I find some sort of net neutrality desirable because the providers most of us are stuck with have an inherent conflict of interest when it comes to the type of content that goes through their pipes. Either they are phone companies which would rather sell you overpriced phone service instead of letting you use VOIP, or they are cable companies interested in selling you overpriced access to TV and movies.
The same problem arises whenever someone is ostensibly selling you one kind of good or service when they really want to sell you something else. A meatspace example is movie theaters which bar you from bringing outside food and drink in the hope of selling you their overpriced junk food. Locked cellphones sold by phone providers are another example.
In all these cases you can argue that the unwanted, overpriced product is subsidizing the desired product or service. That is not bad if the providers are transparent about it. Some phone companies let you buy unlocked phones at a higher price, which lets you see the size of the subsidy and decide whether you want it or not. Some restaurants let you bring your own bottle of wine for a fee. I donât know of theaters which let you pay extra to bring your own food or drink. And I wonder whether ISPs would let you pay a reasonable extra fee for a neutral connection.
Net neutrality, like climate change, is one of those political topics that is a documented target of astroturf campaigns by incumbent players (Comcast, AT&T) who want to ensure the gravy train keeps rolling:
So take any hysterical anti-regulation comments with a grain of salt.
Net Neutrality is about preventing ISPs from engaging in various monopolistic practices. This is about consumer protection. Nobody is suggesting that they be prevented from managing their networks, but ISPs should provide all bits that customers request with best effort and not deliberately slow-walk competitors services.
People seem to forget that the marginal cost of providing bits is very near to zero; once the infrastructure is built and the network admins get paid, it doesnât cost anything more if your network is running at 5% or 50% utilization. If the network is at 5% utilization and the ISP still decides to throttle a competitorâs service, that is a monopolist using their position to strangle innovation. That is what net neutrality is intended to address.
Iâm officially ignoring every comment on this thread where the Typepad account was just now created to comment on this thread. âis now following The TypePad Teamâ as of February 14th.
The network neutrality âissueâ was invented by AT&T. There was no discussion until Whiteacre announced that he would like to charge Google etc. for access to his customers. Of course, at the time, there was absolutely nothing stopping him from doing that, except that it would have been commercial suicide â so AT&T never did.
Network Neutrality, as in the end-to-end principle is just good engineering, because it means you donât have to do anything to the network to use it in new ways. Just modularity, nothing more, nothing less. We should all be in favour of it because itâs good engineering. Having a regulatory body enforce this good engineering practice will do more damage, in terms of restricting how the network can be used, than abandoning it would, not that it is at all likely to be abandoned anyway.
The guys arguing that net neutrality blocks innovation are presupposing a working marketplace of ISPs doing battle to capture customers. The idea of that happening isnât just absurd, but also adorably naive. I think, if anything, itâs getting more and more monopolistic. Building/maintaining these networks is very expensive. And the only reason a corporation is going to do it is if they think itâll raise next quarterâs earnings report.
One example of this going awry is the ISP Clearwire. They EXPLICITLY blocked ports that enables you to video/audio chat as a way to push PREMIUM INTERNET PACKAGES to their customers. âWant to do a completely normal thing on the internet? Well, PAY UP!â
I do agree that we have to be careful of the government having too much control (regulatory our otherwise) over the net though. Look at what happened with social networking and the governmentâs response in Egypt.
@Cjbreisch, âcompanies who have a vested interest in making you happy and making as much accessible as possibleâ.
Companies donât give a single droplet of shit about their customersâs happiness. All they care about is MAKING MONEY; the scope is to MAXIMIZE PROFITS. It may be easy to say you can always pick another ISP because you live in the major city, but a massive part of the world DOES NOT HAVE ACCESS TO SEVERAL ISPs.
Look at what has happened to the television and telephone industries. TV networks charge you extra for more channels. Telephone companies charge you extra for more free/cheap locations. Do you really want your ISP to charge you extra because you found a nice website on Google that isnât on your package? If net neutrality is hampering innovation, how has the Internet evolved so MASSIVELY over the last decade, with it being completely neutral?
I think itâs perfectly legitimate for a regulatory body enforce good engineering practice; you donât want to drive over a bridge or live in a house that isnât up to code. Computer networks are increasingly considered critical infrastructure, why shouldnât it be regulated where the public interest is concerned? [*]
[*] Of course there is a slippery slope argument here, so let me be clear I am 100% against any kind of censorship by government or corporation.
An interesting special case that hasnât really been mentioned is network security. Verizon DSL blocks outgoing port 25 to fight spam botnets; however this is incredibly annoying if you want to use a mail agent via a legitimate relay. Personally I think they should not be allowed to block ports without cause, but should be able to disconnect customers who have been pwned.
@Nicholascloud, âNet Neutrality ignores the fact that bandwidth is a scarce resource and as such is governed by the normal laws of economics;â
No it isnât, bandwidth is not a scarce resource. Fiber has very little bandwidth limitations. We have yet to saturate 100 Mbit Ethernet, let alone Gigabit Ethernet - all these are dirt cheap from chipsets to wires. The reason is ISPs making obscene profits; it costs them next to nothing / MB, because the infrastructure cost is amortized over a HUGE amount of traffic.
âit is simply price control re-branded.â
Exactly. Tell Comcast or any other ISP we donât want to be charged extra for some websites. We want a flat rate for access to the WHOLE Internet, or go to hell.
âAll pro Net Neutrality arguments ultimately boil down to: âwe want it, and at someone elseâs expense.ââ
No, we PAY for the bandwidth we get, whether we actually USE it or not. But donât just drop it to 20GB/month either. Few people use hundreds of GBs a month, but some DO. You can easily do the math and see that those are not an issue.
âNet Neutrality is immoral because it is a violation of property rights. c.f.â
No it isnât a violation of property rights. It has become a UTILITY, like power, water, etc. You canât easily switch power companies or water companies, same for the Internet: few people can easily switch them, if they can at all.
I can certainly appreciate the differing points of view here and understand why people feel the government has to stop in to protect the people from profit minded corporations and blatantly unfair treatment.
There are places where this has already happened and the politicians continue to stand up for the little guy. I think thereâs many people would be much happier there since the political environment more closely matches their own.
@Boatseller.wordpress.com, right, itâs easier to move to a completely difference country in a completely different place of the planet, on my OWN money and time. Uh, what? I am a citizen HERE, I have elected you to SERVE ME (politicians), not the companies Iâm already paying. By your logic 95% of the world would be in a separate country. Why? Because they arenât in the top 1% wealthy, so they should go somewhere else where itâs uniform. RIGHT.
Iâve listened to a lot of people make the sort of libertarian argument that well, they donât much like the idea of corporate monopolies controlling the internetâs physical infrastructure, but damn it! I donât want âThe Governmentâsâ filthy regulatory hands all over it either!
But none of this group has answered (or asked?) the obvious question: if not via public policy, how do you plan on avoiding monopolization? Shall we just ask them nicely?
Iâm curious how all the free market fans feel about the fact that the cable companies and phone companies built their networks through extensive use of regional monopolies, easements over public land, and government power of eminent domain? That was then, this is now?
As far as the impingement on net neutrality being a âwhat ifâ fantasy, have we already forgotten the spat between Netflix and Comcast two months ago? I donât want free bandwidth. If I use 10OMb/sec for an hour Iâm happy to pay for it. I just donât want to pay one rate for the Disney Chanel and another rate for WikkiLeaks. If the ISPs want to charge differential rates by content source, at the very least they need to give up their common carrier status, and give back all those lovely easements.
Great, a libertarian flashmob, all working out from their dogma that regulation must always be bad. I particularly like the comment that calls Atwood uninformed, although not a single commenter to that point had shown signs that they understood the scale of government subsidies to the telcos and why infrastructure is a special case where it can be argued that competition doesnât work. I mean, you could disagree with it and say that overall the pro-net neutrality arguments are outweighed by the anti-neutrality arguments, but instead we get to see the cretinous trait of our species called dogmatism and people arguing an ideological standpoint.
While I support Jeffâs right to express his opinion on his blog, I choose not to give him his advertising revenue if he is going to promote government regulations. I have deleted my RSS feed to this site.
The Brazil reference to me is what led me to your site, I made a couple of cryptic tweets just to remind of myself of my thought at the time. My premature conclusion on net neutrality is this, Matroyska dolls. Since infrastructural ownership isnât the final straw due to the symbiotic aspect of interactivity through choice as the internetâs root characteristic, Google shows a strength for cartographically creating a route regarding the seas of data. However, if tiered internet (which i personally have no issue with) is what net neutrality is, and the idea of slower internet being the real centralized type power leverage, then, the âcontainerâ industry will become the next Google, since it will be innovative though inspired by diametric opposite intention. What this means, containers will trick packet sniffers, and it will be a see saw bunch of recess BS, though will result in a Divx style legitimacy when itâs innovation to deceive creates an efficiency that is unintended initially.
I wish the myth of ISP competition would finally just die. Yes, for some people there may be more than a single ISP available. Those of you that live in affluent neighborhoods in suburbs of large cities probably have at least 2 providers, Iâll grant that.
Me, I live in the middle of Boston, right between Harvard Medical and Harvard Business and I have exactly 1 ISP to choose from, Comcast. If me, a user in one of the tech friendliest cities in the country canât get a choice of ISPs who can? If Comcast were to do anything I donât like Iâd have to grin and bear it.
I have no problem keeping the government out of the Internet the day we actually have a choice 4 or 5 providers in the big markets. Until then we treat ISPs like we treat electric companies, as regulated monopolies.
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I was frustrated with my waste service provider so I cracked open the phone book and found 3 advertisements, 2 for my existing provider. So I call up the 3rd and ask their rates. To get the process of switching over to them rolling they ask for my name, phone number and address. It turns out I was already in their system. It was the same company but advertising under a different company name for a different location in my area. What I thought was a choice turned out to not be one. I have 2 choices of internet providers in my area. Iâve used both and they both have bad customer service and poor billing practices. If we want to change anything it should be regulating their business practices, not throttling bandwidth. The internet is a utility in my opinion and should be treated as such since tax dollars are what got the whole thing in place to begin with. We the people paid for the infrastructure.