from the just-like-the-reporter,-the-tv-commentator-and-the-internet-commenter dept
Update: Please read our update on this story, The Cartoonist Has No Idea How Fair Use Works, explaining how one of the cartoonists parodied below has decided to send DMCA takedown notices.
Earlier this week, the
A Good Cartoon tumblr first posted a bunch of ridiculous and misleading
political cartoons about net neutrality that showed zero understanding of net neutrality. And then the person behind the site remade many of those cartoons, but replaced the words in them with "the cartoonist has no idea how net neutrality works!" For reasons unknown, the
original Tumblr post that had all of them has been taken down, but many of the images are still viewable
via John Hodgman's blog, and they're worth checking out. Here are just a few with some additional commentary (because how can I not provide some commentary...)
Right, so actually, the rules are designed to do the exact opposite of the image above. They're designed to make sure that the big broadband access players can't delay things and have to deliver your content faster. The idea that the FCC will be stepping between the content and people who want to see it is completely false.
I don't even know what the original cartoonist was trying to say here, because it doesn't even make the slightest bit of sense. The text in the original cartoon was "time's up, next!" which makes even less sense than the first cartoon. The whole point of the new rules is to prevent broadband providers from putting these types of controls on your internet usage.
Sensing a pattern yet? All of these cartoons are pretending that the new rules insert the FCC between you and the internet. And all of them pretend that the FCC is going to do what the
broadband providers themselves have said they want to do -- which
these rules are designed to prevent. So, yes, the cartoonist has no idea how net neutrality works.
At least this one doesn't go for the easy (but wrong) joke pretending that the FCC is now watching what you do online. Instead, it's claiming that there's no reason for the FCC to "fix" anything because it's "not broken." But that's only true if you ignore the attempts to
break neutrality along with how the broadband providers
purposely made your Netflix slow in order to get the company to pay its tolls. And, of course, it also means having to ignore what the broadband providers have
been saying themselves for a decade now about how they want to double and triple charge internet services to reach end users. If you pretend all of that isn't true, then maybe the original cartoon makes sense. But, all of it is true, so the cartoonist has no idea how net neutrality works.
Filed Under: broadband, cartoonist, fcc, net neutrality, political cartoons
