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A friend recently sent me an email Q&A between the New Yorker and Julius Genachowski, chairmen of the Federal Communications Commission. The topic of course is Network Neutrality with the FCC having come out in support of it last week.

Supporting, of course, is different than making policy but it does give us clues as to which direction the FCC may go once its scheduled hearings on the issue begin in late October.

[For a backgrounder on the issue, here's a debate between and amongst Tim Wu, law professor at Columbia University, Tim Karr, Campaign Director for SaveTheInternet.com and Kieth Clemens, General Counsel for Verizon.]

Wrote Genachowski to the New Yorker:

Network Neutrality protects the ability of users to access the lawful content, applications, and services of their choice. In other words, it lets users determine who wins and loses in the marketplace, and that’s the way it should be.

What’s most important in this email exchange is that Genachowski explicitly states that the FCC is looking to maintain the status quo. It wants to maintain the historical roots of the Internet as a free and open network against the economic and commercial interests pushing for otherwise today.

We could flip this around a bit to also say that Network Neutrality also makes sure that entrepreneurs and innovators do not have to pay to play in the Web space in order for their content or applications to get a fair shake in front of the users who then — in Genachowski’s words — determine the winners and losers in the marketplace.

If you want to understand what that practically means, think of today’s Internet darlings, or $1 billion darling: Twitter.

Put simply, would a Twitter be as successful today if, during its infancy, it had to pay to play to access certain markets. Where would it, or Zappos or any other successful native online brand be today if the Internet was reconfigured so that not only did they need to get the technology, brand, and marketing right, not only did they have to solve customer need and concern, but they then had to approach Internet carriers to get permission for their products and services to be carried across their lines?

What would the story of Skype be if telecoms had been able to cut deals with Internet carriers that relegated and slowed Skype data transmissions?

If you break it down, Network Neutrality’s opponents are asking for a tiered network where their products and services — ie, online applications and media — have greater priority than others on the market and in the network.

By doing so they’re trying to maintain — or create — scarcity (ie, broadband access and distribution) and determine the criteria for allowing access to that scarcity (eg, payment, application type, content type, etc.). With this control in place, the market is perpetually and always tilted in favor of legacy companies and big media, and against feisty startups and bootstrapped innovators.

I grit my teeth outlining how and why some believe this is a good and necessary idea. There are arguments given by smart people though but since I dislike grinding my teeth, I leave it to Sarah Sorenson to do the bidding.

She argues that government intervention in how the network evolves will — by definition — slow progress down.

Yesterday, the FCC proposed rules that would create more government control over the Internet and force Internet providers (including wireless) to treat all Web traffic equally. This would mean they couldn’t block or slow traffic, presumably to prevent providers from treating competitors content differently and to make sure consumers have the freedom to use their computing devices to access any and every service they want. Again, in principle, that’s a good thing. However, it may have unintended consequences.

The reality is it could end up affecting the experience that we all have on the Internet. As you have probably heard, traffic on the Internet is doubling every two years… and it takes investment to make sure that enough broadband is available to support all of that traffic. In many cases, it necessitates adding capacity and upgrading the underlying network, in other scenarios, it is about extending the reach of the existing network to a greater percentage of the population. To date that investment has been primarily taken on by the private sector, namely the Internet providers themselves…

…The problem is that, unless the service providers can identify additional revenue to justify the build out, there will be no incentive for them to do so.

Sorenson has a reasonable, rational argument here but overlooks one very important fact in her centrist support for unencumbered market control of the network: these companies were already given considerable tax incentives and write-offs to build the network. And they were given these incentives and write-offs specifically to support open access on the Network.

Earlier this week I interviewed Bob Bowman, CEO of Major League Baseball’s mlb.com. As the curator of a multi-billion dollar brand — the American Pastime no less — Network Neutrality is of immense interest to him. And he’s against it. Major League Baseball is against it. And they’re against it not because they are tyrants and demons of the worst order, but because they are capitalist conservators of the first order. They want to maintain and advance MLB’s place in Americana and the world.

To do so they invest heavily in Internet and mobile technologies. They innovate across all platforms in an attempt to provide a global baseball fan base the best possible experience no matter the chosen medium. This is what they say. This is what they believe. And this is what they’ll fight for.

And Network Neutrality — in their view — gets in the way precisely because after all their investment, and all the investment of their Internet carrier partners, they cannot guarantee privileged transmission. And privileged transmission is what they want. For the fans. And wanting what you think is right for the fans is as American as apple pie.

At root is a fundamental belief of whether government can be an agent of good, or if it always gets in the way. Both Sorenson and Bowman suggest government intervention hinders growth and innovation. But if we look again at what the FCC’s Genachowski actually says, the government is not intervening, it’s not changing the rules, it’s maintaining the status quo of an open and neutral Internet.

To suggest otherwise is similar to saying that efforts to keep our national parks open and public amounts to invasive governmental land management.

From his actual speech announcing the FCC’s position (emphasis mine):

I am convinced that there are few goals more essential in the communications landscape than preserving and maintaining an open and robust Internet. I also know that achieving this goal will take an approach that is smart about technology, smart about markets, smart about law and policy, and smart about the lessons of history.

And from his email exchange with the New Yorker:

We seek to preserve the current ability of entrepreneurs to innovate on the Internet without having to ask permission first. This notion has been a hallmark of the Internet since its inception…

…This is largely about preserving the status quo.

As the Internet continues to disrupt and transform how information, economies and activities are conducted and performed, it will need excellent global stewardship. The hope here is that the public good wins out over the profit motive of an elite few.

These need not be mutually exclusive but the opportunities afforded by an open Internet has moved the technology from one that is merely beneficial, to one where access to it — and the ability to create and develop on it without restriction — is increasingly becoming a human right.

One which no company, industry or government should be empowered to control or restrict access to.

This article originally appeared at ScribeMedia.org.