There could be an oxymoron in that first headline at the top: I’m not sure there is such a thing as ‘individual mankind’ – but if there isn’t, there should be. And the individuals that make up the real people (as opposed to the cloned sociopaths running pretty much everything else) need to move against the
Google/Verizon axis right now….or it is Game Over for the free Internet. Free, in this instance, I use in every sense of the word: available, for nothing, and libertarian.

First off, within six hours of the news leaking yesterday, Google tweeted to say the reports were untrue and they’d had ‘no convos’ with Verizon. Bollocks: they’ve been in talks for days at least. As the FT reported this morning, the pair ‘have agreed on the outline of a plan covering key aspects of how internet services are carried over communications networks’. And although the FT’s source defensively added that ‘creating a premium tier for the web would not automatically undermine the current open model’, the American Federal Communications Commission (FCC) ‘called off industry-wide talks on the same issues. The agency said it had failed to reach agreement on a “robust framework to preserve the openness and freedom of the internet”’.

The Ft concludes, ‘A mutual arrangement between Google and Verizon risks undermining the search for an industry-wide agreement and could instead establish an arrangement that is beneficial mainly to the two big companies’. Precisely: no smoke, fire, etc etc.

I have first-hand phone on the FT’s piece; trust me, unless a stink gets kicked up – and everywhere – they will do this thing. Google lied, and for me that’s a case of ‘start as you meant to go on’. Anyone who still trusts corporate press releases must be either under five, or one of the seven people who have bought Lord Mandelson’s memoirs.

But let’s not go off half-cocked about this: what does it mean?

As an old phobic myself about most technology, I try to explain the way digital mobile internet works (and will develop) by using the analogy of what used to be.

Imagine a journalist in 1970. In his trilby hat-band is a card marked ‘Press’, and his editor has just told him to get a taxi and see what’s up as there’s a commotion over in South London.
On the desk, our reporter has a typewriter. There’s a cab quickly hailed outside. Our hero feels in his pocket to check he has notebook and pencil with him. He gets to the scene, and spots Scoop Bentley from the Daily Graphic. The disturbance turns out to be the Queen engaged in a street fight with Arthur Scargill, but the Graphic is already on the case – if trilby-man doesn’t find a phone-box soon, he might lose the exclusive. He legs it round the corner, and finds an amazingly unvandalised public phone. He phones in the story to Maisie in the typing pool, and the story pips the Graphic by making it into the late afternoon edition.

Now it’s 2010, and we find our contemporary hack yelling into a minor celebrity’s letter box. Letters have longed ceased to be written: letter boxes now exist purely for the convenience of tabloid journalists.
Our man’s Blackberry rings, and it’s the editor. Reuters’ news website is carrying unconfirmed reports that Obama has finally decided to hire Elizabeth Warren: Warren’s sister lives in London – can he find her?
The journo goes onto Facebook, finds Gertude Warren and rings her on the Blackberry. Yes she says, it’s true – and Geithner’s resigned.
Where the 1970 journalist’s typewriter was, our 2010 incarnation has a laptop, but he can’t get to it – and typing pools don’t exist any more. Also the keypad on his Blackberry is a pain in the backside – so he takes his new MarkIII IPad out, and goes online to publish directly onto his newspaper’s site via the larger, virtual pad.

It says, ‘All Orange internet connections are busy’. He’s finding this more and more these days: but when he goes to BTConnect, a panel pops up.

The message says, ‘ENTER PREMIUM CODE NUMBER’. And the e-journo-cum-blogger says “What f**%%@@g premium code?” But nobody in accounts has told him that BTConnect lines are only open now if you know the site’s special premium usage code. Another message tells him that he can use the Standard Class lines….but these will take a week to deliver the data.

So he loses the exclusive….because over at Newscorp, Rupert Murdoch just happens to know Tim Geithner personally….and the Times wins out, because verification comes through via Roop’s own news service – which pays a premium to ATT in order to get everything first . (Nobody reads the piece, because it’s behind the Newscorp paywall).

Perhaps some ideas are by now forming in your head about the ramifications of this becoming the future. Most probably you can think of more than me….and if you can, by all means comment-thread them. But for starters, here are my top six nightmares:

1. A Government takes over the phoneco and decides both speed and content.
2. The richest news suppliers pay the highest prices….and concentrate yet more power into the hands of Establishment media.
3. Every blogger on the planet gets relegated to Standard (ie, sub-standard) internet lines.
4. Line costs become like TV airtime schedule auctions, where the highest bidder gets a big splash through first on a kind of quicktime EBay system.
5. A Treasury bribes phoneco to ensure that every news source story on today’s 30% currency fall gets dropped down to Snail grade.
6. The Establishment opinion always gets aired first. (As an ex-adman, I can tell you that this would be crucial to mass belief).

The bottom line is that those with the news will be those with the money.

If you want that outcome (or think that situation already pertains anyway) then go back to sleep. If you don’t, I’m asking everyone who reads about this – and agrees it must be stopped – to email me on wardslog@aol.com – and also email, link, tweet and whatever else turns you on this to everyone you know for whom you think it relevant.

I am keen to help coordinate any demand-based scheme to scare the crap out of this Dirty Duo, so again -if you know of one, email me.

This is the pivotal moment when we all either roll over, or fight back in the only way corporates understand: by boycotting any and all premium-segmentation internet schemes they and the phonecos are cooking up. The choice is entirely ours.

Many thanks in advance.

Editor, The Slog. 6.8.10, 10.48 EST, 3.48 BST.