Why We Need Net Neutrality
Imagine attaching a wireless router to your cable modem and being charged with a federal crime for doing so. Before the principles of network neutrality were enunciated by the FCC, AT&T did just that. The telephone company repeatedly warned customers that using Wi-Fi for home-networking constituted “theft of service” and could be considered a federal offense.
Nearly all Americans (99.6%, at last count) receive broadband service from either a phone company or a cable company. This, in antitrust terms, is a duopoly — a virtual monopoly that restricts consumer choice and provides no incentives for competition.
1. A History of Discriminatory Conduct
Incumbent telephone and cable operators, who maintain a government-regulated monopoly for hard-wired connections to the home, have a sordid history of discriminating against content providers that they deem “unacceptable” or threatening to their business models. Only the continued vigilance of individual users, non-profits, and corporations, all of whom oppose network discrimination, will prevent further biased conduct on the part of the cable-and-telco monopolies.
In 2004, a telephone company was fined by the FCC for blocking the Vonage VoIP service. In 2005, Canadian telecom giant Telus blocked access to a pro-labor union website. That year Time Warner’s AOL service blocked all emails that mentioned “dearaol.com”, a campaign that opposed AOL’s pay-to-send email scheme. And in 2007, Comcast began degrading subscribers’ BitTorrent traffic — without warning — by forging packets to simulate dead connections.
The Wall Street Journal and other communications carrier apologists repeatedly argue that regulation of their network management tactics is unnecessary. The Internet has never required regulation, they argue, yet the very cases above testify to behavior typical of government-regulated monopolists. And FCC officials routinely conflate network neutrality with excessive regulation when, in fact, it aims to eradicate a raft of regulations, prevent discrimination, and ensure free speech for all.
2. What Is Net Neutrality?
Net neutrality simply means “no discrimination.”
It prevents network operators from blocking, speeding up, or slowing down content based upon:
- source
- ownership
- or destination
Let’s use the so-called “Fairness Doctrine” as an example. Some Congressional Democrats espouse resurrecting an equal time “principle” that would regulate speech on radio, television (broadcast, cable ,and satellite), and the Internet. The doctrine mandates that commercial content distributors (e.g., radio stations) present opposing viewpoints whether the market supports such activities or not. In the past, content distributors chose to avoid all controversial material for fear of running afoul of regulators. The doctrine had the net effect of suppressing free speech and was subsequently eliminated by the Reagan administration.
The Fairness Doctrine equates to network discrimination — the very opposite of net neutrality — whereby the government or its proxies, in this case the telco and cable monopolies, dictate content rather than letting the market decide.
For example, consider a hypothetical telco monopoly called AT&V. Let’s pretend that AT&V created its own search engine. While not nearly as efficient as Google or Yahoo!, AT&V figures that for reasons of “Fairness,” it should be able to discriminate against other search engines. For that purpose, the provider decides to slow down Google and Yahoo’s search results so that AT&V’s inferior search appears to work just as quickly or even “faster.”
The internet will survive and grow without the “help” of more federal regulation.
This article is absolute nonsense.
Cable companies and telephone companies are in a head-to-head battle for customers.
Each side realizes the folly of discriminating on the basis of content, so there are absolutely no such limitations. One can obtain the same internet content regardless of the provider.
The only distinction is that customers may choose the bandwidth they desire and can reasonably afford. Both cable companies and telephone companies must be careful to allocate bandwidth in their respective networks. Telecommunications firms simply cannot allocate the financial resources to expand networks to provide the same bandwidth to everyone all at once. To do so would essentially drive them into insolvency. To maintain profitability, they must increase bandwidth incrementally.
When has federal regulation ever helped the free market?
marc:
What you wrote was absolute nonsense as you seem to be grossly unclear on the concept in play.
What net neutrality means is that your internet provider cannot charge you more based up the content you access.
If I am paying for a 10mb/S connection what business is it of my provider if I want to access CNN/Fox/ or YouTube, or if I wish to even use it at its maximum capacity at all?
Do you REALLY want to go back to 56/k speeds next time you try to watch streaming video where the content provider will not pay extra money to my cable company so I am denied access to that content at the same speed I am already paying for?
What right do they have to tell me I can use Google for free and not Microsoft Live Search without paying extra?
You, in your foolish ignorance, wish to flush that freedom right down the toilet, not only for yourself, but for all of us.
At the end of the day this is nothing more than a money grab by the big ISPs that will result is higher internet access fees and a worsening level of service unless you pay more.
Yes, Cable and DSL are competing head-to-head in many markets but not all of them.
I can’t get anything but Time Warner for a broadband ISP where I live and that is not likely to change anytime in the near future.
“The Internet has never required regulation, they argue, yet the very cases above testify to behavior typical of government-regulated monopolists. And FCC officials routinely conflate network neutrality with excessive regulation when, in fact, it aims to eradicate a raft of regulations, prevent discrimination, and ensure free speech for all.”
The Fairness Doctrine, so-called, sounded all very well and fine in theory, but it was only in the result of its enforcement that we came to see its failure.
The Fairness Doctrine was intended to promote civility and to enforce a wider distribution of views. In practice, it helped crowd out less familiar views (think of the BBC in the UK) and to burden small businesses.
I think it is more likely that net neutrality will turn out more like the Fairness Doctrine.
Perhaps the problem is rather that, in creating the concept of “monopolies”, we then set ourselves up to “fix” them.
The assumption is that some company will become so large and unequal that it will distort everything without government intervention; but in technology situations rapidly change, and what is dominant now will change tomorrow with new technology. In that case, it is the government that will distort innovation and variety.
I don’t dispute that some abuses occur, but it is easier to alter the policies of companies than it is the policies of governments.
One way to change companies is through massive criticism. That often works with companies because they have customers. Governments have camps, mainly two, and only when one camp begins to lose ground to the other will the camp losing ground think about change.
Another way is through competition. Unhappy customers plus competition equals a challenge to the monopoly. But most of all, rapid technological change in a dynamic society often renders a large company a dinosaur in a decade.
Once the FCC has the power to impose regulation on the Internet, it will not leave it alone, and it seems to me that the Australian example, as in the link below, is the greater danger. Don’t be so sure the First Amendment will make a difference. Since the ratification of the Bill of Rights, the First Amendment has protected print, but at one time or the other has heavily regulated radio, television and perhaps soon, the Internet.
Here’s the link I mentioned:
Plan in Australia to block Websites
Anthony, Mr. Ross is equating the actions of the carriers with the Fairness Doctrine, not net neutrality with the Fairness Doctrine. Net neutrality should mean that we users have equal access to whatever content we want. I pay for bandwidth from my provider — what I do with my bandwidth is up to me. If there is something impinging on my decisions, I want it removed. The companies could do that on their own, consumers might be able to force it, if there is actual consumer choice, but in the end, the government, at the behest of voters, must protect and enhance my freedom. The Fairness Doctrine is not intended to protect or enhance my freedom.
Key is defining what net neutrality actually means in the nuts and bolts. The fewer words, exceptions, etc, the better. Make it 2nd Amendment-esque. 50 words or less…
Maybe a GSE to own all the parts of the network (LOL), except the last mile. Just kidding.
Your argument sounds like the same ones the Progressives used 100 years ago against the railroads. In the end, all the government & the ICC did was cripple what was once a one of the most dynamic & technologically innovative sectors of the economy. It wasn’t until the Penn Central fiasco that led to deregulation that returned the railroads to profitability and the success they are today. No surprise, the Democrats (led by Jim Oberstar D-Minn) are leading the charge to re-regulate them.
The facilities provided by ISPs and others are private property. They have the moral right to set the terms of their use, whether in cost, bandwidth consumption or any other aspect.
They have, of course, no incentive to regulate content access and don’t try to do so.
The ‘Net Neutrality’ movement is a control-oriented idea, not one compatible with the free market.
If I were a conspiracy fan, I’d think the author is just such an advocate of control, attempting to sell the idea to the opposition on the basis of favorable sounding ideas. At the very least, he’s very confused about what is an actual free market. The important portion of that phrase is the first word.
I think some of you are extremely confused and paranoid. The underpinnings of net neutrality have more to do with equal access as opposed to who/what gets accessed. The argument is simply that normal users who send some email or do a bit of shopping aren’t subsidising the habits of the few who watch and/or share streaming video all day long and eating the available bandwidth.
Where ISP’s are concerned, they’re saying that they can give customers say 1 MBPS, but the caveat is that the customers are also playing fair as well. A small group of customers watching streaming video all day or downloading bit-torrents effectively eats the bandwidth that is normally apportioned relatively equally to all. The “content control” stuff is simply that the ISP would like the right to slow down the streaming video feed when other customers are online trying to shop or send pics of the kids to grandma. This is fair to the majority of customers even if it seems unfair to the bandwidth hogs.
You’re an ISP. You have 100 customers. 97 of them are normal families. 3 of them are running peer video sharing with thousands of people worldwide downloading. They are eating your bandwidth. They are also eating the bandwidth of your other 97 customers, who are experiencing delays and griping at your support staff accordingly. What, precisely, should you do about this?
One way of attacking the bandwidth hog/abuse problem is to charge for the bandwidth used. This way those who are the hogs can pay to be hogs. The rest of us are left alone. Net neutrality seeks to limit how an ISP can respond to bandwith hogging, and the usual scary story by supporters includes the above utter nonsense about Dominos pizza and restrictions on political sites. I’m not sure how one logically progresses from bandwidth usage issues to political suppression.
On the other hand we all know that an ISP will charge you $10 per second if they can get by with it. Obviously letting ISPs do as they please solves nothing; what starts out as a necessary action soon morphs into a profit center. What would be nice is to address the overall bandwidth apportionment problems without getting extreme on EITHER side of the issue.
Probably the correct approach is to simply do an annual bandwidth averaging, and set an upper limit of say avg + 25%. If you stay within bandwidth averages, nothing changes in your world. If you go above, you pay for the privelege. This lets the average family access the net as they will, downloading from itunes and watching the odd movie here and there and so on. On the other hand bandwidth hogs who are running peer to peer sharing for downloading videos worldwide, let THEM pay for what they use. Why should I pay for it? Or you?
Net Neutrality is a hypothetical solution in search of a hypothetical problem. Nobody seems to be able to make a compelling case for it, and even *fewer* seem to understand what it’s really all about. In toto the whole issue is a 10-foot-tall neon sign flashing: “So what?”
Fortunately for us, persuasion and analysis are not this particular author’s strong suit. He even manages to destroy his entire thesis in the last paragraph with this rather telling analogy:
<>
For those of you unfamiliar with American politics and financial institutions, Fannie & Freddy were the American government’s pet financial instititutions (known as Government Sponsored Enterprises). Both of them recently blew up in a $200-billion super nova of government-supervised incompetence and idealism. It turned out “non-discriminatory,” and “fair” lending practices could only defeat market forces for so long before a massive market correction and a worldwide economic panic.
If this is the best example for recommending Net Neutrality, count me out, waayyyyyy out.
Agree totally……..thanks for such a clearly written article on this issue.
#11 Edward,
If net neutrality is “hypothetical”, then why are mobile devices locked down tight as drums? Can’t change carriers, can’t run applications I want to, can’t run wi-fi, can’t get competitive pricing plans.
That is because the few mobile carriers that survive are generally uninterested in competition, free markets or allowing application providers to monetize their platforms.
Net neutrality exists, barely, because the fcc came down on the gse’s (the telcos) when they tried to ban wireless routers, and vpn use, and voip telephone services. If the fcc hadn’t done that we’d never have had google or skype or digg or facebook.
If it were up to the telcos, basically a reformulated Ma Bell, we would most likely have the internet equivalent of cable tv, with a few approved content providers.
And there would have been no internet boom. How sad would that be?
Wow – looks like you guys agree with the liberals on this one. Actually, I think most people that don’t happen to own a telecommunications giant agree on this.
What is wrong with an ISP doing what they want? If they are up front about it they do what they do and you can go some where else.
TO: All
RE: It’s Really….
…REALLY, quite simple….
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[Is there a storm coming?]
TO: Andrew Ian Dodge
RE: Yeah….
Until all the ISPs behave like Google.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
What is this guy whining about? I did not like my wireless carrier so I switched and have been happy for ten years with the same company for my whole family. We do not need this trojan horse from the government. Run from it with your digital life and grow up.
“Net Neutrality” is “Net Socialism”.
A “technology executive for a Fortune 500 financial services company” seems unlikely to be a credible reference for understanding the ramifications of such legislation from both a pollicy or technical perspective.
NN is about control. NN is about restricting what companies can do with their own property. NN is about constraining the private marketplaces ability to set their own terms and conditions of business. NN is intrusive cyber-socialism.
Yes, certain companies can behave in objectionable ways, sometimes illegal, but that does not justify condemning the entire marketplace to fascistic controls that have no basis in our Constitution. Their are technical ways to circumvent practically any unconscionable constraints placed upon a service by the ISP, and these ways, as well as standard channels, will ensure that such behavior is lambasted – THAT’S how you solve the ‘behavior problem’ of certain ISPs.
No competition translates to this on an everyday basis.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,473924,00.html
Text Rip-Off? Pricey Messages ‘Cost Virtually Nothing’ to Carriers
“In 2008, 2.5 trillion messages were sent from cell phones worldwide, up 32 percent from the year before, according to the Gartner Group and reported by The New York Times. But, what also rose in the last three years was the price — doubling from 10 to 20 cents per message while the industry consolidated from six major carriers to four.”
If we had true competition in fiber-to-the-home (via required wholesaling) or in mobile, none of this would be an issue.
But we don’t have a free market in either situation!
BTW Burp, TCP/IP is inherently net neutral. Requiring carriers abide by the three rules Ross describes is simply following TCP/IP. What carriers have done in the recent past (Comcast for instance) is violate that neutrality with behavior like forging TCP RST packets if they detect BitTorrent.
Is it so onerous to ask the cable/telco monopolies to simply enforce TCP/IP?
“TCP/IP is inherently net neutral”
This is actually a nonsense statement. TCP/IP is a transport/routing protocol and has no concept of such policy-level issues as NN.
“Is it so onerous to ask the cable/telco monopolies to simply enforce TCP/IP?”
Again, another nonsense statement. “Enforcing” TCP/IP is to simply adhere to the protocol, which every entity connected to a network built upon it must do, else they will not be able to operate.
Blocking various application-layer protocols (such as Bittorrent) is a service-policy issue, and entirely within the authority of an ISP to do – to moderate bandwidth consumption, for example.
When you purchase Internet connectivity from an ISP, you are purchasing a service, which has terms & conditions. Commonly, for household services, you may not establish a publicly accessible server (eg. for gaming or filesharing), a policy motivated by a desire to moderate bandwidth consumption, again.
The overriding principle here is that all these issues are a legitimate part of a private business establishing terms & conditions of service. NN violates this most essential aspect of private property rights – hence NN is cyber-socialism.
http://www.pbs.org/cringely/pulpit/2006/pulpit_20060209_000883.html
“I asked Bob Kahn, the father of TCP/IP, and he made the point that the Internet is a Best Effort network and if you change that, well, you no longer have the Internet.”
With all due respect, I’ll trust Kahn rather than you, Burp.
If the ISP had capped traffic and not specific protocols, it likely would not have run into problems with EFF and such. Because it targeted Bittorrent only, that is why it ran into trouble.
Sure; Next it’ll be illegal to post any comments until there is one comment from every sex, race, religion, known to man.
We need a “2nd Ammendment” for our internet rights.
TO: Cybergeezer
RE: Heh
You already HAVE a 2d Amendment.
What you apparently lack is the will to use it.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
Another good article from MIT’s Technology Review.
http://www.technologyreview.com/web/17245/page1/
Net Neutrality: Lessons from the Past
An Internet without net neutrality might become as fragmented as U.S. mobile phone networks, say some observers. But history may hold even richer lessons.
“Critics claim that without net neutrality, the Internet will be plagued by the same problems as the cell-phone networks: an oligopoly will emerge, innovators will be edged out, and technology will stagnate.
But some experts say history offers even more compelling lessons for those envisioning an Internet where content providers can pay to get their messages to customers as fast as possible.
Transformations in the telegraph industry in the mid-19th century provide one scenario for what can happen when owners of large networks extend their influence. During the Civil War, Western Union began controlling telegraph trunk lines across the country [and achieved] a near-monopoly by 1866… it focused on serving business customers, forgoing innovations that would have made it more affordable for the press or private citizens to communicate by telegraph…
“There does seem to me to be a historical analogy” with the current telecommunications marketplace, says Paul Starr, a social historian at Princeton University, who wrote about telegraphy and other early forms of telecommunications in his 2005 book, The Creation of the Media. “In both cases, the incumbents that dominate networks have tried to exploit their existing position rather than innovating.”
…”It doesn’t take much imagination to imagine Verizon treating their Internet property just like their cell phone network — short-sightedly milking it for all it’s worth, at great expense to the public, and to the future,” Glass wrote.
Mark Donovan, a senior analyst at M:Metrics, a Seattle market research firm that monitors mobile commerce, agrees. “The cable and long-distance companies would like to look a little more like mobile phone companies, in terms of their ability to control traffic on the Internet,” he says…
Laws and regulation always simplify problems. While most of this sounds like a good idea there is no way to know some of the undesired effects it may have in the years to come.
When me and my IT friends first got broadband we all set up Warez servers in our homes to share software, music, movies. As time went on some of our neighbors started to experience slow connect speeds. Our local subnet and router was basically overwhelmed. Largely due to the traffic we were generating. Some of us were moving an incredible amount of data 24/7. Once the complaints from paying customers started coming in, my ISP started to block ports to top me from doing this. Sadly it was the correct choice.
Fast forward 10 years to today. Several company’s buy excess bandwidth to distribute their product. Because the company who hosts their website charges for the amount of data that is downloaded. If you have not ever hosted a website, you would be socked at the price of bandwidth. Currently it averages 1-3 dollars a gig.
I guess my point is, I want to preserve my connection speeds. There is little choice but to let the person who controls the lines have some control. To protect against abuses. I suspect that there free markets can solve almost everything Net Neutrality hopes to accomplish and there is always the courts.
TO: All
RE: Why?!???!???!!!!!
Probably because we have people like Google and Amy Alkon and Daily Kos and Charles Johnson….who….given a mind….tend to ‘kill’ people who disagree with them.
Imagine that capability of silencing people who disagree with them, as ‘managed’ by a government agency.
Regards,
Chuck(le)
[If you can't beat them, 'kill' them. -- totalitarian view of Life, the Universe and everythink]
24. Chuck Pelto
Stay on topic, your lordship.
TO: C-Geezer
RE: On Target
I am ‘on-target’.
What’s YOUR problem with that?
Happy New Year,
Chuck(le)