Tim McElligott Blog: Cerf's Up in Net Neutrality Debate

Sometimes it takes the calm rationality of someone who has seen it all to step in and stop the bickering and to convince bitter rivals that they have more to gain – or less to lose – by working together toward a mutually acceptable solution. Google executive Vint Cerf, who has been to the mountain tops of both carriers and Internet companies, stepped into the middle of the Net neutrality debate and thought he had done just that.

The immature, self-interested and ideologically stunted political leaders of this country should take note of the unlikely alliance between Google and Verizon and see that bridges can be built. Chasms can be crossed. A solution can be the goal. Egos can be set aside. The Net neutrality debate has often looked just like our embarrassingly childish politics here in the U.S. and I guess that’s not surprising given how politically entwined it is. It is clear that some people don’t want solutions. Solutions remove their reasons to bitch and complain and rant.

Last Friday, Cerf irked some Net neutralilty purists with his comments to CBC News on the deal between Google and Verizon. He said it was a worthwhile experiment in which two rather polarized views of Net neutrality could find common ground.
 
"You can imagine how polarized the beginnings of those discussions might have been. I viewed the discussions with Verizon as an experiment or an exploration of how two rather polarized views of Net neutrality could ultimately end up reaching some sort of compromise that both parties would be equally unhappy with," Cerf said in the CBC News interview.

He called it a kind of homework assignment that Verizon and Google have attempted to complete just to show what happens when you try to come to some kind of common perspective. Google enflamed the Internet on Monday when it announced the proposal with Verizon. The companies worked together to establish a framework of rules that would prevent any unfair interfering with internet traffic. But the hystericals – those who shriek at the perceived giving of any ground and consider the telecom giants “evil” companies – felt Google had caved to its own self-interest.
 
People who call telecom carriers evil are no better than birthers and 9-11 conspiracists. They don’t want common ground. Calmer, more much intelligent minds, think like this: "What this document (Google/Verizon framework) should do is stimulate discussion about the terms as opposed to running around pointing fingers at people saying you're a traitor. I don't consider that to be very constructive."

That’s what Cerf says the agreement is.

And that’s the way things get done, eventually. It’s either find common ground or live with the equivalent of the endless battles over holy lands and revealed truths and ethnicity and Net neutrality and all the other arguments that give idiots who refuse to find common ground a reason to live.