Give Visitors With An FCC IP Address The Slow Lane Treatment

The FCC isn’t making a lot of friends these days in large part due to its position with Net Neutrality. If you want to get back at the FCC, consider using the FCC Slow Lane plugin. The plugin allows users to protest the FCC by slowing down their websites to a crawl when an IP address registered to the FCC is detected. FCC Slow Lane is developed by WordPress.org user Evoknow. The plugin was created in response to a support forum thread requesting functionality to protest the FCC.

photo credit: La Chachalaca Fotografía – cc

When a blocked IP address is detected, the loading time is increased by two seconds. It also displays a header on top of your site for five seconds stating that they have been slowed down due to the FCC position regarding net neutrality. By slowing down your website to IP addresses registered to the FCC, they get to see first-hand what the Internet is like in the slow lane. The IP address ranges are publicly known and are in CIDR format.

192.133.125.0/24

165.135.0.0/16

192.104.54.0/24

4.21.126.0/24

65.125.25.64/26

208.23.64.0/25

Although there are no options to configure, it would be nice if there was a way to increase the time it takes to load the page to give those IP addresses the extra slow treatment. When installed, you can see how the notification header will look by adding ?fcc=demo-on at the end of the URL. Alternatively, you can use ?fcc=show-fcc-ips to see which blocks of IP addresses are being targeted. It’s not pretty, but it gets the message across.

When a visitor with an FCC IP address visits the site, they’ll see this header.

If there is enough interest, Evoknow said he’ll create an administrative backend to add new blocks of IP addresses. This would help spread the word to other political officials. FCC Slow Lane works fine with WordPress 3.9.1 and is one of the easiest ways to protest the FCC.

WordPress Sites Used As Protesting Machines

FCC slow lane is another example of turning WordPress sites into protesting machines. In 2012, users were able to protest SOPA via the SOPA Blackout plugin. Earlier this year, thousands participated in the The Day We Fight Back campaign via a plugin. With WordPress powering more than 22% of the web, it’s becoming easier for digital citizens to fight back. As each site participates in a protest, the volume is raised. When WordPress.com and others joined together to protest against NSA surveillance, the volume was deafening.

What would happen if only 5-10% of WordPress powered sites protested against specific causes? Would it be enough to affect change? Is it possible to change the future by using WordPress sites to protest or is it just a bunch of noise at the end of the day?