Verizon's Bizarre New Network Neutrality PR Offensive - For the first time in a while, Verizon seems legitimately afraid...

With a new President who's unequivocally stated he's in favor of network neutrality, Verizon's top lobbying and policy guru Tom Tauke has been putting forth a kinder, gentler face this week in the hopes of keeping new consumer protection guidelines at bay. While the rhetoric is softer, Verizon's logic-distortion field remains as potent as ever. Tauke, talking to Politico, takes a moment out of his day to falsely suggest that network neutrality protections would prevent them from offering things like parental controls:

Demand is growing for other options that would allow consumers to block data — including parents who want to control what pops up on home computers and people worried about identity theft, he added. . ."Our view is, in the future, consumers ought to have the ability to choose between the wild, wild West of the Internet or to choose a different experience," Tauke said. “All of that potentially would be viewed as discrimination if we’re offering different kinds of services. We think it’s part of consumer choice."

Tauke's dizzying logic, which Politico doesn't seem particularly interested in challenging, is that network neutrality protections would somehow block user access to security software or parental controls -- which makes little to no sense. Tauke even goes so far as to suggest to Politico that consumer protections aimed at network openness would somehow block access to "special services to the disabled and to victims of domestic violence."

Politico concludes Verizon has decided to "trash the Republican-friendly talking points about allowing the free market to determine the evolution of the Internet, and start talking about consumer choice." Again, that makes no sense and distorts the issue entirely; but that's Tauke's job, and he's damn good at it.

Tauke continued his strange network neutrality PR tour '09 today, telling specifically invited reporters that he wasn't entirely opposed to a fifth FCC principle on broadband network nondiscrimination:

(Tauke) recognizes the political reality that there was an election and there appears to be some momentum for movement on the nondiscrimination front in the administration, in Congress, and at the FCC. "I'm not saying I am inviting a fifth principle," Verizon Executive VP Tom Tauke told reporters Thursday at a press briefing, "but I wouldn't want to say that we couldn't find a way to live with a fifth principle."

That wouuld actually mean something if the FCC's four other network neutrality principles were actually worth anything. As it stands, the principle policy statement (pdf) Tauke refers to isn't law and may not even be enforceable in court -- something Comcast's currently trying to prove. Advocating for a fifth meaningless and unenforceable principle may not mean all that much. It certainly wouldn't stop Verizon from say -- eventually imposing unreasonable metered billing on customers in order to protect FiOSTV revenues from Internet video.

Verizon -- for the first time in a while -- seems legitimately afraid of new consumer protections being passed in DC covering not only network neutrality -- but metered billing. But while some rhetoric has changed, Verizon's underlying beliefs haven't. In recent comments to the Washington Post, CEO Ivan Seidenberg re-iterated the bizarre telco logic that began the network neutrality debate back in 2005 -- namely that content companies should subsidize phone company network builds -- and that nobody gets to ride on Ma Bell's pipes for free.

While talk is nice, Verizon might be better served with action if they really want to prevent network neutrality principles from being codified into law. A good place to start is Verizon's 2007 promise of a truly open wireless network. While the tech press applauded the announcement like lobotomized pharmaceutical test monkeys several years ago, the initiative, with a few minor exceptions, has been little more than empty public relations fluff.