The next weapon in the War on the Internet: the brownout

Today the FCC voted three to two along party lines to move forward with a proposal that will significantly reduce the power and effectiveness of the Internet in the United States of America. Their proposal will also significantly limit innovation and will throttle startup companies and their embryonic technologies.

This is not a joke. This is not hyperbole or a prediction. The damage is already happening based on the threat of these rules.

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The vote today will be followed by a four-month period to allow for public comment. In the past week or two, there have been campaigns on popular techie sites and news aggregators to get people to call or email the FCC and express their displeasure about the proposed rules and to request that the FCC do what should have been done more than a decade ago: classify ISPs as type II common carriers.

In this age of blatantly bought-and-paid-for politicians and appointed commissioners that were lobbyists for the very industries that they are supposed to regulate, I’m not sure how much public opinion really matters. There is so much money in the game now that the threat of public distaste for a position doesn’t hold much weight anymore. The prevailing thought seems to be that the will and voice of the people don’t matter, that it’s all about the corporation and keeping the money flowing.

However, there are some rather big dogs in this fight that have come out against these proposed rules. They are as large as Google and as small as a startup with a really good idea. If the voice and desires of the people don’t matter anymore, maybe we can convince the corporations to duke it out for us. Fixing the larger mess and returning to a time when multinational companies did not run the government is another matter entirely, but let’s assume for now that we have only this playing field within which to work.

So I propose that these companies begin demonstrating the realities of Slow Lane Internet to the population at large, to all users. NeoCities made some minor news recently by declaring that they were slowing down access to their site to the speed of a 28.8Kbps modem, but only to requests coming from FCC IP addresses. This demonstration needs to be more powerful than that.

If Google, Microsoft, and all the others began instituting a 3 to 8 second random delay per page load on their public sites and free services, complete with an overlay describing the reason, we might actually get somewhere. If every request for the Google search page from the U.S. didn’t result in immediate gratification, but a random delay and a message (“Your request is waiting to be processed. This is what to expect the Internet to be like if the Slow Lane Internet proposed by the FCC is fully approved. Please click here to register your comments.”), people would begin to see what’s at stake here.

Even one day of this inconvenience would awaken just about every Internet user to the realities of what the FCC is proposing. You could get more involved and enforce sporadic delays during normal app use, again with overlays describing the situation, stopping shy of crippling the user experience, but with enough hassle to get the point across.

Having to wait 3 or 8 seconds before the email you clicked can be read, or the next page of search results will display, would quickly get old, even if it only affects a user for the first few page loads and then stops. The reality is that this kind of user experience is exactly what’s in store for all U.S. Internet users should these rules truly take effect. Giving them a preview of what’s at stake may be the only way to actually stop this madness.

It’s easy to point out that such a protest could and would have deleterious effects for the companies that participate, but if enough take part, it will definitely make a difference. To defeat SOPA a few years ago, some sites went completely dark for 12 to 24 hours, displaying only a notice explaining why they were offline. This doesn’t go quite that far, but it offers a real-world Slow Lane Internet experience. As the situation changes and the public comment period shortens, maybe the delays grow longer. Maybe another blackout is warranted.

Can you imagine the fallout if Google, Microsoft, Yahoo, and Facebook all blacked out their free sites for U.S. use for 24 hours? It would be absolute chaos. Sure, they would lose money, but it would be far less than they would be forced to pay out to the ISPs monthly in the event that Slow Lane Internet becomes law.

It would also underline the fact that the Internet is a public utility, and an Open Internet is an absolute requirement. This is non-negotiable, and FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler needs to step down or be removed from office if he cannot see this requirement and enforce it.

This story, “The next weapon in the War on the Internet: the brownout,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Read more of Paul Venezia’s The Deep End blog at InfoWorld.com. For the latest business technology news, follow InfoWorld.com on Twitter.