Tech Brief
On Tech Brief today: The tech world debates Google and Verizon's proposals on net neutrality.
• Perhaps today Tech Brief should be called Tech Grief as it is all about adverse reaction to Google and Verizon's proposal on net neutrality. This is the principle that ensures that all data is treated equally by the people that provide your net link.
The firms propose a legal framework to overcome US problems with net neutrality occasioned by a court case that hobbled official efforts to police what ISPs can do to the data you want to see.
Among the seven proposals are calls for laws to stop data discrimination, demands that ISPs tell consumers about their services and fines for ISPs that break laws.
The full proposal is online but few web commentators like it all. Rik Myslewski in The Register looks ahead and wonders about splitting fixed line from mobile net access:
"The future is inarguably a wireless one -- and although the framework specifies that the US Government Accountability Office should issue an annual report on "whether or not current policies are working to protect consumers", the proposal gives no guidance on how, when, or in what way wireless broadband might ever be included in the wireline guidelines. Equally -- perhaps more -- concerning to those who want a flat-internet future is the proposal's clear statement that its "open Internet" strictures would only apply to current technologies and internet useage patterns."
• Over at TechCrunch, Nicholas Deleon is also worried about wireless. While the rest of the proposals seem "benign" the ones dealing with wi-fi and mobile could, he fears, lead to the creation of a second internet:
"The internet you know and love, the one that has worked fairly well so far, will remain in place, but ISPs will be allowed to offer "additional, differentiated online services" as they see fit. So, you can subscribe to the ISP of your choice--provided you even have a choice, since it's not unusual to see towns and cities with only one viable broadband provider--and be able to access the internet as you do today. But, in addition to that, and destroying the very idea of an open internet, ISPs will be able to offer, say, an "Internet Plus" option."
• Veteran tech commentator Dan Gillmor also has worries about what would result from a network cast in the design Verizon and Google envision:
"...the game is on to create a parallel Internet. It'll still be packet-switched. But they won't call it the Internet anymore. That's an end game we should not encourage.
• Over at Ars Technica it was the unstated get-out clauses in the proposals that irked Matthew Lasar:
"The Google/Verizon manifesto claims to preserve "transparency" on the 'Net, but the only really transparent thing about the plan is that it is packed with so many loopholes, a deep packet inspection powered P2P blocker the size of an M1 Abrams tank could roll through it without disturbing a telco executive's nap."
• The final word comes from Ryan Tate at ValleyWag:
"But then, skepticism is the correct reaction to an "open" internet proposal developed by two massive corporations behind closed doors."
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