If Google’s stock price were linked to its reputation among fellow advocates for an open Internet, the search giant would find its market value tanking. On the day after the joint announcement by Google and Verizon Wireless of a proposed policy framework for the wired and wireless Internet, consumer groups, as well as a variety of industry bloggers and some Internet companies, are highly critical of the companies’ vision.
Andrew Jay Schwartzman, policy director at the Media Access Project in Washington, D.C., told news media that the plan “creates an Internet for the haves and an Internet for the have-nots.” Among the “have-nots,” he indicated, could be the next generation of “new startups.”
‘Extraordinary Loopholes’
Former MySpace President Jason Hirschhorn told The New York Times that the plan could lead to an Internet that more closely resembles the tiered structured of cable than the open Internet of today. “Imagine,” he said, “a world where ABC, Comedy Central, MTV, any of these brands, were on some other network, and then there was this open Internet.”
Public-interest group Public Knowledge expressed its “alarm at the extraordinary loopholes” in the proposal. The organization noted that, in addition to outlining how Net neutrality might work in wireless and wired broadband, the proposal also recommends that “the FCC have no rule-making authority with respect to consumer protection and nondiscrimination,” and “directs the FCC to defer to rules set by industry-led advisory groups.”
The proposal, Public Knowledge said, is “nothing more than a private agreement between two corporate behemoths.”
The plan outlines a variety of proposed policies, including prohibiting wireline providers from preventing the sending or receiving of any lawful content or applications. There would also be transparency rules, where the provider’s offering and conditions would be described in plain language.
‘A Parallel Internet’
But the proposal also would allow providers to offer…