Google has filed a submission, on its own and one jointly with Verizon, to the FCC for its proposed rulemaking docket. Google says its goal is “to keep the Internet awesome for everybody.”
“There’s a lot of awesome stuff on the Internet: Cats talking LOLspeak. Iranian dissidents tweeting. Live traffic updates. Science experiments,” says Rick Whitt, Washington Telecom and Media Counsel on Google’s Public Policy Blog. “All of these things, and so much more, are possible because of the openness of the Internet. Any entrepreneur with an idea has always been able to create a website and share their ideas globally – without paying extra tolls to have their content seen by other users. An open Internet made Google possible eleven years ago, and it’s going to make the next Google possible.”
Here’s an outline as to what Google supports in its FCC filing:
- Adding a nondiscrimination principle that bans prioritizing Internet traffic based on the ownership (the who), the source (the what) of the content or application;
- Adding a transparency principle that ensures all users have clear information about broadband providers’ offerings;
- Providing a carefully-defined “reasonable network management” exception so that broadband providers are empowered to address genuine congestion issues and protect against hazards like malware and spamming;
- Applying general openness protections to both wireline and wireless broadband infrastructure; and
- Creating better enforcement mechanisms at the FCC, and introducing the concept of technical advisory groups (TAGs) to potentially provide expert advice and resolve disputes.
The FCC’s OpenInternet.gov has quite a bit of posts about liveblogging the recent “Innovation, Investment, and the Open Internet” workshop up, which featured discussion from a variety of people about the Open Internet.