So, we have The Wall Street Journal doing a story with a screaming headline about how Google is attempting to subvert network neutrality.

Note that the Journal‘s editorial page has long argued against network neutrality, and Google has long championed the idea that ISPs should act as common carriers.

Well, they note one of Google’s main allies, Larry Lessig, has shifted his position to match Google’s, which he shows (with footnotes) to be wrong.

Then Google explains that what it is doing is placing caching servers to better response time, not buying enhanced access to the last mile of wiring to the home.

It’s called “edge caching”, and Akamai has been doing since 1998.

While Google’s actions might be troubling to Akamai, they would likely see a huge new competitor in this market, this is nothing new.

Additionally, the article claims that Obama and his people are walking backwards from their commitment to network neutrality, a charge which they unequivocally deny.

We also have Wired.com calling bullsh$# too.

And finally, if you need any more convincing, isen.blog plucks this little jewel from the article:

One major cable operator in talks with Google says it has been reluctant so far to strike a deal because of concern it might violate Federal Communications Commission guidelines on network neutrality.

“If we did this, Washington would be on fire,” says one executive at the cable company who is familiar with the talks, referring to the likely reaction of regulators and lawmakers.

As David Isenberg so rightly notes, “Yeah, right, the cable guys want to preserve Network Neutrality, while Google wants to violate it. That **would** be a boy-bites-dog story, if it were true.” (emphasis original)

Additionally, he makes some good notes on the regulations on this:

Google’s FCC counsel, Rick Whitt explains that Google simply seeks to do edge caching, just like Akamai, Amazon, and several other companies. The idea of edge caching is to locate frequently used content closer to the people who access it. It makes accessing the cached content faster.

Importantly, since the cache must be connected to the Internet by a big, fat, stupid [emphasis mine] pipe, the company doing the caching can, in principle, buy pipes from any carrier. Indeed, if it is concerned with up-time, local congestion, or avoiding single points of failure, it will buy connections from several providers. [See my “Buy as Many Nines as you Need“]

Also, in principle, carriers can let any edge cache access its network. Indeed they have a duty to do so, under the Doctrine of Public Callings, the doctrine of common law that underlies common carriage and network neutrality that has been in effect for about 900 years now. [emphasis mine]

Net Neutrality only becomes an issue when a carrier picks and chooses which cache to supply pipes to.

The argument the WSJ seems to be making — and they don’t make it very well — is that when Google has an arrangement with carriers to provide a cache it advantages its access. However, it has always been the case that Google pay a carrier more for a fatter pipe to its content. Edge caching is another case of that, no matter in which building a caching platform might be located.

In other words, if Google does edge caching it buys access. It’s the same as when I, as a residential customer, pay $34.95 for one megabit DSL service or $49.95 for 3 megabit DSL.

The concern of Network Neutrality advocates is not with access but with delivery. The fear is that Internet connection providers would charge for expedited delivery of certain content to the end user, and in so doing would put themselves in the business of classifying which content gets enhanced delivery. Since they were charging for expedited delivery, they’d get more revenue for improving the enhanced delivery, so the only network upgrades would be for the enhanced service. Non-enhanced would fall further and further behind. Plus the power to decide what gets delivered might, indeed, be powerful, and power corrupts; just ask NARAL.

(NARAL was denied the ability to send text message alerts to people who had opted in to by Verizon wireless, because abortion rights are icky.)