As I sat watching Mr. G lay out the details on the net neutrality rules, I had to chuckle. After weeks of the righteous outrage of incumbents’ CEOs, cries in the wilderness to “let my people go,” AT&T execs falling prostrate rending their garments and exhorting employees to rise up against the FCC demon hordes, this is it!? Where are the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse?

Bemusement gave way to mild despair. I remembered after the FCC vote in favor of adopting the rules, we’re looking at over two months of public comment, plus a couple of more months for comments on the comments. Jiminy Cricket on a crutch! This net neutrality is such a simple concept that’s getting distorted all to hell, and we’ve got six more months of the same.

Let’s take the incumbents out of the picture for a minute. Hard as it is, pretend for a little bit they don’t exist. Ok, now that you can hear yourself think, let’s go over what was said yesterday.

The FCC believes we need Net neutrality rules. These rules would codify six principals that say the couple of hundred million or so U.S. citizens who access the Internet won’t be discriminated against in terms of what they can access (within legal boundaries) and the devices they use to access it. These rules also would require any entity that provides public access to the Internet to be open about how they manage the data passing through their respective domains.

This isn’t rocket science, people. Nor is it the end of the Internet world as we know it. But as Mr. G went on to say, “there is no shortage of half-truths” from those who have a n immediate and occasionally psychotic Pavlovian response to the word “regulation.” When you get down to it, the purpose of yesterday’s FCC meeting (probably the most watched and widely reported FCC event in ages) was to smack down some of the negative hysteria generated these past few weeks.

When you boil everything down that Mr. G said yesterday, what you have here is not “onerous” regulation of the Internet, but sensible, justifiable regulation of commercial entities that can put a chokehold on the Net. A chokehold that is the antithesis of an open and free Internet.

He acknowledged and encouraged the role of the private sector in bringing forth innovative new products and services. But Mr. G also pointed out the “false choice between openness and innovation” that critics are trying to sell to the American public. In my column here on Wednesday, I pointed out the flaw in the telco-as-great-innovator logic, which you should read. The public needs to understand the cause-and-effect issues here so they understand how net neutrality protects Internet innovation.

Contrary to what the “government sucks” crowd wants you to believe, the Chairman went on to make it pretty clear that the role of government is not to control the Internet. However, he likewise made it clear that actions of incumbents over recent years, “taken together, have left protection of the Internet vulnerable.” Anyone who thinks business entities with near monopolistic reign over an industry won’t work counter to consumers’ best interests doesn’t own either a mortgage, a credit card or a good grasp of history.

It’s going to be a long, noisy schlep from here to (hopefully) net neutrality rules that (also, hopefully) Congress will support. The true winners in the short run will be lawyers, lobbyists and PR people. If the long-term winners are to be the general public and the thousands of small, medium and large organizations that do business on the Net, then we must push back heavily on the incumbent noise to ensure the FCC does the right thing.

- Craig Settles, Successful.com
Twitter: cjSettles