Net Neutrality celebration

Grassroots organisations that lobbied for net neutrality celebrate their victory in their own ways.

Banner over the corporate headquarters of Comcast
A banner flown over the corporate headquarters of Comcast [Al Jazeera]

A day after the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) voted to approve rules that would uphold Net Neutrality, some of the grassroots organisations that lobbied the FCC celebrated their victory.

If you thought they would celebrate online, you would be wrong, they went strictly analog (although there was a touch of the internet). 

They flew a banner over the corporate headquarters of Comcast, one of the companies that wanted the FCC to vote against these new rules, which features the face of internet sensation Grumpy Cat and the words: “Comcast: Don’t mess with the internet  #SorryNotSorry and #NetNeutrality”.

This is not the first attention-grabbing stunt done in the name of Net Neutrality. Before the vote, there was also an internet slowdown protest as well as the internet countdown, which was a sustained protest effort counting down to the FCC’s vote.

But why Comcast? According to David Segal, the Executive Director of Demand Progress, “Comcast and cable allies spent big for the right to degrade the very service they provide to their customers, and they tried to ignore the millions of public comments in support of Net Neutrality.

But they can’t ignore the FCC’s vote yesterday – or a plane flying over their corporate headquarters today. This banner is a message from the millions who stood up to one of the most powerful special interests in Washington: You can’t ignore the Internet.”

Source: Al Jazeera