Net neutrality: a primer for the rightosphere

Net neutrality is an affront to free speech, innovation and property rights

An open letter to my friends from Instapundit to proteinwisdom, from QandO to The Corner. I want to bring to your attention the issue of ‘net neutrality, which you may have heard in your travels.

In a nutshell, the concept of a network neutrality mandate is that all bits on the Internet must be treated identically, by law. It has become something of a hot-button because one of the telcos said some impolitic things that set off the conspiracy theorists and got the attention of Congress.

While “neutrality” sounds benign, the proposed legislation would give the FCC powers that it currently does not have. Be clear, there is no neutrality legislation in place and we are doing just fine.

More importantly, from a technical and economic perspective, I am inspired by innovation and experimentation and the free markets which enable them. A neutrality mandate would give the federal gov’t regulatory powers to decide right and wrong at the router level.

You should not be surprised that the loudest advocates of ‘net neutrality are those on the far left, including MyDD, and MoveOn. Their arguments are very much in line with things like McCain-Feingold and the old Fairness Doctrine.

It is also being sold as “fear the big bad corporations”. I don’t have any particular affection for any of the companies involved here, but I do know that customers know best. Some customers might indeed say, I will pay more for better video. Alternatively, the market may say “we like it the way it is”, which is neutrality de facto. In either case, we don’t need Congress or the FCC to make the call.

The history of the Internet has told us we should imagine the unimagined. Let’s preserve the absence of inhibition that has gotten us this far. Keep it libertarian. No new laws.

(Put another way: think about what the FCC has done in the name of “decency”. Now expand it to private bits on private networks. That’s “neutrality”.)

Some reading:

Me, previous:

• Net neutrality vs free speech
• Resisting the net neutrality Kool Aid?

Martin Geddes describes why “neutrality” is ill-defined, unenforceable and naïve:
http://www.telepocalypse.net/archives/000905.html

Mark Cuban says “Hell yes, I’ll pay for faster packets” in Hey Baby Bells & Cable, We need multiple tiers of service

A new organization called Hands Off the Internet, to whom I am reaching out:
http://handsoff.org

Your feedback is welcome, kind regards,

Matt S

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Update: Adam over at PFF lays it out clearly that the “Save the Internet” slogan translates to “Regulate it More”

Comments

[shortz]

Handsoff.org is registered to Mercury Group, a lobbying and PR firm. That doesn't look very grass roots.

[Matt S]

Yeah, you're right, I shouldn't have used that term. They're on the right side of the argument, though. Looking forward to the accusations of "astroturf". :)

[shortz]

"They're on the right side of the argument, though."

I mean, PFF is on their side!

[Jeff Medcalf]

There's a little something you're missing though. The way you phrase the argument is that it's perfectly reasonable for people to pay more for a faster connection. The problem is that no one disputes that; it's a straw man.

What the cablecos and telcos want to do is not to charge you more for a faster connection. Wait, they want to continue to do that, too. But what the net neutrality argument is about is not that.

The cablecos and telcos want to artificially limit the packet flow from certain sites or services — Vonage, Google, Microsoft, etc — unless those companies/sites pay the equivalent of protection money. Note that all of those companies do pay for their own bandwidth, and in the case of Vonage, they only provide a service that uses bandwidth that you pay for.

But the cablecos and telcos are desperate for more revenue, and don't want to charge their customers more. So they figure that by charging big pocket providers, who would stand to lose money from advertisers if their sites were blocked or limited on a large number of users' network connections, is a good way to get revenue by raising prices, but cost shifting the new part of the price to services you use.

What would keep them from limiting Instapundit, or Kos, or any other site? Nothing at all, except that Glenn and Markos probably couldn't or wouldn't pay the bribe.

And really, I'd be fine with that, on one condition. How about we make a deal: the providers can charge what they want to whomever they can get to pay it, but we end their monopolies/duopolies in all markets? That way, they can charge what they want for what they want to provide, but cannot keep other companies from charging less and providing more.

[MikeT]

There are other reasons to oppose the legislation as well. As I said on my blog (http://blindmindseye.com/my-articles/net-neutrality/), there have been cases where existing law has proved more than sufficient to curtail the extremes such as the Madison River case involving Vonage. Another thing too which is worth noting is that most services are low-bandwidth services. HTTP doesn't need 200kb/sec to work well, 10kb/sec would be more than fast enough for most websites. A local ISP would have to throttle the bandwidth down to the point that no one would want to use the service in order to really be a noticable problem.

[Matt S]

Jeff, thanks for the note. You're not wrong -- of course the telcos are self-interested. I suspect we also agree that the ultimate solution is competition, ie, eliminating the monopoly/duopolies.

I think the best way to do this is to remove barriers to entry. That means fewer rules and giving new entrants the ability to design and price any plan they want. History makes clear that that is the most progressive, permanent solution.

Regulating speech and network architecture, as any neutrality legislation must, is the opposite of this.

I realize that it may seem counter-intuitive, but the best way to protect consumers is to let the corporations do as they wish, and slug it out for your $$. When that is the case, they are accountable only to consumers.

[tpwk47]

I think your dead on. This is simply another battle being fought by folks who believe in governmental regulation of every company (i.e. socialism). Net Neutrality legislation will do nothing to "Save The Internet". Rather, it will open the Internet up to a host of special interests, which is exactly what some members of Congress want. Imagine an Internet in which the government mandates that certain "public service" sites run faster than others. Yuck.

[AJ Carey]

Net neutrality should be viewed in light of the freedoms you spoke of earlier, I agree. As such, it would be best that the government stay out of it and let the free market work out the details.

[directorblue]

You need a serious education in network technology.

First off, check out Cisco's SEF hardware. The marketing lit basically chortles over the fact that telcos can block, filter, impede, meter, or otherwise meddle with third-party traffic:

http://directorblue.blogspot.com/2006/02/network-neutrality-what-cable.html

Second, every network-savvy person that I know of -- Bob Kahn, the inventor of TCP/IP; Vint Cerf, the father of the Internet; and Tim Berners-Lee, inventor of the web -- favors the current state of network neutrality.

Last, tell me what great invention the telcos have come up with? What application or service of value -- akin to the massive value creation of Skype, Google, Vonage, etc. -- have they created?

Even now, with the prospect of a change in attitude toward network neutrality, investment in net startups has chilled: Blair Levin, analyst with Stifel Nicolaus said, "Right now, I would never invest in a business model that depended on protection from Net neutrality."

So who will fund the next Vonage, Skype, or Google?

Go to http://www.savetheinternet.com and take action.

[oldhats]

Not to mention that this is not a fight between the evil telcos and the "little guy." This is a schoolyeard squabble between the telcos and the software giants--Microsoft, Google, Amazon, etc--cos with enough market and financial strength to duke this out all right in the market.

[tpwk47]

Oldhats has a point. And if we think the battle over net neutrality has big lobbying dollars behind it, imagine if government enters the fore to legislate winners and losers on this issue? Soon, our Internet experience will be dictated not by what we are willing to purchase, but by what government deems it appropriate for us to purchase. Doesn't sound like "saving" the Internet to me.

[jeran]

Our government hasn't exactly demonstrated an enlightened ability to make good decisions on our behalf recently. Why open the door to Internet regulation by giving them the ability to decide who can have what information, and how fast they can have it? This is a matter best left to the market. Any telecom that refuses access or offers limited access to sites like Google or Microsoft won't keep its customers very long. Allowing regulation here will only slow growth.

[oldhats]

"Allowing regulation here will only slow growth" AND INNOVATION.

[AJ Carey]

The pipes that the internet runs through are no different than any other form of property. As such, companies should be allowed to use their property rights and do whatever they please with them. I say keep the government from violating property rights.

[Jim Lippard]

AJ:

The difference is that the telcos built their pipes with government monopoly, free access to rights-of-way, and tax subsidies including universal service fees, in return for which they were required to act as common carriers and allow all-comers to use their networks (for voice telephony and private lines, not their Internet networks). That's why they were required to allow competitive DSL providers to use their last-mile networks. Cable providers, by contrast, were not required to allow others to use their last-mile networks because they don't get universal service fees, have to pay for access to rights-of-ways, and have to pay a portion of their revenue via franchise agreements with the municipalities where they operate.

It's not quite as clear-cut as you say when we're talking about the consumer last-mile networks (vs. backbones).

I've written up a little analogy about the backbone/last-mile confusion in net neutrality debates at my blog (May 8 entry).