14 DAY TRIAL // There’s a new big fish in the pool of companies trying to convince the US authorities that Net neutrality needs to be a reality and not just an ideal put on paper. Netflix has joined the Internet Slowdown protest that’s scheduled for September 10.
Netflix joins a growing list of tech companies, including Reddit, Mozilla, Kickstarter, Vimeo, Upworthy and WordPress, although the list is a lot longer.
The momentum is growing for the action seeking to protect the open Internet, as prominent tech companies and organizations are teaming up to take a stand against the destruction of Net neutrality, an event that would not only hurt the way people browse the Internet, but also tech innovation.
The event that’s going to take place on Wednesday banks on the huge support that was shown by the US citizens who decided to send messages to the Federal Communications Commission in favor of Net neutrality. Over 1 million comments were received in a two-month period, as well as plenty of joint requests from tech companies across the US.
According to a recent research, under 1 percent of the comments received by the FCC supported the idea of allowing ISPs to create the so-called fast lanes that Tom Wheeler proposed. While there are a few more meetings to be held until the end of the month, it is quite unlikely for the proposal to be approved and quite more likely that the FCC will resort to reclassifying ISPs as common carriers, which would make it possible for the commission to impose its rules on them.
The sites of the aforementioned companies, as well as Digg, Etsy, Foursquare, imgur, Twilio, Urban Dictionary are joining a lot of advocates, such as the American Civil Liberties Union, Democracy for America, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Fight for the Future, Greenpeace USA, and others. They’ll all be making some changes to their sites on Wednesday, when an ever-loading wheel will grace their pages.
Why Net neutrality is important
This is to signify the dangers that the lack of Net neutrality could bring, with access to sites that have not paid for special access being slowed down to impossibly low speeds that will make people close the tab rather than wait for them to load.
And therein lies the issue with the system that allows ISPs to do whatever they want to get money from both huge companies and subscribers – they could end up controlling what content people view and what’s beyond their access by simply throttling with their speeds.
“The free and open Internet has been central to the economy and to global free expression. Everyone has to step up now and do everything they can to protect it,” said Paul Sieminski, general counsel at Automattic, the company behind WordPress.
Reddit’s General Manager Erik Martin also says that the cause of Net neutrality is an important one for them as a business, as well as for the site’s visitors and for democracy.