Musings Upon Network Neutrality, as Prompted by a Disappointing but not Wholly Unexpected Announcement from American Telephone and Telegraph

Wherein Your Faithful Correspondent Tries to Reconcile the Capitalist and Socialist Parts of His Economically Confused Mind

by folkbum

Net neutrality is in the news again, with the Federal Communications Commission considering making that the policy in spite of some court rulings and the intentions of a corporate-funded Congress. Net neutrality is, broadly, the notion that the whole of the internet should be a level playing field, with internet service providers considered to be "common carriers" who cannot discriminate or differentiate in the way they provide services.

There are two things related. One of them is similar to what ATT is about to do with the data plans for its smart phones like the iPhone--something that's weighing on me, personally, as I am seriously considering finally upgrading to an iPhone this summer once the 4Gs are out. The short answer is that ATT is going to be charging more of customers who use more data:

One of the new AT&T plans will cost $25 per month and offer 2 gigabytes of data per month, which AT&T says will be enough for 98 percent of its smart phone customers. Additional gigabytes will cost $10 each.

A second plan will cost $15 per month for 200 megabytes of data, which AT&T says is enough for 65 percent of its smart phone customers. If they go over, they'll pay another $15 for 200 megabytes.

Except for the cheater-y math in plan B ($30 for 400 MB is a ripoff if plan A gets you 2 GB for $25), this is an idea that is reasonable, and one I have some sympathy for when expanded beyond the idea of mere smart phones to broadband or internet access in general. Though the calls to dump your iPhone and boycott ATT have already started, I think that's ridiculous. Like, say, electricity or even land-line phones, if you use more, you can pay more, and, because I am, in fact, a capitalist, I am not so much in favor of the FCC over-regulating broadband and internet service providers in this way.

I do believe that everyone does deserve access, and those whose access is more difficult to achieve, like people in rural areas, should not be punished by geography when it comes to this resource (rural folk pay the same kWh rates as the rest of us). I believe the FCC has a role there to make sure that everyone has access to email, news, and basic research and learning opportunities online without sticking it to the user or throttling users without warning or the opportunity to appeal. And I don't think ISPs have much reason to privilege particular users over others in terms of whose data goes out first and faster (and I don't think there's much of a technical reason to do so except to bleed the gullible who may want to pay a premium for priority). But if an ISP wants to identify, say, people who bittorrent a lot of data and hit them with higher fees, I can get behind that.

With one caveat: Right now ISPs generally do not do a good job, or any job at all, of telling users how much data they are using. There are some--the satellite providers, for example--who do, but I, for one, have absolutely no clue how much data we use at our house. And with my wife and I both active internet users, with Netflix streaming to the Wii (which is awesome, by the way), I'm sure that we're well above average. But if my ISP offered me a menu tomorrow of choices for a data plan that I had to choose, I wouldn't know which to pick.

But there's a second thing going on with net neutrality that is much more important, and it has less to do with the interactions between ISPs and users and more to do with the interactions between ISPs and content providers. And it is here that, because I am, in fact, a socialist, the FCC needs to strictly regulate this aspect of the internet. Here's where things get hairy: When an ISP decides that it wants to make a pact with a content provider to privilege that provider's content. It wouldn't be hard for an ISP to contract with Google to serve up Google's products and pages and search results faster than Hotmail or Bing or Wordpress or Yahoo or whatever. Or to contract with Blockbuster over Netflix, or the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel over local bloggers and independent publishers.

This kind of non-neutrality, while it might be good for the ISPs and the companies they trade money with, is bad for users and, I think, bad for the development of a strong and vibrant internet. One reason we have such a strong net today is that ISP haven't been making those deals with content providers. New and interesting and exciting technologies have developed because scrappy and creative internet entrepreneurs have been able to serve an unlimited number of customers without fear of being throttled by the people who own the pipes. That may be slightly less true today as content providers find their revenue streams shrinking and they consolidate and slow down innovation. Yet it shouldn't be the ISPs decision as to who lives and who dies as content providers on the web--it should be the users, whose access needs to be unrestricted to any and all corners of the web.

MoveOn,org, among other places, is running a petition drive to maintain that last kind of neutrality, if you want to take some action.

More Hands on the Internet

As I noted the other day, the BlogAd to your right for "smart network or dumb pipe" or whatever it says today takes you to a misleading video and presentation that distorts the arguments for what we're calling "net neutrality" and instead offers a point of view sponsored by the big telecoms like AT&T and Bellsouth. You can click on the ad and get their point of view if you like. That's the great thing about a neutral internet--no one is telling you what you can or can't see.

But I want to follow up with some more information for you. Last Friday, Mike McCurry (lobbyist for the telecoms) debated Paul Misener, vice president of Global Public Policy for Amazon.com (McCurry calls him the lobbyist at McCurry's blog!) about the issue. This post has a partial transcript and links to the video, but I wanted to highlight just a smidge of Misener's words. He starts by refuting the notion that somehow the telecoms get stuck with all the bills for high-profile and high-bandwidth dot-coms:

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 browzer 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.

As you can see, the argument that telecoms must have control over what goes in or out of their networks--or at what speeds--to protect themselves is baloney. McCurry and his crew are simply not being honest with you.

Hands on the Internet

For the first time ever in the history of this here blog, I have two BlogAds going at once. It's still not enough money to cover what they want to fix my car, but, hey . . .

However, the second of those ads ("See the future of the internet!") is one that you should be wary about. You may have heard a little bit about the "net neutrality" debate going on right now in Congress. The idea is that, absent regulation or law, internet service providers could be free to deny or privilege specific web content. For example, if you get your internet through SBC/Yahoo/AT&T or whatever they are now, your ISP could decide that you just don't need access to Google, which is, of course, a chief rival to Yahoo. MSN could decide not to let you visit the Apple Store online. Providers may decide that all the streaming video you've come to enjoy from places like YouTube is just too bandwidth intensive, and so you can't have it. Or, you can't have it at a reasonable download speed.

The ad takes you to a quaint little deceptive movie about the net neutrality debate, but you can click around and get to Hands off the Internet, which is kind of the blog of the group sponsoring the ad. You can find there that they believe

that the Net's phenomenal growth over the past decade stems from the ability of entrepreneurs to expand consumer choices and opportunities without worrying about government regulation. We believe consumers across America see the results of this "hands off" approach - through such benefits as expanded distance education opportunities, improved access and speed to almost any information, on-line commerce, and an easier and inexpensive way to communicate with family and colleagues.

What's funny about this, of course, is that up until recently--the last year or so, I think--there were regulations in place requiring neutrality and equal access to content from all ISPs. Those regulations went away, and that's why we're now in a fight to get them back. So the "phenomenal growth"--things like Google, eBay, MySpace, YouTube, and so on--all happened under the kind of regulation this group opposes!

It won't surpirse you to learn that their effort is heavily subsidized by the telecoms (which is why I don't feel bad about taking their ten bucks even though I disagree with them). The lead spokesman is former Clinton press secretary Mike McCurry--who has, because of his corporate shillingness, earned the inetense scorn of the left.

At any rate, you can click through and decide for yourself. But don't be fooled by their discussions of taxing the internet and things like that--none of that is on the table from anyone anywhere. All the forces of good are looking for is the assurance that ISPs cannot block or slow down content, picking and choosing what you get to see.

Monday Quickies

• First, whether you think you're in the left, right, or center--or even not anywhere on the spectrum--you should be concerned that they're going to take away "internet neutrality." What does this mean? Your ISP could decide to block, well, anything. Here's more about how you can help.
  
  
• For the record, Patrick McIlheran's links to me have brought, according to the SiteMeter, zero hits. I'm not sure what it means, but I feel the need to say it. Update, April 27: One hit.
  
  
• Carrie Lynch writes a post I never had time to.
  
  
• The best part of this story:

  [T]he reason Wisconsin's Tax Freedom Day is nine days later than when Doyle first started in office is because the federal government has been asking for more money. The Tax Foundation report shows federal spending drove the change--not state or local governments.
  
  And Green voted for three of the last four federal budgets.

• Seth tells us about CFAF, which is not the sound of coughing up phelgm, but an "interest group." The discussion raises an interesting point: Since the governor has no say in a constitutional amendment, like the TABOR family amendments, why is Mark Green campaigning for governor on the issue? Why is CFAF running ads against Doyle about it?
  
  
• Read about a conservative whose health insurance company wants her to die. As there are no atheists in foxholes, there are none opposed to health care reform among the seriously ill.
  
  
• Remember when the right Cheddarsphere had a fit about Jim Doyle holding hearings to try to figure out why gas prices were so high? (Fraley is still at it.) Well, let's see if they lay into George W. Bush with the same kind of gusto.