What is “Net Neutrality” anyway, and why should you care?

June 20, 2006 in Blogs, Various & Sundry

The term “net neutrality” has a variety of specific meanings, but generally refers to the idea that the service providers sending information over the Internet cannot discriminate what they send, and how fast they send it, based on content.

In the current political context, the term refers to an amendment proposed by Rep. Edward J. Markey to a House telecommunications bill that regulates Internet phone (Voice Over IP, or “VoIP”) and broadband suppliers. Markey’s amendment would have ensured that “Broadband network owners should not be able to determine who can and who cannot offer services over broadband networks or over the Internet.”

The telecomms want to be able to charge for “expedited” service. That is, they want to allow some websites a faster loading rate over their networks. (The network providers can distinguish the type of information that flows through their networks, and they can block or expedite information.) From the WaPo:

William L. Smith, chief technology officer for Atlanta-based BellSouth Corp., told reporters and analysts that an Internet service provider such as his firm should be able, for example, to charge Yahoo Inc. for the opportunity to have its search site load faster than that of Google Inc.

The problem?

Several big technology firms and public interest groups say that approach would enshrine Internet access providers as online toll booths, favoring certain content and shutting out small companies trying to compete with their offerings."Prioritization is just another word for degrading your competitor," said Gigi B. Sohn, president of Public Knowledge, a digital rights advocacy group. "If we want to ruin the Internet, we'll turn it into a cable TV system" that carries programming from only those who pay the cable operators for transmission.

[snip]

Consumer groups wonder, for example, how any Web start-up that might want to challenge an incumbent could expect to outspend it to get top or even equal performance over a network charging for the privilege.

Another argument against Net Neutrality is that it discriminates against information passed on the Internet that is more “valuable.” Medical records, for example, under “pure” Net Neutrality, are weighed equally with porn or blogs and travel the network at the same speed. However, Markey’s amendment allowed for valuing certain types of information over others. Network operators could prioritize medical records over porn or blogs, but they couldn’t discriminate among hospitals or medical networks.

In essence, network providers want to “push” content at the consumers, the same way newspapers and television push content at consumers. In this model, consumers can choose only among a pre-screened subset of programs or articles. In the Internet, this translates into the network provider choosing for you a subset of websites you can effectively and quickly download and view.

In a recent debate (recap and partial transcript here) between a Net Neutrality proponent – Amazon’s Paul Misener – and an opponent – former Clinton staffer and telecomm “sellout” Mike McCurry – the philosophical ideas and real-world market effects were bandied about, and, in my opinion, made it clear which side to favor. You’ll recognize most of his arguments – I’ve already included them in this post, but Misener is pretty durn elegant.

Misener:

Tiered pricing for access is something we support. Amazon pays a lot more than ‘Joe’s-Internet-retail.com’ simply because we use more capacity… That makes perfect sense to us. You pay for that capacity. But the important component here is that once the consumer has paid for his or her capacity at their home they ought to be able to use that capacity however they want.There’s a fundamental misconception here that somehow delivery of video over the Internet is just like it is over cable TV, over satellite, over broadcast or, frankly, like delivery of content through newspapers or magazines. Those models have always been about ‘push.’ Somebody decides — who either owns the pipe or owns the newspaper — what content goes in their and pushes it out to consumers and they can choose to read it or not.

That’s not the way the Internet works. The Internet does not have all this content in there unless the user asks for it. When you hit return on your browser it actually sends out a ‘get command’ to the server; it’s a very illustrative name for a command in computer code. It actually says ‘get’– that means now send me the file. That file never gets into the pipes owned by the network operators that Mike represents unless their customer who’s paid for that access asks for it. So we’re not clogging their pipes at all. We’re only providing the content that we hope our joint customers want to see.

When we get to the point of discrimination, there’s also this misnomer when we talk about things like wanting to prioritize videos so things don’t get clogged… We don’t want that either. We don’t think that that’s wrong for the network operators to be able to prioritize certain types of content. So if they want to prioritize telemedicine over data files that makes perfect sense. Let them do it. We’re not opposed to that. The [Net Neutrality] rules that we propose would not do that. Our concern is discriminating among the source or ownership of that content. So if the network operators are put in a position of favoring the Mayo Clinic over Johns Hopkins, that’s a problem. That’s the discrimination. That’s when the network operators become the HMO.

[snip]

If you want to discriminate and favor telemedicine offer data files, that’s fine. But don’t pick the Mayo Clinic over Johns Hopkins. That’s pretty easy. And a complaint system where Johns Hopkins can go to the Commission and say Mayo Clinic was given a better deal than we. That makes perfect sense.

I’d argue that what the telecomms are asking to do would hurt the free market by crippling innovation. In a sense, telecomms are asking for the power to regulate the Internet. I’m not against regulation in general – I think, for example, it should be illegal to disseminate child porn over the Internet – but I don’t think giant corporations should have to power to regulate.

One of the great things about the Internet – besides its unfettered freedom – is that it’s about as close to a meritocracy as you get in our society. The best content wins the most clicks.

The net providers want to take that meritocracy away and replace it with a plutocracy – an Internet where those with the most money win the most clicks. We saw what happened with radio when money took over. You see it in television too. Homogenous pap meant to sell but not offend, meant to entertain but not challenge.

Later on I’ll give you a scorecard for Montana candidates on who supports Net Neutrality and who’s against it. Right now I know Monica Lindeen favors it, and Denny Rehberg prefers the telecomms.