Definitely one of the most debated issues during the past weeks has been Net Neutrality. First the speculation about a possible Google and Verizon deal to come up with a solution to guarantee quicker delivery for contentproviders who can pay -- then the actual proposal for a policy for the future Internet.
Its an interesting read and indeed swears by openness. It swears by the original spirit of the Internet as the rhetoric there goes, and how FCC should remain in its central role --- for wireline broadband that is. The trick is in point six:
"Sixth, we both recognize that wireless broadband is different from the traditional wireline world, in part because the mobile marketplace is more competitive and changing rapidly. In recognition of the still-nascent nature of the wireless broadband marketplace, under this proposal we would not now apply most of the wireline principles to wireless, except for the transparency requirement. In addition, the Government Accountability Office would be required to report to Congress annually on developments in the wireless broadband marketplace, and whether or not current policies are working to protect consumers."
In short, it suggests to leave out the wireless -- perhaps the most important area of future internet -- of the deal and suggest new rules for that area.
There is a huge amount of good debate and analysis of this and its implications, and this case is indeed a great example of politics in technology -- and politics inherent in seemingly technological solutions. Yet, the media theorist Richard Grusin among others has noted an important reservation: the Internet was not even before this suggestion that neutral. The original myth about the leveled, free and open forum that the Internet is supposed to be -- part and parcel of the foundational myth of the network, and outlined e.g. in Patrice Flichy's The Internet Imaginaire -- does not really withstand reality checks when looking at net infrastructures, ownerships, user patterns, and things such as the power law that characterizes the dynamics of the Internet much more accurately than an assumption of evenly distributed net.
What Grusin is after is a more thorought debate not only on technological solutions but on social and political contexts intertwining with such solutions. In a way, I would see that this has been happening already, but to demand its explication clearly is a good call. Indeed, as Grusin writes: "The issue is not a neutral net as opposed to a biased or unequal net, but the current net inequality as opposed to some other form of net inequality, a form which might very well, as has been argued, be even less equal, less neutral, than the form we have now."
Read the Verizon-Google legislative framework proposal here.