Opinion: Google and Verizon's Dark Internet Vision

(Aug. 12) -- Legendary columnist Pete Hamill once said that newspapers should think of themselves as a "zocalo" -- the word for a public square in Mexico -- because of the critical role that newspapers play in keeping a community informed.

Maybe that was a good way to describe newspapers. But it's an even better way to think about the Internet -- the virtual plaza where we gather and where everyone's voices can be heard on the political or social issues of the day.

If you visit a zocalo, you'll find a place where the town's key institutions are located: City Hall, the Catholic Church, the central bank, restaurants and a band shell for live bands and political speeches. The zocalo is a place where both the rich and the poor gather daily to participate in the town's political and social life.

But our digital zocalo is at risk of being taken over and walled off by a few big corporations. On Monday, Google and Verizon announced they had reached an agreement on a policy framework for the Internet's future.

On the surface it has plenty of platitudes about protecting the "public Internet" -- but dig a little deeper and you'll find a harrowing vision that threatens the foundations of the online public square.

Here is what Verizon and Google are really proposing:

• Net neutrality rules -- the fundamental protections that keep the Internet open and free from discrimination -- would not apply to wireless networks, paving the way for corporate censorship, the blocking of websites and a pay-for-priority treatment of Web traffic on your phone or mobile device.
• Net neutrality protections on wired networks would be so riddled with loopholes that companies could get away with things that were prohibited in the past -- like Comcast's infamous blocking of BitTorrent file-sharing applications.
• The deal would allow the phone and cable companies to split the open Internet into two "pipes." The private, "managed services" would not be subject to network neutrality rules either, letting the few big companies that could afford it speed up their content. But such a move would freeze the "public" Internet where it is, resulting in slower Web traffic for the rest of us.
• Perhaps the most outrageous proposal Google and Verizon are pushing is to take away the Federal Communication Commission's authority to actually adopt network neutrality rules. In addition, the companies are calling for the FCC to "give deference" to an industry-created committee to resolve any disputes or violations of their loophole-laden rules.

The shorter version: Google and Verizon not only want to write the rules; they want to police themselves too.

The reason why these companies are able to attempt this move is because the FCC currently doesn't have the authority, as a result of a federal court ruling last April, to prevent companies from blocking or discriminating online. The good news is that the FCC still has the power to restore its authority and protect Internet users.

FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski, however, is reluctant to move forward and appears to be caving to corporate pressure, despite his earlier outspoken support for net neutrality.

His office recently convened a series of closed-door meetings with Google, Verizon, AT&T and the cable industry in an effort to come up with a deal on net neutrality. Those meeting were called off when Google and Verizon announced their pact, but the trade press reports that the chairman is still making the rounds trying to strike a compromise with the corporate giants.

We know bad things happen to the public when industries are allowed write their own rules -- look no further than the Wall Street meltdown or the disaster in the Gulf of Mexico.

But the FCC's inaction is all the more galling because President Barack Obama campaigned on a promise that he would take a "back seat to no one" in his support of net neutrality. Yet his FCC chairman, even with a majority of the votes for net neutrality already in his pocket, hasn't taken the lead.

That leaves it up to the rest of us to make enough noise to pressure the White House and the FCC to do the right thing.

And that means we are going to have to take to the zocalos -- online and in the actual streets -- and make our voices heard.

Joe Torres is senior adviser for government and external affairs at Free Press, a national, nonpartisan, nonprofit organization working to reform the media.