Ish,
You're right, this is very important.
The "Internet Slowdown Day" begins at midnight Wednesday and ends at midnight Thursday of this week.
You know that annoying loading symbol you get when your computer is buffering (the circle that spins round and round)? Well some major websites are going to show that for the entire twenty-four hour period mentioned above to bring peoples attention to what the FCC wants to do to the internet.
You see, the new head of the FCC is the former head lobbyist for ISP's like Comcast, Time Warner and Verizon (to name a few). Those companies want to be able to start charging (see: extorting) money from companies like Netflix and Amazon to move them onto an internet "fast lane" because they use so much bandwidth. In short, pay our ransom or we'll start "throttling" your access to the internet, thereby slowing down your website and pissing off your customers who then might stop visiting your website and causing you to lose revenue.
Some of the downsides to this are if the government allows this to happen, then companies like Netflix and Amazon will have to raise their prices (in order to offset the extortion payment) and guess who gets to pay those higher prices.....us. The other downside is that it eliminates competition....what about the newer, smaller upstarts that might benefit us all but they can't afford to pay the extortion fee? They get put in the new internet "slow lane."
I know of a few companies taking place in the protest- Netflix, Reddit, Etsy, Kick Starter, Vimeo, Foursquare and Mozilla, to name a few. Not sure if Amazon is participating but if you do a little research you'll find that some of the biggest internet companies all signed a letter to the FCC saying this is unacceptable.
MC