Should the US Government Pass Net Neutrality Laws?
The Internet is an international, largely decentralized network that has heretofore avoided restrictions and gatekeepers in order to avoid impeding the Internet's growth and continued function (a principle called "net neutrality"). In a purported response to heavy usage across their "last-mile" infrastructure, usually by peer-to-peer file sharers, ISPs are increasingly moving to support tiered pricing or data transfer caps. Opponents argue that there is plenty of bandwidth, and in many cases, moves against network neutrality stem from anticompetitive motives, since streaming video competes with ISPs' cable television paid services, as well as repression of free speech.
Jack Blogger
The US government (and all country governments, for that matter) should enforce net neutrality. Not only does net neutrality preserve a sense of fairness and equality among all of the Internet's users, it is critically important to the functioning of the Internet. Companies that oppose NN do so because they have something to exploit from an non-neutral Internet, and politicians who do are unaware of the disastrous impact that making ISPs gatekeepers of the Internet would have on a system that we have come to depend on.
Jill Blogger
I agree that fairness and equality are important principles, and this is why I believe ISPs should be free to exert some control over predatory usage by some of their customers. File sharers and heavy video users, in particular, suck up bandwidth, and other "normal" users end up subsidizing the exploiters' bandwidth. The current system does not factor in the cost of bandwidth, so companies like Google (and YouTube) enjoy the benefits of high traffic without having to bear the costs beyond server usage.
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Jack Blogger
Well, I agree with you on one point: some Net users are more active users than others. But penalizing those who use more bandwidth becomes a slippery-slope argument - do we really want ISPs to regulate what sort of online behavior merits higher fees? What might seem like a fair set of rules the first go around could devolve into invasive policing by ISPs, eager to "catch" users to justify making them pay more.
The closest analogy to me seems to be health care. In our current (broken) health care system, some people use more medical services than others. Insurance companies regularly discriminate against patients (based on their medical history). They also regularly boot customers for any set of arbitrary rules, but mostly because they're no longer profitable. Coverage rules are incredibly complex, and even covered people live in constant fear of having their coverage denied. Is this the sort of system we would want to replicate when it comes to Internet access, which is becoming almost as essential as decent healthcare?
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Jill Blogger
Net neutrality and socialized medicine can both easily become prey to the same phenomenon: the tragedy of the commons. When a certain resource is infinitely available at a fixed price, it becomes victim to abuse. BitTorrent users gobble up about a third of Internet bandwidth, and expect the other two-thirds of Net users to subsidize their outlandish usage of the same pool of available bandwidth. Additional capital expenditure to expand bandwidth is gobbled up by heavy users. And I'm not talking only about end users. Websites and Web services quickly capitalize on end-users' access to greater bandwidth in developing new media-rich and data-intensive applications and services. Can you imagine what would happen if your local Wal-Mart were to offer a "buy whatever you want, just pay the $100 entrance fee"? There would be a mad run on everything on the shelf, with grown adults plowing over each other with their overstuffed carts! The only reason bandwidth hasn't yet been abused to the same extent is that a majority of users don't know about high-dev video streaming, BitTorrent, etc.
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Jack Blogger
We're talking about data here, not perishable goods (I appreciate a good analogy every now and then, but come on!) ISPs run on a very high-margin, low-cost business, unlike just about any participant in the food supply chain. Investing in additional capacity is not something ISPs are pressed to do on a regular basis, and the idea that they're nearing their bandwidth breaking point is the stuff of lobbying myth. The only reason they're pressing for abandonment of net neutrality is because there's more money to be made, on a basis that seems persuasive to most of their customers. Their customers are used to paying by-the-minute for cell phones - why shouldn't they accept by-the-MB-transferred for Internet access? At least tiering for various levels of usage is something that most consumers are comfortable with, conceptually, at least. Except, of course, that the Internet has become synonymous with the "all you can eat" model, even with VOIP, so that's going to be an enormous change to try to pull on consumers.
I'd like to bring up a different issue: the ISPs as gateways in the TCP process, interrupters of the end-to-end principle that has served the Internet remarkably successfully so far. Do we really feel confident enough in ISPs own standards to do a better job than TCP? Granting them the ability to decide who gets their packets, in what order, and up to what limit, violates this fundamental principle of TCP.
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Jill Blogger
I'll grant you that allowing ISPs the ability to manipulate the "last mile" transmission to their subscribers is a departure from the status quo, and we don't really know how the change will pan out. But since ISPs' jurisdiction is just at that final step, I can't imagine that their intervention would wreck the functioning of the Internet in any appreciable way.
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Jack Blogger
Unfortunately, we do have a glimpse of how a network non-neutral world might work, because some ISP heads have told us so. The heads of BellSouth, AT&T and Verizon have all said they'd charge not only certain users more, but the actual websites, too. So, one site could load faster than another, effectively shutting out the latter since slow load-times are a deterrent to Internet usage. This stifles innovation (how would a great start-up site that improves on the old get access to its users?) and allows ISPs to control what their subscribers see based on how much they've paid the ISPs.
And it's not only about extracting more money from Websites. ISPs have tried to regulate the content of data transmitted through their service, as well. Verizon prevented the transmission of pro-choice text messages until the NYT exposed them, and AT&T cut off its subscribers from seeing part of a webcast of Pearl Jam because its lead singer, Eddy Vedder, was too critical of George W. Bush. And in a few instances that recall communist-style censorship, ISPs cut off access to anyone that challenged the ISPs' market position (Shaw, Telus, AOL).
I guess, in my final note, it depends on whether you believe we can depend on the marketplace to be self-regulating. I suppose I've seen enough examples of them not to strongly believe that NN needs to be codified and enforced by the government.
Thank you for an eye-opening dyalogue; I understand better where you're coming from now.
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Jill Blogger
I have to admit, the thought of ISPs stepping in to regulate the transmission of data it doesn't like is a bit frightening. I'm not sure I see eye-to-eye with all the ISP heads myself. I didn't know that this sort of thing was happening. I'm not comfortable, either, with ISPs charging websites for quicker transmission of their data, although it makes sense from their perspective--big Websites have deep pockets.
I agree this dyalogue has been thought provoking, and I find myself agreeing with you on some points. I still do, however, think heavy users of the Net (like the BitTorrent folks) should have to pay more. But I will readily agree that, strangely enough, we're a bit closer with respect to our thinking than I had originally thought.
Thank you for inviting me to this dyalogue!
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In this dyalogue...
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Jack Blogger is not a real person, but imagine he was. Joe works as a Web consultant for Intertubes Design (his day job), and blogs at HappyLittleBloggerJack.com (his evening & weekends job). Jack's drawing skills are on full display in Little Jack Horner, his comic strip syndicated in 230 local newspapers across the U... Full ProfileYou can also find Jack Blogger at:
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Jill Blogger is not a real person, but if she were, she would be a full-time blogger who focuses on business and technology issues. Jill is the editor of FemaleTechBloggers.com, and contributes to BusinessTechBlog and TechnologyBlogReview. In her free time, she adores gardening and hopes to launch a gardening blog one of these days... Full ProfileYou can also find Jill Blogger at:
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