Net Neutrality (a fair and level playing field on the Internet) may be a thing of the past after the upcoming Net Neutrality FCC vote on December 21, 2010. In the most serious threat yet to the Internet as a whole, these new FCC Net Neutrality rules will mean the end for an untold number of technology businesses. By allowing priority traffic, the FCC will have single-handedly brought a class system to a free and open online society.
A controversial proposal for Internet traffic rules that would allow providers to ration access to their networks is scheduled to come before U.S. communications regulators for a vote on Tuesday.
The Progressive Change Campaign delivered over 100,000 of petitions to the FCC to pressure them into making Net Neutrality rules stronger and to keep President Obama’s Net Neutrality campaign promise to provide a “level playing field for whoever has the best idea” and “maintain that basic principle in how the Internet functions and as president I’m going to make sure that is the principle that my FCC commissioners are applying as we move forward”.
The new rules (if approved) are the result of substantial lobbying by those industries who will monetarily gain from a pay-tier Internet. Senator Al Franken (D-MN) recently spoke out about the vote:
Under the language of the draft Order as I understand it, it would be entirely acceptable for a mobile ISP to prioritize its own such such applications and either degrade competing applications, or, quite simply, block them outright. To use a hypothetical, under this framework, Verizon could initially allow iPad owners access to a streaming Netflix video application over their 3G or LTE network—but then block that same Netflix application the very day that V CAST, Verizon’s mobile video on-demand service, becomes available and offers competing content. In fact, they could have blocked the Netflix application the day they thought of offering V CAST on iPad.
ArsTechnica reports there are Net Neutrality issues beyond “prioritization”.
Beyond concerns about exempting wireless broadband and permitting paid priotization, Franken worries about reports that the Order will define broadband Internet access as a “consumer retail service, by wire or radio, that provides high-speed capability to transmit data to and receive data from all or substantially all Internet endpoints.” This approach would be similar to the net neutrality draft that Representative Henry Waxman (D-CA) unsuccessfully tried to get through the House earlier this year.
The definition is “flawed,” Franken insists. The “consumer retail service” provision could be spun to exclude business or enterprise broadband. The all-or-substantially-all language could “perversely, allow broadband Internet access service providers who block websites to remove themselves from coverage under the rule.”
UPDATE Newser via Huffington Post are reporting that Senator Al Franken has stated that this is the “most important free speech issue of our time”.
For example, Verizon could block Google Maps “on your phone, forcing you to use their own mapping program,” which is far worse; politically-motivated companies could, say, prevent you from using Obama or Tea Party apps. While President Obama and the FCC chairman say they back net neutrality—“the most important free speech issue of our time”—it’s starting to look like we’ve “been had.”
