A tip of the hat to AP’s Anick Jesdanun for this article on maintaining the Net’s traditional openness:

Say it on the Internet, and you’ll find that free speech and other constitutional rights are anything but guaranteed.

Companies in charge of seemingly public spaces online wipe out content that’s controversial but otherwise legal.

Jesdanun’s article shows how Net neutrality agitators Google and eBay themselves dabble with online gatekeeping when it suits their purposes. But in fairness, it also explores the difficulty of how, “balancing [competing public] interests raises very tough issues,” as Google explains it.

For our part, we hope coverage like this reminds our friends in Mountain View and San Jose that their own actions are starting to undercut the “black-and-white” rhetoric they use in describing Net neutrality.

That said, one point unfortunately missing from the article is mention of the consumer protection guarantees already set forth by the FCC – especially consumers’ ability to access the lawful Internet content of their choice. This is a principle all Internet players, whether content companies or broadband carriers, should try to see upheld.

So long as that happens – and there’s no evidence that the overall momentum is slowing – Net users will have the increasing benefits of broadband without the costly drawbacks of Net neutrality.

Initially, network neutrality was the demand that network carriers ignore the Internet’s fundamental inequality ….

[Google’s nationwide chain of computer complexes] exploit a flaw in Internet architecture that enables them to seize more than their fair share of network bandwidth, effectively giving their owner a fast lane…. This system, which Google calls broadband neutrality, actually preserves a more fundamental inequality.

In today’s San Francisco Chronicle, Richard Bennett unmasks the real issue spurring Google’s campaign for Net neutrality. (Hint: It’s not the well-being of Net users.)

“Consumer advocates and Web heavyweights like Google Inc. and Amazon Inc. [say that] it’s a bedrock principle of the Internet that all traffic be treated equally.” — Associated Press, October 19, 2007

Oh really?

The Net neutrality implication of yesterday’s announcement is clear: Technology increasingly has the potential to take effective, real-time action against websites that peddle child porn. So far, so good and those on both sides of the Net neutrality issue almost certainly support this.

But as the article notes:

“While officials from the attorney general’s office said they hoped to make it extremely difficult to find or disseminate the [child porn] online, they acknowledged that they could not eliminate access entirely.”

That’s why emerging network technologies, in addition to improving the Web’s overall functionality, are so critical to this effort. Both the technology and the ability to make real-time decisions that keep up with the child porn dealers’ own rapid changes are vital to this effort.

But Net neutrality threatens this, especially the deployment of better networking technologies.

It would be beyond tragic if efforts to combat this serious problem were hampered because of Net neutrality regulations designed to combat a hypothetical problem.

• “We believe that the new [Clearwire] network will provide wireless consumers with real choices for the software applications, content and handsets that they desire. Such freedom will mirror the openness principles underlying the Internet….” - Google public policy blog on its $500 million Clearwire WiMax investment, May 7, 2008
• “Exclusive web and local search provider” - Google’s investor relations statement [pdf] on what it’s getting for its $500 million (Slide #9)

There’s a pretty big temptation to crow about Google’s hypocrisy. But as Don Corleone said in The Godfather, “That would be wrong.”

Is Google backtracking on its support for net neutrality? Sure. But that was inevitable and few took the company’s Messianic pronouncements in favor of Net neutrality seriously anyway.

The real issue is that the Sprint-Google-Intel Clearwire announcement shows once again that broadband deployment is frighteningly expensive, whether wired or wireless. Even with all the benefits of modern technology, there is simply no easy way to bring high-speed service nationwide – especially to rural and underserved Americans.

Will WiMax be a nationwide silver bullet? Probably not. Will it be a plausible option for some consumers? More likely.

But that’s why the federal government is right to retain the traditional evenhanded approach to the Internet that it’s had since the 1990s and not try to regulate new technologies, especially if the financing for these systems holds the promise of lower-cost options for consumers.

As the Chinese adage goes, Let a hundred flowers bloom. Consumers will then choose the winners and this whole neutrality issue will crumble from its own irrelevance.

At a Congressional hearing on Net Neutrality back in 2006, proponents couldn’t get their answers straight when asked to define the concept. Two years later, evidently not much has changed:

Jonathan Rintels writes this week at SaveTheInternet that Net Neutrality is “a requirement that broadband Internet consumers be permitted to access the lawful content of their choice.” We agree. But if that’s the definition, then this Net Neutrality fight is over since consumers already have that right.

Google blogged a different approach recently, saying that prioritizing some types of traffic over others is completely consistent with Net Neutrality – a comment at odds with the “all data is equal” crowd. Though it’s correct about that, Google’s problem is its position that Net users, not the company, should pick up the tab for the new pipes that need to be built to handle its video content.

Then there’s Net Neutrality advocate Susan Crawford, who testified on the Hill last week. She’s argued that content-based regulation couldn’t be done without “a heavy handed regulator.” (She’s right.) So that’s why Net Neutrality requires government policies “separating transport from other activities, and separating access from backbone and backhaul transport….”

Net Neutrality advocates can help clear up the confusion by acknowledging at least this: Writing the regulations that would govern how data traffic travels across the Internet will give an army of Washington lawyers and lobbyists a lifetime guarantee of full employment.

Chalk one up for common sense.

At last week’s Internet Video Policy Symposium in DC, Cowen & Co.’s Arnie Berman offered a sharp response to the claim that Net Neutrality would put a “toll booth” on the Internet. According to press reports, Berman noted that video data on the web is like a bus that’s three lanes wide. So to handle all this traffic – and remember that last December, 140+ million U.S. Internet users watched more than 10 billion online videos – you’d need highways that are 30 lanes wide.

Earth to Google: Care to explain how Net Neutrality helps us fund all that?

NetworkWorld’s Johna Till Johnson is definitely not being evil with this cool blog on Google:

“Google wants net neutrality? Great! Virtue begins at home. Let the company first propose federal regulation of all search engines to ensure ‘neutral’ rankings of search results, and to guarantee that information isn’t getting concealed (or revealed) for political purposes. Let’s see Google regulate itself — then we’ll consider regulating its competition.”

The interesting thing about Johnson’s Google critique is that when it comes to data management on the network, she gets it. Only a few weeks ago, she posted a column on the problem of applying yesterday’s “dumb-pipe” approach to todays’ Internet, writing:

“The lesson of the Internet (and of free-market democracy, at least so far) is that more freedom is generally preferable, even at the cost of limited performance guarantees. But ‘generally preferable’ doesn’t mean ‘true at all costs’….

In network terms, the network should be dumb enough to permit freedom, but smart enough to stay functional under stress. In other words, add just enough intelligence to keep the ‘net functional, but not so much that it breaks.”

That’s a pretty good summary of what the net neutrality fight is all about. The “bandwidth glut” from earlier this decade has disappeared faster than the latest Lindsay Lohan movie. With network operators reporting 60 percent annual data growth, there isn’t any choice but to add a limited amount of network intelligence to keep the web functioning properly.

Sure Google objects, but as Johnson notes about Google’s commitment to neutrality:

“Try Googling Google, and you may notice something surprising: very few negative comments on the company pop up. Odd, no?”