Reports about what the new net neutrality rules will entail have some Internet activists up in arms, though FCC Chairman Tom Wheeler insisted that his proposal will not destroy net neutrality.

"There are reports that the FCC is gutting the Open Internet rule," Wheeler said in a Wednesday night statement. "They are flat out wrong."

Wheeler plans to circulate his revamped plans for net neutrality to his fellow commissioners today, and they will vote on the proposal at a May 15 open meeting. While all the details have yet to be ironed out, one aspect of the plan has left a bad taste in the mouths of net neutrality supporters.

As currently written, the plan would still include three basic rules: transparency about network activity, no blocking, and no discriminating based on application or service.

However, there will now be a bit of wiggle room on the anti-discrimination bit. Broadband providers would be able "to enter into individual negotiations with content providers," an FCC spokesman said yesterday. "In all instances, broadband providers would need to act in a commercially reasonable manner subject to review on a case-by-case basis" by the FCC.

At this point, the FCC has not determined what constitutes baseline service or a commercially reasonable standard, and the commission will be opening the issue up to public comment after the May vote.

"There is no 'turnaround in policy,'" Chairman Wheeler said. "The same rules will apply to all Internet content. As with the original Open Internet rules, and consistent with the court's decision, behavior that harms consumers or competition will not be permitted."

Despite those assurances, the reaction was quick and fierce.

"Until consumers have a meaningful choice when connecting to the internet, monopolistic high-speed broadband providers will have an incentive to charge content providers more to connect to their customers," Gabe Rottman, policy advisory with the ACLU, said in a statement. "Net neutrality prevents that overcharge, which gets passed along to consumers and stifles innovation. If the FCC embraces this reported reversal in its stance toward net neutrality, barriers to innovation will rise, the marketplace of ideas on the internet will be constrained, and consumers will ultimately pay the price."

Demand Progress's executive director David Segal, meanwhile, argued that the proposed rules "would undermine the Open Internet by allowing Internet Service Providers to extort fees out of Web platforms, and thereby advantage certain services - those that are established and wealthy enough to pay the fees, and those that have financial ties to or are otherwise favored by the ISPs - over other platforms."

Michael Weinberg, vice president at Public Knowledge, said the "very essence of a 'commercial reasonableness' standard is discrimination."

The big ISPs have yet to weigh in. More details about the FCC's plans are expected later today; stay tuned.

For more, watch PCMag Live in the video below, which discusses the FCC's plan for the future of net neutrality.