill over the issue.

"[N]ow it’s up to President Obama to prove that his administration actually cares about the Internet," Fight for the Future campaign director Evan Greer said. "If he does, he has no choice but to veto this blatant attack on Internet security, corporate accountability, and free speech."