Today is the day that Fight for the Future's "Internet Slowdown" initiative to protest the FCC's proposed changes to the Open Internet Order (also known as net neutrality) goes into full effect.

In case you missed it, video streaming service Netflix will be taking part in Fight for the Future's "Internet Slowdown" initiative to protest the FCC's proposed changes to the Open Internet Order (also known as net neutrality).

The battle for net neutrality is heating up, as the Federal Communications Commission finds that the public's opinion seems to be strongly against the agency's plans to allow ISPs to charge online content providers for faster access to its customers.

At a recent State House rally, a small group of protesters urged lawmakers and the Governor not to bail out 38 Studios.

"It’s a scam. It’s a rip-off. We shouldn’t pay it back," said one protestor - as reported by the Providence Journal.

GLAAD (an advocacy group for people in the lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender [LGBT] community) issued a statement yesterday lambasting Nintendo for not including a same-sex relationship option in its 3DS game, Tomodachi Life. Nintendo's Mii-based "life simulator" for 3DS releases on June 6 in the United States.

FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler's proposal allowing for ISPs to charge for an Internet "fast lane" that would let Internet service providers charge Web services for priority access to consumers is ticking consumers off, but some folks who have to do business on the Internet are not pleased about it either - and one company is doing something about it: Neocities web hosting service.

An interesting story from the New York Times points out that the level of lobbying has increased dramatically since FCC Chairman vowed to "write new rules to secure an open Internet." According to NYT, in the nine weeks since the FCC lost its case against Verizon in the federal courts, at least 69 companies, interest groups and trade associations have met with FCC commissioners and officials about rule changes related to net neutrality and those

Top executives from tech companies including Facebook, Google and more are meeting with President Obama today to talk about “issues of privacy, technology, and intelligence,” according to what one White House official tells Politico. The administration declined to provide a list of those attending the meeting.

When the Daily Caller and the San Francisco Gate report a positive in the same story, it doesn't mean that the apocalypse is in full swing; it generally means that something particularly interesting and possibly good has occurred.

In a statement to NBC News former NSA contractor (currently in exile in Russia after leaking classified NSA documents about domestic and international spying programs) called Senator Diane Feinstein (D-CA.) hypocritical for complaining about the CIA allegedly spying on the Senate while strongly supporting the NSA's spying programs and bills like CISPA.

The Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) has issued an action alert urging members and the internet-community-at-large to contact their elected officials in Washington D.C. and urge them to support two stop-gap measures that would restore net neutrality rules until a more permanent solution can be worked out by lawmakers. You can check out the appeal from the ECA below:

Today is the day that advocacy groups and businesses have designated as a day of protest online against the NSA's unfettered surveillance and data collection practices. Led by the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the collective are calling on websites and internet users to show their support by displaying special banners online and to contact their elected official in D.C. to let them know that the mass surveillance being conducted by the NSA needs to come to an end.

Jesse Ventura, former Minnesota Governor and host of a new show online called "Off the Grid," has endorsed tomorrow's planned Internet protest of NSA surveillance, attentively dubbed "The Day We Fight Back."

“Benjamin Franklin once said those who would give up essential liberty, to purchase a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety,” stated Jesse Ventura. “I hope to raise awareness of how dangerous the NSA has become, and I will be joined online with people around the world who feel the same way.”

A fascinating account of one man's encounter with a Verizon customer support representative details how the company admitted that it was selectively limiting bandwidth to AWS services and adversely affecting the quality of Netflix.

Twenty-three-year-old Robin Ras, a Dutch game developer and owner of GamesOnly.com, has found a unique way of protesting Russian President Vladimir Putin's anti-gay policies. With the Winter Olympics in full swing at Sochi, Ras thought the best way to make a statement about the country's deplorable treatment of gays was to create a protest game.

The lead author of the Patriot Act said on Tuesday that he will spearhead an effort to reject reauthorization of the law (which is set to expire next year) if the White House doesn't make some serious changes to Section 215 of the law, which has led to the NSA and other government agencies collecting and storing all kinds of information on American citizens.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation is calling on everyone on the Internet to make something extraordinary happen: end mass surveillance by the National Security Agency (NSA).

The Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA) has issued an action alert concerning the future of net neutrality, asking its members and the Internet community at large to contact their representatives in Congress, President Barack Obama, and the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and ask them to preserve and revise the Open Internet Order so that it can survive future legal challenges.

Apple has responded strongly to reports that the National Security Agency claims a "100-percent success rate" in attaching spyware to iOS apps. The revelation about the NSA's targeting of Apple products comes from a recent Der Speigel report featuring leaked documents from former NSA contractor Edward Snowden provided to various journalists. The NSA program targeting Apple products is called DROPOUTJEEP, and allows the agency to intercept SMS messages, access contact lists, locate a phone using cell tower data, and even activate the device’s microphone and camera.

After a two week hiatus (thanks mostly to the holidays and Andrew's self-imposed exile to a small town in Kentucky) we return with Super Podcast Action Committee Episode 81! On this week's show hosts Andrew Eisen and E. Zachary Knight talk about the Killer Instinct DRM that popped up during a recent competition at a NYC college, the EFF's annual Wish List, and investors suing EA over the shaky Battlefield 4 launch. Download Episode 81 now: SuperPAC Episode 81 (1 hour, 17 minutes) 88.4 MB.

In a rare public statement yesterday, NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden (now exiled in Moscow) urged American citizens to take part in a protest in Washington D.C. this weekend being put on by the members of the Stop Watching Us coalition. The group includes the American Civil Liberties Union, the Mozilla Foundation, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, the Green Party, the Libertarian Party, social news website Reddit, the Council on American-Islamic Relations, Demand Progress, Students for Liberty and the Entertainment Consumers Association (ECA).

Indie developer Sophie Houlden has brought her game back to Ouya, saying in a recent blog post that the makers of the console have adequately addressed the concerns she had that made her pull her game from the system last month. Houlden pulled her time-travel stealth game, Rose and Time, from the Android-based home console in September in protest of the controversial Free the Games fund.

US Rep. John Conyers Jr., “Pentagon Papers” whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg and actress Maggie Gyllenhaal are taking part in a new PSA calling for an end to mass "suspicionless" surveillance by the National Security Agency (NSA). The new short video released by the StopWatching.us coalition was directed by Brian Knappenberger (We Are Legion: The Story of the Hackivists) and produced by the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF).

Canadian Internet rights group La Quadrature du Net warns that a trade treaty between Canada and the European Union will ultimately hurt internet freedoms in both regions if its ratified. CETA recently reached "agreement in principle" status during a meeting between José Barroso, the President of the European Commission, and Stefen Harper, the Canadian Prime Minister.

A new video detailing the National Security Agency's (NSA) broad spying programs on Americans will be on display tonight at 9:00 PM ET in Manhattan, projected onto a building for everyone to see. Internet freedom groups Fight for the Future and Demand Progress have teamed up with Golden Globe nominee Evangeline Lilly (Lost, The Hobbit) to produce a 5-minute crowd funded video that explains the NSA’s surveillance programs and calls for an end to them.

Democracy Now, "a daily independent global news hour" hosted by Amy Goodman & Juan González talks extensively with Lori Wallach, director of Public Citizen’s Global Trade Watch about the Trans-Pacific Partnership trade treaty.

Several advocacy groups have banded together for a 100 city protest called Restore the Fourth on July 4. The day-long protest is described by organizers as a "grassroots campaign designed to raise discussion in Congress about the rules and regulations of the Fourth Amendment." Specifically, the protest focuses on some of the laws and activities being used in the name of fighting terrorism.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) announced that the grassroots campaign opposing the dragnet surveillance programs of the National Security Agency (NSA) at StopWatching.Us has garnered 500,000 signatures. When half a million people sign up for a campaign the government would be wise to take note of it.

A petition on Whitehouse.gov to pardon NSA contractor Edward Snowden for revealing the NSA's spying activities (PRISM and phone data collection) has passed the 100,000 signature threshold needed to earn a response from the White House. As of this writing the petition sits at roughly 117,000 signatures. The petition solicited the Obama Administration to pardon Snowden for any crimes he may have committed.

Earlier in the week while the National Governors Association and proponents of the Marketplace Fairness Act were hosting an event to encourage House members to approve the bill already passed the Senate, Republicans from the House and Senate joined Grover Norquist and Americans for Tax Reform to rally against it. Sens. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Ted Cruz (R-Texas) joined House Republicans and Grover Norquist, president of Americans for Tax Reform on Tuesday to rally against the bill.