Well the announcement didn’t end up being what we were expecting, there was no deathblow to net neutrality per-se. However, there is one major loophole that stands out; wireless networks.

this link here has all the official details.

Craig Aaron for The Huffington Post has these five points to make:

1. Under their proposal, there would be no Net Neutrality on wireless networks — meaning anything goes, from blocking websites and applications to pay-for-priority treatment.

2. Their proposed standard for “non-discrimination” on wired networks is so weak that actions like Comcast’s widely denounced blocking of BitTorrent would be allowed.

3. The deal would let ISPs like Verizon — instead of Internet users like you — decide which applications deserve the best quality of service. That’s not the way the Internet has ever worked, and it threatens to close the door on tomorrow’s innovative applications. (If RealPlayer had been favored a few years ago, would we ever have gotten YouTube?)

4. The deal would allow ISPs to effectively split the Internet into “two pipes” — one of which would be reserved for “managed services,” a pay-for-play platform for content and applications. This is the proverbial toll road on the information superhighway, a fast lane reserved for the select few, while the rest of us are stuck on the cyber-equivalent of a winding dirt road.

5. The pact proposes to turn the Federal Communications Commission into a toothless watchdog, left fruitlessly chasing consumer complaints but unable to make rules of its own. Instead, it would leave it up to unaccountable (and almost surely industry-controlled) third parties to decide what the rules should be.

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So while it isn’t what we thought it would be perhaps they thought they could get by with just a little on the side and hope that in contrast to what we were thinking we would be relieved. We imagined the end of the internet as we know it and they just roll out something much smaller so we feel better about the whole thing. I don’t think that there has to be any difference between wireless networks and the rest of the internet and it should all be equally open. I’m not alone in this opinion as scores of folks have been rushing to sign net neutrality petitions.

Such as these:

http://savetheinternet.com/fcc-comments

http://civic.moveon.org/save_the_internet/

http://www.alfranken.com/index.php/splash/netneutrality

The full report is set to be released on Friday during the annual Ecological Society of America conference and hopefully released to the public as well. I’ll update this if I get my hands on the full report.

http://www.smartplanet.com/technology/blog/science-scope/genetically-modified-canola-found-in-the-wild/3407/

http://green.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/08/06/an-invader-biotech-canola/?src=mv