1. Monthly archive
  2. April 2020

April 2020

Campaign aims to get students connected

Common Sense Media is urging Congress to use the next round of coronavirus relief legislation to make sure all US students can connect to the internet. The campaign, dubbed "Connect All Students," comes as a poll from the group and SurveyMonkey finds that teens are worried they'll fall behind in school due to the pandemic. More than half of students whose in-person classes have been canceled worried about not being able to keep up with schoolwork and extracurricular activities.

Why the coronavirus lockdown is making the internet stronger than ever

In addition to the increase in traffic, sheltering in place strains the internet in two more ways. First, last-mile connections—the ones that run from local exchanges or data centers to your home—are typically the weakest links in a network. Many run over outdated cables. When broadband was rolled out in the US, for example, it often piggybacked on cables originally installed for TV. These cables were designed to pipe data into a home and not out of it, which is why uploading video from a home internet connection can be flaky.

Sponsor 

Committee for Justice

Date 
Thu, 04/09/2020 - 18:00

Last year, the D.C. Circuit issued its opinion in Mozilla v. Federal Communications Commission in which the court largely upheld the Commission’s 2017 Restoring Internet Freedom Order that reversed the Obama Administration’s 2015 decision to apply common carrier regulation to the Internet. While the court upheld the bulk of the agency’s actions as reasonable under the Supreme Court’s rulings in Chevron and Brand X, the court also found that the agency lacked plenary preemption authority over state efforts to regulate the Internet under the FCC’s theory of the case.


Groups Call on Congress to Fund Journalism and Treat Local News as Essential Service during Pandemic

A coalition of more than 45 organizations and scholars has called on Congress to include vital funding for local news in the next coronavirus stimulus package. Free Press Action, PEN America, Common Cause,  and other organizations urged the House and Senate leadership to consider local press an “essential service” vital to the nation’s health, prosperity, and recovery. The organizations ask Congress to allocate at least $5 billion to support local journalism in the next stimulus package.

Sponsor 

Internet Society

Date 
Tue, 04/14/2020 - 20:30 to 22:00

In the U.S. and Canada, rural and remote areas are the hardest to reach and most under-connected. Native communities face unique barriers for connecting to the Internet, which is a powerful tool to preserve cultures and languages; devices and apps can offer local languages, and community members can create their own cultural content. The panel will explore how Internet access can protect native cultures and community engagement can foster connectivity.


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