Net neutrality is about preventing people who run cables from A to B from charging different amounts to transmit different data. This is to solve the supposed problem of an ISP owned by Microsoft charging people more to download data from Apple, and situations like that.
Google and their friends have written an open letter to the Federal Communications Commission expressing their support for plans to “adopt rules that preserve an open Internet.”
Except in this case “adopt” means “enforce”, I think.
You see, I don’t *get* net neutrality. Google and friends want the Internet to be “an environment where consumers, not broadband providers, choose winners and losers”.
But by constraining broadband providers according to these rules, the government is subjugating them to satisfy the whims of others. Why does it make sense that Google and friends get freedom to freely enter into whatever contracts they want but ISPs don’t? It doesn’t.
Some commenters agree. Bone wrote:
Yeah, to heck with the companies that built the infrastructure bringing the internet to your house……….
If you regulate them too much, and they go under……….wait, they probably fall into that too big to fail category and the government will own the internet too.
Michael added:
Bone touched on exactly what I’ve been thinking. In early ‘08 I saw net neutrality as the “thing to do” to protect consumers. Recent events have caused me to re-evaluate my position. No matter who is in charge, government abuses its power. Given the opportunity our government will take control of the net in order to silence its opposition. The free market must be allowed to operate in order to assure an open internet. If an ISP behaves abusively they will lose customers to their competition.
Rajesh Shenoy agrees:
Isn’t this a little too utopian for comfort? By the same token, we could abolish toll highways too, or varying speeds according to broadband rate plan. It just isn’t very practical. There should always be differentiation towards those who are ready to pay more. *That* is freedom. *That* is a win for end consumers! I’d be very happy if broadband providers go net-neutral because of market pressures. But regulatory mandates? I’d say no.
I first heard about this when Adriana Lukas wrote about it back in 2006. She seemed to be in favour of net neutrality [Correction, I misunderstood and failed to read the bit where she wrote "net neutrality legislation is not the answer"]. The discussion on Samizdata wasn’t very informative because I think it was such a new issue back then.
I disagree on principle, because I don’t see how you can morally justify enforcing net neutrality rules.
I also happen to think that the problem of not having net neutrality won’t be such a problem. There will inevitably be choices for consumers and those who value neutrality more highly will pay more to get it. If that choice isn’t available it will either be because not enough people value it, or because some regulation is preventing new ISPs from entering the market, or preventing innovative workarounds to the problem. The solution to that is less regulation.
Frankly, if it gets bad enough, we can all put line of sight microwave links on the roofs of our houses.
I am still a bit torn about the whole net neutrality thing but I hate the idea of any legislation going anywhere near the internet so I’d to agree with you. There are compelling reasons not to legislate for net neutrality that have to do with warping behaviour and innovation in the future… Doc Searls tends to have some good thinking about this, where we both different from the usual webby crowd of West coast liberals.
Either way it’s a tough one – telecos are a hugely regulated industry so the option of no government intervention is already compromised. The question is use more government intervention to prevent abuse of the network by telcos or just leave things alone even it if means bad things for the internet and web…
In most urban areas in this country, most telephone exchanges have unbundled local loops from at least five different carriers, meaning that changing ISPs will not change the copper wire between your home and the exchange, but will change everything else about the internet connection, including how that copper wire is used. Plus you have in many areas a cable possibility via Virgin Media, plus five different UMTS networks (some of which are sharing infrastructure and two of which are about to move, but still a number of different choices) and various other future possibilities. If your ISP decides to try to control what you can and cannot do with it, you have lots of choices, so we don’t need to worry about this much over here. Most other countries have less competition – the basic rule being the more significant the former monopolies remain, the worse the situation is – but I am still pretty confident that competition will keep us in pretty good nick. The pattern is very clearly away from telcos attempting to control what services can be provided over their networks and towards open internets. (In case nobody noticed, openness won in the mobile space during the last couple of years).
I am much more concerned by the prospect of governments trying to censor networks, or trying to ban certain protocols in ham handed attempts to enforce copyright and things like that.