James Gattuso

The Economist Speaks Out Against Regulation

Good piece in The Economist this week on the specter of “net neutrality” regulation. The London-based magazine, which is pro-market in a British sort of way, hasn’t hesitated to support competition rules in the past (it was an avid supporter of the Microsoft prosecution). But in an editorial in this weeks issue, it warned against overly-prescriptive net rules, arguing:

An overly prescriptive set of net-neutrality rules could prove counterproductive. For a start, it would mean that all new network construction costs would have to be recouped from consumers alone, which could drive up prices or discourage investment. Ensuring “neutrality” could require regulators to interpose themselves in all kinds of agreements between network operators, content providers and consumers. If a network link is too slow to support a particular service, does that constitute a breach of neutrality? Strict rules could also hinder the development of new services that depend on being able to distinguish between different types of traffic, imposing a “one size fits all” architecture on the internet just as engineers are considering novel ways to improve its underlying design.

The piece does allow that some basic rules could be in order. Alas, one would think that a magazine based in Europe would know more than most that limited and simple regulations all too often turn into expansive and complex rules.

Still worth reading (subscription required).

March 10, 2006 | Comments |

Viewing 7 Comments

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    The problem that I have with it is that they are twisting QoS into a weapon against the services that their users may legitimately want. Since my ISP is supposed to be primarily concerned with providing me the connection, who are they to throttle a VoIP service that I receive over the connection that I leased? Are they just glorified web and email providers these days? I agree with their efforts to throttle our outright eliminate certain protocols like Gnutella or eDonkey because they are almost always used for destructive and illegal purposes, but what business do they have throttling and denying access to legitimate services? Yes, the neutrality mandate that is being proposed is overly broad, but the problem is that if there is nothing in place, the ISPs will be allowed to turn an "Internet" service into a web service with some email thrown in when in fact the Internet is nothing more than TCP/IP and UDP.
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    meh, the more I read re: network neutrality, the less of a big deal the whole affair becomes.

    MikeT: I suppose you will be appointed to determine the "legitimate services"?
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    How about any service whose primary purpose/usage is not illegal? BitTorrent was created for the distribution of large files like ISO images of Linux. Its purpose was for that sort of thing, whereas Gnutella was created as a way of sharing files a la Napster. In other words it might require a sensible judge and jury, rather than a set in stone legal explanation that has a one-size-fits-all judgement.
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    Nobody is twisting anything from what I can see. This proposed regulation is solving a problem that doesn't even exist, which is the only sure-fire way to disaster I am aware of. Who here would trust ANY politician to solve a problem that doesn't exist with technology they don't understand? OMG this could get horrific before it's all said and done!
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    Nobody is twisting anything from what I can see. This proposed regulation is solving a problem that doesn't even exist, which is the only sure-fire way to disaster I am aware of. Who here would trust ANY politician to solve a problem that doesn't exist with technology they don't understand? OMG this could get horrific before it's all said and done!
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