On a breezy day in late August, Tim Wu is pausing briefly in New York between adventures. Just back from three weeks in Kenya and Malawi, he's about to leave for a backpacking trip in Red Rocks, Utah, where he plans to unplug his Droid for six days. "I really like taking an information sabbatical," muses Wu, 38. "You come back, and the Internet seems amazing."  There are those in the business world who wish Wu would stay on sabbatical. He's the guy who coined the term "net neutrality" back in 2002, for the proposition that networks should aspire to treat all content, sites and platforms equally. For example, Wu blasted Verizon's reported deal with Google to make sites like YouTube run faster than others, in exchange for payment. "Internet payola," he called it. (Verizon and Google denied they were making such a deal.) "Blocking is the same thing as censorship," says Wu, a Harvard law grad who studied under open- Internet evangelist Lawrence Lessig. His views are not mere academic musings. He is regularly consulted by Democratic congressmen and regulators writing the nation's Internet laws.  His latest attack is spelled out in a new book called The Master Switch: The Rise and Fall of Information Empires. Tracing what he deems the 20th century's three great American information empires--Hollywood, the broadcast networks and AT&T--he details how early idealism and openness turned to corporate consolidation. That, in turn, quashed innovation, he asserts, and silenced multiple voices in favor of a few.  Case in point: AT&T Bell Labs invented the telephone answering machine in 1934 but kept it under wraps. He says the company was worried people would abandon telephones out of fear their conversations would be taped. "AT&T suppressed anything that could threaten their empire," he adds.  Wu is afraid that history will repeat itself. He points to Skype's free Internet calling, with its threat to the phone companies' most lucrative business. "If there were no net neutrality, Skype would have already been suppressed," he contends.  A tenured professor at Columbia Law School, Wu teaches copyright and communications law. Ironically, he does not allow his students to use laptops during class ("I need people to be present"). He consults for free with companies like Google, which he hopes will stick to its "don't be evil" credo. Representative Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) is tapping Wu for advice on legislation that would make it illegal for phone companies to block access to the Internet on mobile devices. In 2007 the FCC adopted several of Wu's proposals in its design of a wireless spectrum auction.  Wu's critics maintain that there's plenty of competition in the wireless realm and no danger of monopolies crushing entrepreneurial endeavors. "[Wu] is a techtopian with far-left-wing views, who thinks the Internet should be an information commons," says Scott Cleland, a Washington, D.C. consultant for companies including AT&T.  Responds Wu, "I'm a libertarian who fears private power as much as public power."  For more on Susan Adams follow her at: blogs.forbes.com/susanadams  Special Offer: Free Trial Issue of Forbes
Columbia Law professor Tim Wu believes private enterprise poses as much of a threat to free expression as government censorship.