The blogosphere has been howling over how Google sold out Monday when it announced that net-neutrality principles should not apply to the wireless internet. The leading headline came from my colleague Ryan Singel, with his spot-on story: "Why Google Became a Carrier-Humping, Net Neutrality Surrender Monkey."
Make no bones about it, Mr. Singel is correct. The Mountain View-based behemoth's joint proposal with Verizon is a net-neutrality flip-flop of epic proportions. If the Google-Verizon proposal to Congress became reality, it clearly would set up a two-tiered internet of the haves and have-nots insofar as the wireless internet is concerned.
There's no doubt that both companies would stand to profit, too, if the wireless internet was not governed by net-neutrality regulations, as the two propose. Google's YouTube, for example, could flourish at the expense of other startups forced to pay carriage fees.
But we have to divorce ourselves from Google's 180-degree shift and examine the proposal from a real-world perspective, the one filled with politics and special interests. It's a real world where utopia and equality do not exist, either on land, sea, space or the internet.
Unfortunately, the Google-Verizon watered-down version of network neutrality is the best we're going to get, if we get anything at all.
Scream if you want. Call me a Google-Verizon apologist. I hope I'm wrong.
Assuming we want regulation, we must first look at what the rules are today. What we find is that, generally, there are no net-neutrality regulations.
We thought there were. But that illusory pipe dream has been shattered, and it wasn't because of the Google-Verizon pact.
A federal appeals court in April ruled the Federal Communications Commission had no power to enforce its principles of net neutrality, absent congressional authority. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit's decision was in response to the FCC dinging Comcast for throttling BitTorrent traffic, a move Comcast correctly said was outside the FCC's purview.
To counter the appeals court, the FCC has begun a complex and politically thorny rule-making process to regain the authority it believed it had.
But much of Congress, including a large chunk of Democratic House members, has come out against the FCC's move. And lurking in the background is proposed Senate legislation that would undo FCC changes, if the FCC actually carried through on them.
With that in mind, Verizon and Google, two of the top private players in the debate, jointly announced a congressional plan that sent the blogosphere aflame.
The proposal espouses against the concept of net neutrality in the wireless spectrum, meaning wireless carriers could discriminate against content providers, big and small, by selling carriage rights or by refusing to carry at all.
In the wireline field, though, the proposal is a pretty good one.
Albeit with a few caveats, it advocates for a pure form of net neutrality: that internet service providers must treat everything on the internet the same (illegal activities and services are not covered.) Unlike the wireless proposal, the pact's wireline vision would forbid internet fast lanes or the throttling of any legal services.
That said, let's be clear about something: Any sense of internet nirvana we might have had was shattered when it became clear that, after the 9/11 terror attacks, the government began spying on our electronic communications without warrants.
Then the whole Comcast brouhaha erupted, only to end in April with another broken pipe dream -- this one net neutrality. As it turns out, net neutrality was an illusion, a theory that it was the kosher way to go.
But theory and practice are whole different worlds. Even Google recognizes that, or at least it says it does, regardless of its motives.
"…this particular issue has been intractable in Washington for several years now. At this time there are no enforceable protections -- at the Federal Communications Commission or anywhere else -- against even the worst forms of carrier discrimination against internet traffic," Richard Whitt, Google's telecom and media attorney, said in a Thursday blog post.
"With that in mind, we decided to partner with a major broadband provider on the best policy solution we could devise together," he continued. "We're not saying this solution is perfect, but we believe that a proposal that locks in key enforceable protections for consumers is preferable to no protection at all."
That's recognition that the full ball of utopian wax is unattainable, at least for now, irrespective if that benefits Google and Verizon.
To be sure, I'd rather see the all-you-can-eat utopian version. But I live in the real world, one where there's too many competing interests for Washington to do the right thing.
Top Photo: Fraulein Schiller/Flickr
Bottom Photo: M3Li55@/Flickr*
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See Also:
- Another Net Neutrality Option: Remove Financial Incentives ...
- Appeals Court Throttles FCC's Net Neutrality Authority
- Google, Verizon, Net Neutrality and The Grateful Dead
- Skype, Wireless Companies Fight to Shape Net-Neutrality
- Net Neutrality Groups Organizing Protest At Google HQ Friday
- Court Drives FCC Towards Nuclear Option to Regulate Broadband
- Court to FCC: You Don't Have Power to Enforce Net Neutrality
- AT&T Tells FCC It Loves the Idea, Not Rules, of Net Neutrality
