Net Neutrality for Non-Science Majors

Most people assume that the Internet is a democratic free-for-all by nature - that it could be no other way. But the openness of the Internet as we know it is a byproduct of the fact that the network was started on phone lines. The phone system is subject to "common carriage" laws, which require phone companies to treat all calls and customers equally. They can't offer tiered service in which higher-paying customers get their calls through faster or clearer, or calls originating on a competitor's network are blocked or slowed.

These laws have been on the books for about as long as telephones have been ringing, and were meant to keep Bell from using its elephantine market share to squash everyone else. And because of common carriage, digital data running over the phone lines has essentially been off limits to the people who laid the lines. But in the last decade, the network providers have argued that since the Internet is no longer primarily run on phone lines, the laws of data equality no longer apply. They reason that they own the fiber optic and coaxial lines, so they should be able to do whatever they want with the information crossing them.

Just as an aside, I spent nearly two years of my life nearly 15 years ago as a regulatory lobbyist for an electric company, forcing me to sit through interminable hearings at the Texas Public Utility Commission. I cannot forget the detailed discussions in rate cases around electric and telephone companies rights to recover the costs of their infrastructure through regulated rates...so it sticks in my craw when they talk about their "ownership" of these assets - no doubt, as the telephone companies transition to private status, they build more and more of their infrastructure on their own dime. But a considerable amount of the copper wires they currently leverage today to provide DSL were built under the auspices and protections of their status as regulated monopolies, where in a sense, we the public all owned the infrastructure - it was a common good. They managed over the ensuing years through a series of legislative and regulatory victories and deals they struck where they did not live up to their end, to transfer those assets over to the private side where they could use them to produce unregulated income ... So file that one away in the back of your mind as you keep reading.

Under current law, they're right. They can block certain files or Web sites for their subscribers, or slow or obstruct certain applications. And they do, albeit pretty rarely. Network providers have censored anti-Bush comments from an online Pearl Jam concert, refused to allow a text-messaging program from the pro-choice group Naral (saying it was "unsavory"), blocked access to the Internet phone service (and direct competitor) Vonage and selectively throttled online traffic that was using the BitTorrent protocol.

When the network operators pull these stunts, there is generally widespread outrage. But outright censorship and obstruction of access are only one part of the issue, and they represent the lesser threat, in the long run. What we should worry about more is not what's kept from us today, but what will be built (or not built) in the years to come.

The essence of the argument to block traffic is that a privately-held resource is constrained and the owners "have to" block traffic in order to maintain service for all. They "have to" block traffic of a few abusers in order to protect the service levels of the rest of their customers. But this argument presupposes that they are managers of a scarce commodity, victims of fate, in a sense. They create the very conditions that constrain them, then argue for remedies that would further limit competition. Orwellian.

In point of fact, the arguments made against Net Neutrality are ultimately based on the availability of a critical infrastructure. The current owners of the infrastructure are banking on maintaining their hegemony over the new network - the bigger, faster one, yet to be built, which will be even more profitable. And they need protection in the laws - they need their leveraged position to be set into concrete - for their plans to come to fruition.

We hate when things are taken from us (so we rage at censorship), but we also love to get new things. And the providers are chomping at the bit to offer them to us: new high-bandwidth treats like super fast high-definition video and quick movie downloads. They can make it sound great: newer, bigger, faster, better! But the new fast lanes they propose will be theirs to control and exploit and sell access to, without the level playing field that common carriage built into today's network.

We can't allow a system of gatekeepers to get built into the network. The Internet shouldn't be harnessed for the profit of a few, rather than the good of the many; value should come from the quality of information, not the control of access to it.

So, if you want the telecoms to be more like the cables, relax and let things happen. But it doesn't have to be that way. Other companies in other industries with a legacy of working in a competitive market readily see a similar situation in a dramatically different way.

For some parallel examples: there are only two guitar companies who make most of the guitars sold in America, but they don't control what we play on those guitars. Whether we use a Mac or a PC doesn't govern what we can make with our computers. The telephone company doesn't get to decide what we discuss over our phone lines. It would be absurd to let the handful of companies who connect us to the Internet determine what we can do online. Congress needs to establish basic ground rules for an open Internet, just as common carriage laws did for the phone system.

The Internet, for now, is the type of place where my band's homemade videos find a wider audience than the industry's million-dollar productions. A good idea is still more important than deep pockets. If network providers are allowed to build the next generation of the Net as a pay-to-play system, we will all pay the price.

Kudos to Damian for making a complex issue plain. It's not an easy thing to do. Takes a creative mind, I guess, to cut through the bull to get to the heart of the matter.

I guess last Saturday was a big day for the Internet at the NY Times (the mainstream guys were off for the weekend?), because there was yet another article on the Op Ed pages, this one about the potential to use the Internet for an unsavory practice - digging into your private lives. The Already Big Thing on the Internet: Spying on Users. This article underscores the argument for a robust, well-regulated Internet industry. We need the Internet, but we also need protection from its abuse. Having a variety of providers to go to would provide a market-based protection against those who would abuse the trust of their customers and take advantage of their privileged positions as network owners by digging into our private files. (See Warrantless Wiretapping).

And, needless to say, from my perspective, metropolitan broadband addresses both these issues, infrastructure and security, because it provides more robust competition and an alternative means to build out critical information infrastructure.