Yesterday, the FCC made a request for further comments in the open Internet proceeding – and this is a great step toward any hope of finding a middle ground over internet regulations currently on the table. The FCC’s announcement is an acceptable step, as it extends the time for proper reflection on the proposal and reduces the risk of sending a hasty message that may destabilize broadband-related markets across the country.

This announcement shows the FCC’s willingness to obtain more information from the interested parties, as well as the public – which will open the door to allow for the process to continue to ensure that a sound and reasonable foundation and framework is in place moving forward- one that protects consumers, small businesses, entrepreneurs, innovators and many others across America.

The overall message of this announcement reads very simple: content providers and consumers of information from the Internet can expect the FCC to pursue the goal of continuing an open Internet with an informed and balanced viewpoint that is cautious, and rightfully so.

Value. Value. Value. It is ironic that in the early arguments for net neutrality, the battle cry was, “Say no to partnerships between content providers and the owners of the pipes.”

Net neutrality proponents were not interested in the strategic partnerships that would allow, for example, poorly capitalized minority-owned content providers to have their traffic prioritized. Under such a scenario, a content provider exhibiting content that targets a sought after market could find themselves avoiding the very scenario Ms. Harris describes.

Ms. Harris comes at this with the not-for-profit, give me attitude that is anathema to our free market system. I see an opportunity for entrepreneurs to build the relationships necessary for carving out a space in the Internet’s new frontier.

In some ways, the Federal Communications Commission can claim some victory in the net neutrality war. Their threat to impose net neutrality rules on the broadband access industry via reclassification has moved the parties to an agreement.

It puts FCC chairman Julius Genachowski in a pickle, however. Does he back off of his reclassification efforts and accept this compromise? Or does he ask for more more concessions, including net neutrality on wire line and wireless networks and open network treatment for all traffic whether running over the public Internet or private networks?

The chairman, who may claim to run an independent agency, does not have the luxury of separating the potential impact of the mid-term elections from a decision on reclassification. A smart play, in my opinion, would be to respect the initiatives of the private sector to address net neutrality on its own.

Damian Kulash of the musical group, OK Go, recently shared his thoughts via The Washington Post on net neutrality. He joined the bandwagon of open network proponents that call broadband access communications and a civil right.

Are we really using the Internet to communicate in the way that communications is regulated by the Federal Communications Commission? Yes, we post our thoughts on Facebook and Twitter. We write blogs on everything from politics to grandma’s cookie recipe. We e-mail each other about business meetings and the feelings we have for a lover at the office. But currently, under the law, none of this is the communications that the FCC and its sister regulatory agencies on the state level regulates.

The communications that the FCC should be concerned about is the instantaneous, two-way communications that we employ via radio and telephone. The communications that the FCC should be concerned about is not the accessing of information posted on an electronic bulletin board for someone to access at their leisure. Rather, communications between a mother and the fire department that not only exchanges information immediately but also will call for some immediate action is at the center of communications that the FCC should be regulating.

Ask any fireman or cop in New York on 11 September 2001 what they would have considered to be true communications and they would have told you a telephone. E-mail just would not have cut it that day. Even if Facebook and Twitter were around in 2001, no public safety officer in their right mind would have considered those platforms as communications.

Broadband access services provide you access to information. These services provide you access to digital product, but to call them communications is a stretch. An example would be a grocery store. You enter the store via a door, but walking through the door is not communications. You look around the store and check out the items. The communications occurs when you instantaneously exchange your ideas about the products in the store with your friends and family. Merely walking into the store doesn‘t communicate anything.

What also has me concerned is this civil rights comparison. I have too much respect for my ancestors who fought, bled, and died for the right to access certain public accommodations and to enjoy the same privileges to vote as whites to liken their experience to a bunch of little electrons moving through space, whether on a wire or not.

Give me a break. Civil rights for bits of electronic data? it’s a sad commentary on our society when we equate the government’s abridgement of the right to access public accommodations with a private company’s business judgment regarding the management of networks that are not considered public accommodations. Broadband access providers are not common carriers. Any reading of the law within the context of civil rights would lead you to that conclusion.

The irony of the discussion is that with all the unimpeded access we have to information, why are we being willfully ignorant about what the law says? Why are we not studying the civil rights law and understanding what it really means before launching off into baseless comparisons?

Instead of screaming about civil rights, maybe we should be exercising our duty to be fully informed.

I was taken aback that a group that promotes itself as defenders of the second amendment right to own firearms would align itself with a group that espouses greater government regulation of our free markets. Gun Owners of America should not be faulted for leaving the Open Internet Coalition. They were probably confused by OIC’s misuse of the words freedom and openness.

I doubt that the mid-term elections had any direct bearing on GOA’s decision to bow out of the group. Conservative groups and commentators are taking inventory of conservatives in name only.

GOA should have imagined a world where buying a shotgun from Walmart took two weeks and a gun owner would have to disclose where she kept her shotgun and how often she cleaned it to any citizen who demanded to know.

So much for freedom.