Caroline Craig

[Commentary] The Federal Communications Commission Chairman Tom Wheeler apparently sees no contradiction between permitting pay-for-priority agreements while purportedly defending an open Internet, but the country's venture capitalists -- not to mention more than 100 online companies including Google, Amazon, and Facebook -- beg to differ.

So does one of Chairman Wheeler's own commissioners, who called for a delay of the scheduled May 15 vote. Commissioner Jessica Rosenworcel said she has "real concerns" about Chairman Wheeler's proposal, which "has unleashed a torrent of public response" and needs time for further input. The FCC's expected network neutrality ruling is already scaring venture capital firms away from media-heavy startups. They fear that if the FCC allows Internet service providers (ISPs) to charge extra fees to content providers, it will increase operational costs and make it more difficult for startups to operate on small budgets.

Big Telecommunications has lobbied hard -- and successfully so far -- not to be treated as common carriers. So Mozilla came out with its own version of net neutrality rules that proposes the FCC treat only some portions of broadband networks as common-carrier services. In a blog post, Mozilla Senior Policy Engineer Chris Riley suggests the FCC create separate rules for how ISPs manage traffic for end users and websites and for Web-based service providers, such as Dropbox.

Mozilla's proposal, which Riley says is "grounded in a modern understanding of technology and markets," would keep broadband providers' relationship with customers as lightly regulated as it is today and might be more politically feasible since it doesn't require any changing of the current law and precedents that are out there.

[Commentary] Much of the reaction against the US Commerce Department's decision to let its contract with Internet governance organization ICANN (Internet Corporate for Assigned Names and Numbers) lapse in September 2015 has been decidedly bellicose and over the top.

Fox News accused President Barack Obama of giving away the Internet, the Wall Street Journal's headline announced "America's Internet Surrender," and former House speaker Newt Gingrich tweeted that "Every American should worry about Obama giving up control of the Internet to an undefined group. This is very, very dangerous."

While the WSJ might rail against "the surprise announcement," the US government's role in coordinating the Internet's domain name system through the NTIA, an agency of the Commerce Department, was always temporary. Indeed, this transition was long overdue in the eyes of many, who say US involvement created political friction and hindered ICANN's development.

As ICANN's board chair Stephen Crocker said, "The US has long envisioned the day when stewardship over [domain names] would be transitioned to the global community. In other words, we have all long known the destination. Now it is up to our global stakeholder community to determine the best route to get us there."

Let's quiet the hysteria, drop the hyperbole, and figure out how to make this thing work. As Politico said, "This announcement definitely doesn't reflect a global takeover. UN black helicopters aren't coming for your servers.... [This is a] smart, strategic move by Commerce to formalize, on its own terms, a process of increased globalization that has been going on for some time."