Blackberry Ltd. CEO John Chen has today called on Congress to implement “Application Neutrality,” a proposal that would legally force app makers to provide a version of their apps that would work on Blackberry devices.

A perhaps mentally unhinged Chen argues that the current system where in all apps don’t work on Blackberry is similar to Net Neutrality, and that Blackberry customers are being discriminated against.

“During the past 15 months [Blackberry] has stabilized and introduced a variety of new products as we pivot away from our prior reliance on hardware to become a full-service, device-agnostic provider of highly secure and productive software and services” Chen writes. “Key to BlackBerry’s turnaround has been a strategy of application and content neutrality.”

He cites the fact that Blackberry Messenger (BBM) has been made available for iOS and Android devices, but other companies have not made their applications available for Blackberry.

“Apple does not allow BlackBerry or Android users to download Apple’s iMessage messaging service” Chen writes, before next targeting Netflix “which has forcefully advocated for carrier neutrality [but] has discriminated against BlackBerry customers by refusing to make its streaming movie service available to them.”

Discriminatory practices?

Chen claims that the dynamic has created a two-tiered wireless broadband ecosystem where iPhone and Android users are able to access far more content and applications than customers using devices running other operating systems.

“These are precisely the sort of discriminatory practices that neutrality advocates have criticized at the carrier level.” says Chen, before saying “neutrality must be mandated at the application and content layer if we truly want a free, open and non-discriminatory internet. All…applications/content providers must be prohibited from discriminating based on the customer’s mobile operating system.”

The obvious comparison is Federally mandated disability laws which dictate things like providing ramp access to buildings; the difference here is that those with a disability don’t choose to have one, where as Blackberry’s handicap is caused by it using its own operating system, where it could switch to using Android and overcome the problem.

Attaching the “Application Neutrality” argument to Net Neutrality is also an appalling move: one is about freedom of access online, the other one is about a failing phone maker who wants to use the law to help prop up its business.

Having checked it’s not April Fools Day, we can only presume that Chen has lost a bet or has quite literally lost his mind.