Debunking the Internet apocalypse

As I read the criticism of Google and Verizon's supposed evil plan to demolish the Internet, and as I hear about "protests" of several dozen people at Google's headquarters, I scratch my head and wonder: am I missing something?

The Google-Verizon Net neutrality proposal I read last week doesn't sound nearly as apocalyptic as Free Press, a media advocacy group, and some of the most vocal critics out there have made it sound.

In fact, most of proposal sounded a lot like a plan FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski offered nearly a year ago, which many Net neutrality proponents seemed to support.

In short, Google and Verizon say they agree to a set of rules for the Internet that would prohibit broadband providers from blocking or degrading lawful content on the Internet. Broadband providers would also not be allowed to take action to impede competition.

This is pretty much what Genachowski has proposed.
OK, terrific. There is agreement.

But wait, Net neutrality zealots are still unhappy.

First, they claim that a provision in the Google-Verizon proposal that allows for broadband companies to offer managed services "would transform the free and open Internet into a closed platform like cable television," according to Joel Kelsey, political adviser for Free Press.

Others argue this aspect of the proposal would leave a ghettoized version of the public Internet.
"It is conceivable under the agreement that a network provider could devote 90 percent of its broadband capacity to these priority services and 10 percent to the best efforts Internet," said Gigi Sohn, president of Public Knowledge, a Washington, D.C.-based public interest group. "If managed services are allowed to cannibalize the best efforts Internet, whatever protections are agreed to for the latter become, for all intents and purposes, meaningless."