Many of us on the left side of the net neutrality debate, myself included, have gone more or less postal over the Google/Verizon announcement and its implications for the future of the open Internet.

Leading up to Monday’s “legislative framework proposal” from the two companies, I read, and was sent, a number of different speculations, including the interesting Robert Cringely piece in the Sunday NYT on data center cooperation between the two players.  I still like the idea that Google is actually trying to better leverage YouTube in the event that the sleeping giants of media (Fox, Time-Warner, Viacom, NBC/U, Disney et.al.) decide to wake up and get intelligent about how to monetize their content in the new media world (instead of complaining about copyright and piracy).

The wackiest lob I’ve seen from the sidelines is the National Black Chamber of Commerce applauding the announcement ‘cuz they think this is somehow going to create jobs.  LOL.  OMG – how wrong they are!  It’s amazing to me how people really just don’t get the ‘Net.

Digging into the actual announcement, the Trojan horse is this idea that somehow “wireless” is a different medium and needs to be treated differently from “wireline.”  This is the rotten Easter egg in an otherwise smart-sounding proposal. Six out of their seven defined concerns – on the face of it –  are right-on:

1. Equal access to content.  They want to strengthen this in light of the Comcast decision.  Check!

2. Prohibition of discriminatory practices against users, or to stifle competition. No prioritization of Internet traffic.  This was the biggie that we were all concerned about.  So: no blocking or degrading of content, no favoring particular traffic over other traffic. Check!

3. Enforceable transparency rules, for both wireline and wireless services. Both for consumers and for provider clients.  Cool!  Check!

4. Creating enforceable consumer protection and nondiscrimination standards with penalties and a complaint-driven review process.  This also addresses some of the sponginess of the Comcast decision. Sounds good: Check!

5. Offer additional “differentiated online services.”  This is pretty fuzzy and airy-fairy to me, but basically they’re reassuring everyone that they want to remain encouraging and supportive of innovation.  Yada yada.  Check!

6. Broadband access for all Americans!  Sure – win-win for everyone.  This is the core FCC policy deployment debate.  No-brainer.  Check!

But now we come to the final position, and this is the smelly one (actually, it’s buried in the number 6 position, where it’s hard to pick it out if you’re skimming the paper)…

Read the proposal.  What they’re saying is:  “You read and like the 6 other proposals?  Well, forget about them because they don’t apply to wireless (except for the transparency ideas).”

Wrong.  Wireless is just another version of “cable” or “DSL” or dial-up.  It’s a way to get to the Internet.  While the market in wireless access may be different commercially from the market for wired access, you have to separate out the marketing from the medium.  This is a debate over access to content.  How can you differentiate the Internet content that you interact with over your iPhone vs. the Internet content that you interact with over your laptop?  It’s the same Internet!

This is like saying that the burger you get at the drive-through can be different from the burger you get at the counter.

I continue to have a very bad feeling about all this…