The fuss over so-called net neutrality is quite odd and has turned into the kind of mass hysteria I've not witnessed in the tech world, ever.

It stems from a belief that without some sort of law or government edict, the evil ISPs—mainly Comcast—will go out of their way to screw customers by practicing all sorts of devilment. That includes network favoritism for its own products (such as NBC programming) and traffic priority for anyone else who will cough up enough extra cash to get preferred treatment on its backbone network.

The analogies about this possibility stem from the Al Gore days of the so-called "Information Superhighway." We'll have speed bumps and fast lanes and toll roads and who know what else. And why would Comcast do this in the first place? Well, it's an evil corporation. Because it can.

So ... why hasn't it done this already? Nobody can really answer that, except to say some unenforceable FCC principles, suggested years ago, are being used to stem any corrupt practices.

What happened exactly to trigger the recent madness was Netflix paying to get a better peering arrangement with Comcast to speed its movies along to the demanding consumer. It seems that Netflix would rather use the private high-speed backbones owned by Comcast and Verizon rather than use the public Internet that flows through the exchange points such as Mae-East or Mae-West.

Netflix and apparently the public think that this special routing, which chews up bandwidth like crazy, especially with a company like Netflix, should be freely given just because it is there.

The basic idea is that this bit hog, Netflix, should rake in the dough and Comcast (and others) have to suck it up and turn over their private networks on demand. Why? Because this is what the "open" Internet is all about. Equal access for all comers. All packets are equal. And because we think that the ISPs are going to for sure violate these principles if given a chance, the government has to get involved and regulate the Internet to protect the public.

After years of fear that the government will take control of the Internet, now everyone is begging them to do it. The two liberal commissioners on the FCC pretty much said that problems are coming and rules need to be put in place. This pre-crime thinking will result in regulation that will encroach on everything.

One of the three principles listed in the hearing proposals adopted by the FCC are the words "legal content." This jumped out at me when I saw it. Who is going to decide what is legal and what is not? These things are always resolved by administrative courts. Someone just decides. I can guarantee the public would have never heard of Edward Snowden if FCC rules were in place. The stolen files would be deemed illegal. Senators would ask why this material is even on the Internet, protected by net neutrality rules or not. The files would be censored for national security reasons. Same with Wikileaks; it would be deemed illegal and not allowed.

That's how this all ends.You'll get your Netflix and get your binge watching. But you won't get anything that criticizes the government. This is not being paranoid, it is being logical after witnessing the reaction to the Snowden revelations. There were no apologies to the American public over what is essentially warrantless wire-tapping and monitoring of the citizens. None. In fact officials proudly carried on. The only problem, as far as they were concerned, was Snowden and leaks themselves. How can that be prevented in the future?

Regulate the net, that's how.

This also explains why Yahoo, Google, and Microsoft, among others, are all in on this idea. They lost business because of the Snowden leaks. This is no good. What can be done to prevent it? Government regulation, licensing, censoring, and protecting the public.

The idea that all packets are equal will go by the wayside once the FCC takes over. It's a red herring anyway. All packets have never been equal, nor should they be. Voice and video packets have to be prioritized over text packets for obvious quality-of-service reasons. Does anyone believe that a remote-control surgical operation controlled over the net when someone's life is at stake should have the same priority as a cat video? Who thinks that way?

Would it be bad if the medical company employing this technology paid extra for near-real-time connectivity? Or should we all cry foul?

The net neutrality, open Internet, all-packets-equal debate can rage all it wants. I personally do not care how it is resolved. I do not see the ISPs as evil creeps. Why do business with them if they are? The government, on the other hand, has a much bigger hand in my pocket than Comcast. Based on the Snowden revelations, it is not to be trusted. They have done nothing to earn trust with never-ending tactics to scare the public with terrorism scenarios as an excuse to abuse power. Now we want to give the FCC more jurisdiction than it already has. One nipple appears on a Super Bowl halftime show and they go ballistic. You do not want these people anywhere near the Internet.

The public can find a lot of ways to punish a corporation that abuses its privileges. This situation should not be escalated to the point that the FCC has anything to do with it.

You'll see.

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