Net Neutrality
Tue Jul 25 21:18:36 EDT 2006
Everyone has something to say about net neutrality. Some of them are clearly misinformed and some of them just plain don't know what they are talking about. So as long as everyone else is yacking, I'll throw in my two cents too.
My biggest gripe is the analogies people use. They focus on the problem from a particular perspective. The idea of the Internet being transport is tossed around frequently. While everyone likes that 1 stamp will get a letter to anywhere in the country, the anti-neutrality people point out that legislating a one size fits all approach would rule out a FedEx, or UPS. Here is where I have a problem with this analogy. For a package, the sender decides what class of service is used. I want faster, or more reliable, I pay extra to get the quality of service I want. The problem with the Internet comparison is that people have been brainwashed by content providers that the content is pushed to people. It doesn't work that way. The client is in charge. They come to the server and ask for something, which the server provides. The content providers pay for Internet connectivity (not always with money) and they sit their data there and wait for clients to come ask for it. Clients pay for Internet connectivity too. If this mail analogy were correct, a non-neutral Internet provider would charge a premium to the customer depending on what content they were requesting. If you want good stuff you pay extra, if you want our stuff (ours meaning from the ISP's content producing friends) it is cheaper. If this reminds you of the commercial describing how Google wants the consumer to pay for the Internet you are on the right track. The transport people want to flip the economics around and charge content providers an extortion fee in order to play on their street. This is not a technical issue, it is an economics problem.
Bruce Schneier has said that problems are best solved when those with the capability to solve a problem are those economically motivated to do so. If an ISP provides poor network connectivity to customers, they will rebel. Now, what the anti-neutrality people want is to make the bad connection a property not of the transporter, but of the destination. Changing ISPs doesn't necessarily solve the problem of a bad connection, and its not the ISP's fault, so there is less chance of loosing customers. The ISP also gains immense power to make or break particular network destinations of their clients, and that power means new revenue streams from their favored business destinations.
Like most things, legislation is not black and white. I could come up with a whole range of ISP behavior and various forms of favoritism and if I asked for a vote people would be all over the map about what was acceptable. Legislation simply draws lines (often blurry lines) and defines economic incentives to stay on a particular side of the line. Regardless of the laws, companies are in business to make money, so they will make money, or they will quit being in the business. My biggest clue to the debate comes because the Internet providers are against network neutrality and consumers are generally in favor of it. Hmm. The providers say "don't legislate unless there is a problem." And the consumer advocates say "if we don't legislate there will be a problem." Perhaps the whole world has watched how the Government, Microsoft and the public interact. If you don't fix a problem before it arrives, is too late?
