Google and Verizon's Scary Net Neutrality Plan

At Popular Science:

Google and Verizon announced a joint vision for the future of net neutrality this afternoon [August 9] -- a plan that may wield significant influence in the ever-intensifying debate over who controls the internet and its content. The plan calls for strictly regulated openness for today's wireline broadband--the DSL or cable internet you likely have at home. But for wireless networks ... the story is different.

For those that may be unaware of the issue, an exceedingly simplified fifteen-second net neutrality primer: The debate pits network providers (like Verizon) against companies and individuals who use said networks to deliver products and services to customers (like Google). As web applications become more central in nearly every aspect of public and private life, the network providers have grown increasingly interested in recouping the massive amounts of money they spend on building and maintaining network infrastructure by charging those companies who use an inordinate amount of bandwidth (like Google) for privileged access and delivery to customers. The internet has never worked this way, so the idea is obviously upsetting to many people, who cite the web's inherent openness as a key, if not the key detail that has allowed it to fundamentally change all of our lives in such a powerful way, and will allow it to continue to do so at the same breakneck pace in the future.

Google and Verizon's plan lays out specific rules to ensure that wireline internet services can not be used for any such tiered or paid access, and that all applications and services delivered over them (as long as they're legal) can be given no preference over any other traffic. That means established bandwidth hogs like YouTube and brand new bandwidth hogs built by Russian teenagers in their bedrooms like Chat Roulette will all get equal access to your eyeballs. This will also theoretically prevent broadband providers from intentionally limiting the speed of all BitTorrent traffic, something they've shown interest in doing in the past to avoid clogging their network with copyrighted materials; the protocol can just as easily be used legally.

But what has net neutrality activists worried--in my opinion, rightly so--is that in the new plan, almost none of these protections apply to wireless networks. Nor do they apply to a more ambiguously defined category of "additional, differentiated online services, in addition to the Internet access and video services (such as Verizon's FIOS TV)" using current wireline networks.

But it's the wireless exemption that strikes the most worry in the hearts of free-internet proponents. As anyone watching the future of telecommunications and the internet will tell you, wireless web access will almost certainly one day overtake traditional wired networks as most people's primary means of getting online. With the last five years' explosion of smartphone usage, we're already watching this happen. Heck, if your home is in a good coverage area, it's entirely feasible today to scrap your monthly cable or DSL broadband services for something like a wireless MiFi hotspot from Verizon or Sprint for all but the most intensive surfing.

Should Google and Verizon's suggested plan be implemented, whoever beams the signal to your MiFi hotspot can shape the traffic of the web however they choose. This means blocking high-bandwidth sites like YouTube, giving preference to one streaming service over another (like only allowing Netflix's Watch Instantly vs. any other movie-streaming service), or blocking certain protocols like BitTorrent altogether.

I don't like the sound of it, especially given the Democrat Party's love of "net neutrality." See, "Sen. Smalley and the Left Are Wrong on Net Neutrality."