Some of the biggest names of the Internet are uniting together for a "day of action" to protest against the Federal Communications Commission, which is currently working on canceling the regulations that were passed for the Internet providers during the Obama administration.
The Internet biggies that will be joining the protest are Etsy, Kickstarter, Mozilla, Reddit, the start-up incubator Y Combinator, and Amazon (whose chief executive, Jeffrey Bezos, also owns The Washington Post).
On July 12, the aforementioned companies and organizations will change their websites to raise awareness regarding net neutrality and FCC's efforts to destroy it, which means, if you open the Mozilla browser or the Amazon e-commerce site, for example, you won't be seeing the usual contents on the screen, rather it will be something else related to the issue.
The present net neutrality rules, passed by former President Barrack Obama, prohibit the Internet providers from blocking or slowing down other providers' websites or charging extra money from the users to show their contents.
"Without strong net neutrality rules, though, I'm concerned that the cable and wireless companies that control Internet access will have outsized power to pick winners and losers in the market," said Sam Altman, the president of Y Combinator.
Participants, such Mozilla, are now pointing out how the demolition of net neutrality could hurt free speech, competition and innovation on the Internet, reported The Washington Post.
"The FCC is endangering Americans' access to a free and open web," said Denelle Dixon, Mozilla's chief legal officer, in a statement. "The FCC is creating an Internet that benefits ISPs, not users."
Net neutrality is basically a concept which ensures that all Internet traffics are treated equally by all the Internet service providers (ISPs). Although the ISPs say that they are committed to the net neutrality, they have, in the past, strongly opposed the implementation of it by the Obama government, according to the report.
Critics of the net neutrality, including the FCC's Republican majority, rules opine that such a rule prevents the ISPs from innovating new ways to make money in a world where most of the goods and services have gone digital.
Ajit Pai, probably the biggest critic of net neutrality, said that "small ISPs faced new regulatory burdens" under the net neutrality regulations. He also added that "innovative providers had to fear a Washington bureaucracy that might disapprove and take enforcement action."
In 2012 Google, Wikipedia and some other organizations had taken a similar effort like this digital rally, where they protested against the federal legislation on Internet piracy. The companies blacked out their websites to demonstrate how the then proposed bill could lead to censorship. Reddit and Mozilla had taken part in that protest as well. Apart from that, around 115,000 websites had joined the protest.
