Sen. Wyden gets ahead of the news cycle

Senator Wyden gets ahead of the news cycle in a short op-ed in today’s Wall St. Journal [paid sub]. In it, he claims that the recent Cox/Craigslist kerfuffle is evidence of abuse by an Internet provider:

Cox Communications, a broadband provider that also has a large classified advertising business, is currently blocking access to craigslist.org, a large, free classified Web site that competes with Cox.

Sen. Wyden has allowed himself to believe the hype, and to treat the facts with short shrift. Richard Bennett spells it out on a technological level, and here’s my take on responsibility and customer service.

This issue was never about Cox directly, their only role was that their customers happened to be caught in the middle between conflicting third-parties. Cox has been, by all accounts, neutral.

Senator Wyden would do well to read his own legislation. In it (and in most neutrality proposals) there is an exception for any type of security software, which was one of the culprits in this case. So even if this were a neutrality issue (it’s not), and even if Sen. Wyden gets his way (not yet anyway), the Craigslist example would be off-topic.

Neutrality proponents do themselves a disservice when they depend on anecdotal and unrelated arguments like these.

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Bennett goes further on Wyden’s piece.

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Another update: the ever-rational Jim Lippard sums it up, making the important point that Craigslist’s choices are reasonable, if a bit unusual. He also gives Sen. Wyden credit where credit is due — just not in this particular episode. I think that should put this to rest from a technical perspective. Will neutrality proponents be so honest?

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Craig puts it to bed.