Net Neutrality

[Hogeye]

My latest letter to the editor:

Dear Editor,

You have probably heard the term "net neutrality," but do you know what it means? Technically, "net neutrality" means internet communication protocols which are neutral (do not discriminate) between packets. That is, all information packets are treated equally on a first come - first serve basis. This sounds reasonable, until one realizes that some packets may be more important than other packets, or need some special handling. Net neutrality prevents prioritization of packets. An analogy: Suppose that a trivial postcard was mailed before a heart sent to a hospital for transplant. Would it make sense to use a first come - first serve rule? What about the option of using airmail rather than overland mail for important messages? That would be forbidden if mail was "net-neutral."

For the internet, packets associated with different applications often have vastly different requirements. It may not matter if an email gets to your box a half a second later, but it does matter if you are talking on an internet phone or watching a video. These latter are called latency-intolerant - delays in reception make such applications aggravating or useless. Anyone who's watched an internet video stop and start and cut off knows what I mean. If you've experienced this, or being cut off when trying to talk with someone overseas on an IP phone, then you understand clearly that not all packets are created equal, and that it makes perfect sense that some get higher priority than others.

"Net neutrality" also has, besides its technical meaning, a political meaning: if someone says he favors net neutrality, then he favors government regulation of the internet to enforce it. Thus, "net neutrality" is generally a code-word for government regulation of the internet, and (more) government spying on internet communications. That is, for the government to enforce any kind of net neutrality, it must sniff out and supervise the treatment of information packets going through internet service providers and carriers.

Prior to 1996, telephone ISPs and cable ISPs were treated differently. With the Telecommunications Act of 1996, the phone companies were somewhat deregulated, putting them under the same rules as cable companies regarding the internet. No longer would they be forced by the State to rent their property against their will to wanna-be providers. Like the cable companies, their property rights to internet infrastructure would be respected.

Some of the political net neutrality advocates want to turn the clock back to the bad old days of telling communications firms what to do with their property. This group wants to make forced rental ("open access") regulation even broader than it was before, putting both phone and cable companies under the pre-1996 regime. The idea of this fascist approach is for the government to prevent all vertical integration, i.e. prohibit carriers from being service providers also. Supposedly this control, along with massive spying on internet packets, would effectively enforce net neutrality in the technical sense.

Another group favors, not forced rental, but simply the spying part limited to the external (non-local) parts of the internet. This is less intrusive than the fascist approach, but still involves unnecessary regulation and oversight, and outlaws the advantages of prioritizing packets.

In my opinion, freedom is a better alternative. Let companies do as they wish, and let consumers choose as they wish. This seems a much better way to determine what (if any) prioritization occurs. The question basically comes down to whether you trust government rulers or people in society to determine what works best and is more flexible in accomodating innovation. Do you want government bureaucrats to determine how well you can chat, or download movies, and talk to your friends overseas? Or would you rather choose which service on the market satisfies your needs, and vote with your money? Do you want a winner-take-all decision by State, favoring political cronies and stifling innovation, or would you prefer a nimble market adapting to your needs and future technology?

A word about scare tactics: Some net neutrality advocates have conjured up a scenerio where the internet is like cable television, with different tiers of service and blocking of competitors' channels. This is an absurd comparison, since it is virtually costless to offer all sites, whereas dumbing down service will almost certainly lose customers. If cable TV companies could offer every channel in the world for free they would do so, if only to keep up with the competition. This is the situation for the internet - companies that hobble their service will generally lose customers to competitors who do not. It's already happened. Old-timers may remember a company called Compuserve which tried to restict customers. They're gone now. Another company called America Online tried to restict, but quickly saw the light and opened their system up to all sites. History shows that we should worry more about governments restricting sites than private providers doing so.

[Barbara Fitzpatrick]

Net neutrality means AT&T doesn't own, and therefore control, the net and it's ability to deliver anybody's message in a timely manner. Your analogy is false - the heart wouldn't be sent "regular mail" and therefore possibly be bumped by a postcard. Net neutrality doesn't prevent you from buying a faster service, it keeps you from being forced to.

[Hogeye]

Yes, since snail-mail is not "net neutral," the hospital may send it with priority over the postcard. Net neutrality for the internet would mean the heart has to wait. Going from the analogy to a real situtation, ITube would not be allowed under net neutrality to pay for faster or prioritized service for its latency-sensitive videos; video packets could be bumped by email packets. Real-time online gamers and people using internet phones similarly could get bumped. To me, it makes sense to allow high-bandwidth applications to contract for higher priority. Net neutrality is not really neutral - it favors old-time latency tolerant applications over newer apps.

Your worry about AT&T controlling the internet is, as I said, absurd paranoia. It's like saying that Weyerhauser makes paper therefore it controls freedom of the press. Network neutrality for newspapers would mean that editors would be forbidden to read the copy (and discriminate) before publishing articles. It would mean the first article submitted gets the front page, no matter how trivial it is. If you transfer the net neutrality argument to any other media, its absurdity is pretty obvious.

[Dardedar]

Wikipedia has an extensive page on this complex issue. Some excerpts:

Network neutrality regulations are supported by large Internet content companies (e.g., Google, Yahoo, and eBay), consumers-rights groups such as Consumers Union, high-tech trade associations such the American Electronics Association (AeA), politically liberal blogs, and some elements of the Religious Right. Opposition to network neutrality regulations generally comes from large communication carriers, manufacturers of network equipment, and free-market advocacy organizations such as the Cato Institute.
...

Network neutrality is a contemporary controversy in the United States regarding the role that government should take relative to Internet access providers providing multiple levels of service for different fees. This controversy, which emerged following regulatory developments in the United States, is extremely complex, as it mixes technical, economic, ideological and legal arguments. In essence, network neutrality regulations proposed by Senators Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and Byron Dorgan (D-North Dakota)[5] and Representative Ed Markey (D-Mass.) bar ISPs from offering Quality of Service enhancements for a fee.
...

Gary Bachula, Vice President for External Affairs for Internet2, asserts that specific QoS protocols are unnecessary in the core network as long as the core network links are "over-provisioned" to the point that network traffic never encounters delay.
...

Those favoring neutrality include some content providers such as Google, Yahoo!, Microsoft, academics, Internet engineers, media reform and watchdog groups, musicians, bloggers, most of the major public and consumer advocacy groups including Free Press, Consumers Union and Common Cause as well as right- and left-wing grassroots groups such as the Christian Coalition of America and Moveon. They contend that any non-neutral scheme could allow ISPs to unfairly discriminate and control which data they prioritize, such as data from their own sponsors or media interests, resulting in a two-tiered Internet. They generally claim that passage of the COPE Act turns control of the Internet over to the carriers, who will then convert it into something resembling cable TV.
...

Complicating the discussion is the practical reality that the Internet is a highly federated environment composed of thousands of carriers, many millions of content providers and more than a billion end users - consumers and businesses. Prioritizing packets is complicated even if both the content originator and the content consumer use the same carrier. It is probably infeasible if the packets have to traverse multiple carrier networks, because the packet getting "premium" service while traversing network A may drop down to non-premium service levels in network B.

Further, the discussion has been very U.S.-centric and very terrestrial-network centered, even though the Internet is inherently global and mobility is the fastest growing source of new demand.

The immediate debate over "neutrality" does not capture the many dimensions of this topic; for example, should voice packets get higher priority than packets carrying email? Or, should emergency services, mission-critical, or life-saving applications, such as tele-medicine, get priority over spam?[16] Some further discussion of neutrality follows.

DAR
The issue is so complex that saying you are "for" or "against" the simple label of "net neutrality" may be premature and over simplified. Right now I am leaning for it.

D.

[Hogeye]

Darrel, the question as I put it is not whether you are for or against net neutrality, but whether you are for or against the government enforcing net neutrality. Like you, I think the technical issues are complex, and it is difficult to say when, or for what range of apps, net neutrality is a good thing. I do know that it is not a question for politicians and special interest groups to decide politically for everyone, so I voted "no." The government is the last entity I would want to make such decisions. I say let the market handle it. Pluralist decentralized voluntary decision-making beats winner-take-all politics every time IMO. I want people, distributively, to decide - not some government assholes.


Some orgs opposing net neutrality that Wiki didn't mention: Black Leadership Forum, the NAACP, the Congressional Black Caucus, the Urban League and the Southern Christian Leadership Council. Civil rights groups and limited government organizations such as Americans for Tax Reform, Reason Foundation, Institute for Liberty and Americans for Prosperity.

In essence, network neutrality regulations proposed by Senators Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and Byron Dorgan (D-North Dakota)[5] and Representative Ed Markey (D-Mass.) bar ISPs from offering Quality of Service enhancements for a fee.

This is it in a nutshell: Should the government forcibly prevent people/firms from offering "quality of service" enhancements (i.e. prioritization of latency-intolerant packets)?

I don't think so, and civil libertarians should be very suspicious:

The irony is that if "net neutrality" as lobbied by many of the PAC's, content providers, politicians and Slashdot/Digg users is legislated, then the FCC and other agencies will essentially be allowed to spy on all Internet traffic. In fact, the FCC - the same governmental organization charged with censoring media - would have to monitor every data bit in order to determine if any VoIP conversation had lower quality, if all email was routed the most efficiently, if any video had been tampered with by an ISP. Ad infinitum.

The double-speak is painfully obvious. The EFF has sued AT&T and other telecoms for allowing the NSA to eavesdrop on all of our phone conversations, emails, instant messages and now even social networks (see Wired magazine's coverage for more). Yet, to logistically monitor all of the data, the FCC would need to do precisely what privacy advocates have accused the NSA of doing. And oddly enough, the EFF also supports "net neutrality." - Tim Swanson, Network Nationalization: Net Neutrality In Action