This past week saw the resurrection of Net Neutrality as a divisive issue. Some folks (people like Google, and, well, us) are in favor of Net Neutrality, while other folks (primarily the ISPs) are against it. Not long after the FCC announced its intentions, six Republican senators, three of which who received quite a lot of money from AT&T, proposed an amendment to a bill to stop the FCC in its tracks. The senators later rescinded their amendment, saying that they were now open to a “dialogue” with the FCC.
Which brings up to today’s point: are there any angels in this debate? The Wall Street Journal recently, I guess, came to the defense of the ISPs: why should Google and whoever else be allowed to profit off the Internet Service Providers’ networks? Why should, say, Time Warner, subsidize Google’s online applications with its broadband network when it (Time Warner) doesn’t stand to make any money?
That’s how the Wall Street Journal characterizes it, at least.
The WSJ says that people like Google (I keep bringing up Google because it stands to benefit the most from an open Internet) want to maintain the status quo: it doesn’t want to have to pay Time Warner (or whoever) hand over fist just to keep it from shutting off access to Google Maps.
The WSJ also brings up how one of Google’s top lobbyists, Andrew McLaughlin, recently got a job in the Obama Administration as deputy head of telecom policy. The scary implication, of course, is that now Google will get whatever the hell it wants because one of its former guys is now in a proper policy-making position. If only things were that easy.
So, basically, I’ve just said nothing other than that this Net Neutrality business can get really complicated if you want to devote the time to it. I stand to benefit more from a Net Neutral world, so I’m in favor of that, which is only logical. You’re free to disagree, of course. In fact, I encourage it! More opinions expressed = a better chance of coming to a well-informed conclusion.
Are you confused about Net Neutrality? Who isn’t? Some people argue it is necessary for continued innovation on the Internet, and point to Comcast’s bandwidth metering
as a sign of things to come. Others claim that it is unnecessary regulation that will create unintended consequences in its wake. Opposing Views, the debate site that pits experts against each other to argue the pros and cons of the big questions of the day (read our launch review), last night put up a page on Net Neutrality. The page lays out the arguments pro and con for Net Neutrality, and then links to fuller arguments.
Marshaling the arguments for Net Neutrality are the Save The Internet Coalition, the Open Internet Coalition, and Public Knowledge. (It’s a freedom of speech issue, the ISPs are quasi-monopolies that cannot be trusted, innovation on the Web is at stake). Arguing against are the Cato Institute and Hands Off The Internet (it’s a technical issue best left to engineers, the cost of Net Neutrality will be passed onto consumers, regulation will backfire). Readers are then encouraged to vote on who is winning the argument, an add their own points of view, which can be elevated to the main discussion page.
Here’s a sample of some of the back-and-forth. The Open Internet Coalition argues that it is a fundamental principle:
Too often, the discussion of why we need to protect the open Internet degenerates into a stale debate about regulation versus the free market. In fact, it’s impossible for innovation to continue apace without some basic rules of the road to protect that innovation.
The open Internet was the principle leading the development of the Internet as the first open global communications network. And it helped drive the development of a host of Internet applications like Facebook, YouTube, and Skype. There would have been no motivation for the developers of these applications to have expended time, effort, and in some cases, their own financial security, in pursuit of their vision if they weren’t guaranteed their inventions would have been able to work over any Internet connection.
The Cato Institute warns of the difficulty of enforcing fuzzy concepts:
it’s important to remember that network neutrality is fundamentally a technical principle. Like any technical principle, it is fuzzy at the edges.
. . . Leading network neutrality proposals contain numerous ambiguities that would create uncertainty for everyone in the Internet industry. Here’s just one example: the most prominent network neutrality proposal of the 2006 congressional session, known as Snowe-Dorgan, defined a “broadband service provider” as “a person or entity that controls, operates, or resells and controls any facility used to provide broadband service to the public, whether provided for a fee or for free.” Does this mean that the owner of a coffee shop with a WiFi connection would be subject to FCC regulation of its firewall configuration? One would hope not, but that’s what the language seems to suggest. The same point can be made with respect to hotels, Internet cafes, airports, and even individuals who choose to make their home WiFi connection available to their neighbors.
Where do you stand on Net Neutrality? Go debate.
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