Net neutrality group Free Press and the left-leaning MoveOn.org are taking the fight over openness rules for the internet out of cyberspace and onto the streets Friday.

Google's street, that is.

*'We are trying to show that the public is against Google and Verizon's plan to turn over the internet to corporations'*The groups are calling on their members in the Bay Area to head down to Google's Mountain View headquarters Friday at noon to vent their grievances over Google's compromise with Verizon on the issue of openness rules for the wired and wireless broadband.

The two powerhouse companies, former arch-nemeses on openness issues and now close business partners in mobile devices, proposed compromise rules on Monday. The proposal, which the companies hoped would spur new legislation, suggested imposing some basic fairness rules on wired broadband, allowing ISPs to build their own net services available only to their customers and exempting wireless providers from rules that let customers use the apps, services and devices of choosing.

Monday's joint proposal has met with a backlash from net neutrality supporters, who were dismayed to see their biggest and most vocal corporate supporter, Google, making a back room deal with one of the nation's largest broadband and wireless companies. (I even called Google a "Carrier-Humping, Net Neutrality Surrender Monkey.")

Google defended its pact with Verizon on Thursday, saying it was a "myth" that it sold out on network neutrality.

Free Press is e-mailing its estimated 15,000 Bay Area supporters Thursday, and MoveOn will do the same to their local membership, which is likely to be many times the size of Free Press'.

The point, according to Free Press spokeswoman Liz Rose, is to make it clear to D.C. lawmakers that this is an issue people care about and to make it clear to those who don't know about the issue "what they are about to lose."

"We are trying to show that the public is against Google and Verizon's plan to turn over the internet to corporations," Rose said. "We can't leave any stone unturned. Can we get people out from behind their computers?"

Free Press has filed comments with the FCC, and gotten its members to write lawmakers and regulators, but the situation in D.C. still looks like the telecoms will be able to prevent the FCC from imposing openness rules on the net's transport layer. Seventy-four House Democrats joined with nearly every House Republican telling the FCC not to try to exercise authority over ISPs.

The FCC wants to re-classify ISPs into a category that gives it a legal way to keep ISPs from blocking users from using the devices, applications and online services of their choice. While such rules were part of President Obama's election platform, House Democrats have threatened to pull the FCC's funding if such rules on implemented on the powerful telecoms.

ISPs had long assumed the FCC had such power, but a federal court ruled the FCC no longer had that power, thanks to a deregulatory sleight-of-hand by the Bush Administration's FCC.

So now, Free Press and MoveOn are trying to get their supporters to close their laptops and make their voices heard in meatspace.

The groups have rented several buses that will leave from San Francisco's Opera House at 11 a.m. Friday.

Photo: Google HQ in Mountain View, CA. Credit: Håkan Dahlström

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