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Battle for the Net has the details about what the September 10th Internet Slowdown is and how to participate.
You're our only hope.
This is the time to go big, visible, and strong--that's the only way we can actually win this fight. We all need to get as many people in our respective audiences motivated to do something. We can make this epic, but only if you help. We need companies to be frontrunners, leaders, and heroes on this, that's the key ingredient to raising the bar and making sure everyone goes big.
We realize it's a big ask, but this is the kind of bad internet legislation that comes along (or gets this close to passing) once a decade or so. If it passes we'll be kicking ourselves for decades--every time a favorite site gets relegated to the slow lane, and every time we have to rework or abandon a project because of the uncertain costs paid prioritization creates. Doing the most we can right now seems like the only rational step.
Several top websites -- including Etsy, Kickstarter, Foursquare, Wordpress, Vimeo, reddit, Mozilla, Imgur, Meetup, Cheezburger, Namecheap, Bittorrent, Gandi.net, StartPage, BoingBoing, and Dwolla -- announced that they will be joining more than 35 advocacy organizations and hundreds of thousands of activists in a day of action that will give a glimpse into what the Internet might look like if the FCC's proposed rules go into effect. The protest comes just 5 days before the FCC's next comment deadline on September 15th.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Rivenaleem on Friday September 05 2014, @02:39PM
Is this a US only thing? What will happen to people outside the US requesting information from a US server? I understand a lot of stuff is delivered locally, like Netflix. But that website is very sparse on exactly what the ramifications for people outside the US are. Where can I read more about this?
(Score: 5, Informative) by Sir Garlon on Friday September 05 2014, @03:22PM
Yes. I apologize for the stupidity of my government.
Nothing directly. The net neutrality rules affect the last mile of the network. Indirectly, companies that want to serve US customers will need to pay twice for their bandwidth, once to send it over the backbone and again so the last-mile network won't slow down the traffic. Domestic or foreign, any server operator who wants his content seen in the US will have to pay the last-mile network owner. Yes, it's an outrage.
The Electronic Frontier Foundation probably has as many articles [eff.org] as a reasonable person would care to read. However if you are specifically looking for the potential impact on non-US persons and companies, I suspect you will have trouble finding much material. The US press, public, and politicians have an almost limitless ability to fixate on a domestic perspective as if the rest of the world STILL didn't exist.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
(Score: 1, Informative) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 05 2014, @03:31PM
This is primarily a last mile thing. Last mile providers are holding sites hostage, threatening to slow them to a crawl unless they pay up.
This shouldn't have (much of) an effect on people accessing the internet from outside the US.
(Score: 1) by FuzzyTheBear on Friday September 05 2014, @06:15PM
So basically it's a case of blackmail to the content providers by carriers who want to milk the cow another notch without regard about what's right and what's wrong. This is typical of US businesses. Nothing to see here. Message to customers ? Shut up and pay , big boys need to upgrade their yatchs.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday September 05 2014, @07:17PM
If this happens in the US it will soon be all over the place. We must put an end to this madness now.