Tomorrow,
September 10, will mark the first great Internet Slowdown — a protest
by some of the web’s largest companies over the FCC and US government’s
handling of net neutrality. All across the web, on sites such as Reddit,
Netflix, and WordPress, a spinning “loading…” icon will appear,
reminding everyone that internet slow lanes — where some websites load
more slowly than others if you don’t pay your ISP some extra money — are
a real possibility unless we write to our country’s lawmakers now. Let me state this clearly: The end of net neutrality would be bad for everyone on the internet except your ISP.
The Internet Slowdown
is being arranged by Battle for the Net, a fairly large concerted
effort of organizations and people who are trying their best to support
net neutrality. Battle for the Net appears to be an off-shoot of Fight for the Future, a nonprofit that popped up during the battle against SOPA and PIPA.
Some fairly big companies and organizations have joined the Battle for
the Net, including the EFF, ACLU, Kickstarter, Tumblr, Vimeo,
iFixit, and Reddit. On September 10, many of these companies — and some
other latecomers, such as Netflix — will be displaying a “spinning wheel
of death” to symbolize how the FCC’s proposed net neutrality rules
would create internet fast lanes and slow lanes. Read more...
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