Alright folks!

It's the holidays.

I'm going to celebrate the holidays with my friends and family. I'm going to take some time to enjoy the company of the people I care about.

And then we're going to tear it all down.

We will organize. We will create. We will assert control.

(thread, because of course. CW'd because I'm salty.)

Here is the situation.

Disney now owns the majority of Fox's assets, making them the single largest owner and supplier and controller of english language pop-culture anywhere in the world.

Rupert Murdoch is now the largest shareholder at Disney.

Rupert Murdoch is, hands down, the reason Trump was elected.

The Trump administration has removed Net Neutrality protections. This is their latest victim, after banking consumer protections.

What does the Net Neutrality repeal mean for you?

That remains to be seen.

Most likely:
- stricter data caps on home internet use,
- throttling of bandwidth intensive activities,
- a "fast lane" being established in which some content providers pay an additional fee so that their traffic is served more quickly (and therefore a "slow lane" in which content providers that didn't pay protection money have their bandwidth artificially capped.)

So, to sum up:

- The already very concentrated American Media landscape just got more concentrated.

- Rupert Murdoch, who is responsible for Fox News and The Daily Mail, now has a controlling stake in Disney.

- Regulations preventing ISPs from abusing customers or restricting access to/from certain providers have been killed.

- Oh! And Comcast (the largest ISP in the country, IIRC) is also one of the biggest producers of media in the country.

- Most cities have signed exclusive contracts with Comcast, Verizon, ATT, or Cox saying that they are the only ones who can be ISPs in their cities.

Comcast has a monopolistic hold on *many* regions and has an incentive to make their content easier to access, and to make their competitors content harder to access.

This also means that the illusion of choice in media companies is quickly eroding, revealing the pulsing

This also means that the illusion of choice in media companies is quickly eroding, revealing the pulsing writhing oligopoly sitting at the top.

It's a real bad situation.

So what are we going to do about it?

First, the american court system can (and very well might! https://boingboing.net/2017/11/26/rule-of-law-not-shills.html) stop this Net Noot change, at least for a little while.

So, you know, pay attention for that.

Second, Congress can actually fix Net noot. They won't, unless we make a lot of noise, but they can. So make a lot of noise. Call your congresscritters. Express your distaste.

I'm moving point three to it's own post because it's important.

3rd:

Pay Attention To Where Your Media Comes From.

Know who made it. Know who's in it. Know who is profiting from your attention. Know who is injecting their opinions in to your brain via this media.

This is not easy, but it is essential.

4th:

If you want to watch a movie, or a TV show, and you don't like the people that made it, consider methods of obtaining that show for free. (And I'm not talking Netflix.) Libraries have DVD collections (and DVD rippers are widely available.)

Media Piracy is also easier than ever (right now, and until net noot gets in the way), and IMO, ethically imperative today.

In fact, I'm going to go on a big ol' rant about piracy.

Media Piracy is the number one thing that most media companies hate about the internet.

They introduce DRM (like EME) in the name of combatting piracy. They take away people's internet access in the name of combatting piracy. They throttle legitimate peer-to-peer connections in the name of fighting piracy.

They say that piracy takes money out of their pockets. According to most studies, it does not.

But it *can*.