Comments on: Valleywag Hates on Net Neutrality & Vint Cerf

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By: cordblomquist

cordblomquist — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 15:43:15 +0000

mcavity,

Let's make a deal on this. I'll agree to support net neutrality the day any such block happens if you agree to not ask for the regulation until it's needed.

Here's why I think it's worth the wait:

Government has a tendency to be a very blunt instrument for change. It makes broad rules that apply to everyone in all cases, leaving little room for flexibility. When government tries to be flexible, it often means giving a lot of discretionary power to some commissioner or another, opening up all sorts of potential for corruption or just the arbitrary preferences of the commissioner. (We're seeing this now with Mr. Martin and his crusade against the cable companies.)

Were the blunt instruments of government to make neutrality the law, we risk having a law that is overly broad and stops useful network management. Some traffic shaping and even traffic block (like child porn sites and hate sites) are useful and marketable services. Some people would probably like a service that gives them faster web browsing at the expense of slower video loading times. Some ISPs have infrastructure limitations that necessitate making those kinds of trade-off decisions. Neutrality could block those, hurting the consumer in the process.

Meanwhile, the nightmare scenario you imagine--an ISP blocking some major or even a minor site--every time that ISPs have even accidentally blocked something we've seen a major consumer backlash. When a Cox router error blocked Craigslist consumers revolted. When Verizon's policy against SMS messages on abortion ran up against a group that wanted a short code, they reversed the policy. Comcast famously made their policies much more transparent when their BitTorrent upload blocking came to light.

And that's what this debate should be about. As a libertarian, I believe that businesses need to be honest about their policies and what they're selling consumers. We should be pushing for all ISPs to be honest and to provide independent verification of their policies--something the free market can do. Consumer pressure has done a lot already, it can do this.

What I'm really advocating is that we don't dictate business models. The free market is about experimentation--seeing what works and what doesn't. We shouldn't stop business models we don't care for simply because we don't care for them, because others might really like them. That's the problem with net neutrality, it blocks business models that may work very well in many situations.

By: cordblomquist

cordblomquist — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 15:26:15 +0000

Justin, I'm sure that neither of us are experts in financial regulation, but from what I can tell, we don't exactly have a free market in the banking industry. Seems as though the government was trying to make home ownership a reality for everyone--even those folks just starting out in the workforce who should have rented for a bit until their incomes increased--and in the course of doing so encouraged all sorts of horrible loans.

The fact that Freddie/Fannie are being bailed out to the tune of hundreds of billion of dollars speaks to this. They bought up the risky loans that banks were making, encouraging more risky loans.

Rather than meddling with the Internet, I'd prefer government to stay away.

By: Kay B. Day

Kay B. Day — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 21:32:26 +0000

Thanks for this; many people have no idea what implications this will have.

And if the Fairness Doctrine comes back too, I am wondering if this will apply to Websites of the stations affected. I don't see how it won't.

But Justin, I have to share something with you to round out your comment about dereg. The greatest deregulator in modern history was Clinton's Treasury Secretary, Larry Summers.

From Summers' Harvard bio page:
"As secretary, he helped engineer a historic pay down of U.S. debt, worked successfully to extend the life of the Social Security and Medicare trust funds, and led the effort to enact the most sweeping financial deregulation in 60 years. Internationally, he worked to reform the international financial architecture and the International Monetary Fund, to secure debt relief for the world's poorest countries..."

Some believe too much debt relief was forgiven.

Summers is an economic adviser to Sen. Barack Obama.

Much of the housing meltdown began in 1977 with enactment of the Community Reinvestment Act.

Segue to now and many of us are wondering if there has actually been an attack on US and European financial systems (not in the sense of a military attack, but a stealth sort of thing). The reason we've wondered is the recent hacking of the World Bank system.

FYI.

In my opinion, the farther government stays away from the Web (and anything else), the better off we are.

By: mcavity

mcavity — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 10:57:53 +0000

well said Justin.

Its not as if google and other content providers are not already paying for the bandwidth they use.

Is Cord saying, because google is successful, they should "spread the wealth around" to the ISP's?

Having worked for an ISP I know there's a difference between legitimate bandwidth shaping and blackmailing sites. Giving up the idea of net neutrality is akin to giving the Major ISPS and Internet backbones the de facto right to tax any business they want for any reason they want.
Think about it.
Google - we want a % of your add revenue or we block your site..
Amazon, eBay, netflix - We want a % of your profits or we block your site..

By: Justin Alexander

Justin Alexander — Mon, 20 Oct 2008 05:42:57 +0000

"We’ve seen what an regulation [...] does to something as comparitively easy to understand as the financial industry. "

What universe are you blogging from? The current financial crisis is the direct result of de-regulating the mortgage industry to allow the creation of bad mortgages followed by the de-regulation of the banking industry to allow unregulated securities to be built on top of those bad mortgages.

As far as net neutrality goes, I'm fairly suspicious of anyone arguing -- as you are -- that allowing a small handful of companies to control and restrict the free flow of information in society is a good idea.

By: Irish Wedding Rings

Irish Wedding Rings — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 19:43:32 +0000

Suffice to say, there's little that government does well. And even if they do a good job, the costs are huge. They need to stay away from the 'net. That said, I don't believe that the net today is neutral at all.

By: Seth Finkelstein

Seth Finkelstein — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 09:11:48 +0000

"and of course, former vice president and Nobel Laureate Al Gore."

Once again: Al Gore / Internet

By: Richard Bennett

Richard Bennett — Sat, 18 Oct 2008 02:18:53 +0000

I like Valleywag's definition so much I'll probably use it in my next talk on this stuff. Nick Denton is a great American.

By: mwendy

mwendy — Fri, 17 Oct 2008 15:59:51 +0000

Look. Let's just get it over with. Just slap the Internet with "compelling government interest" reasoning, and confiscate the property of those rolling out the next version - FiOS, etc. Afterall, according to Vint, and Susan Crawford, larry Lessig and Andy Updegrove - this is our civil right, dammit! The Internet is the people's! And besides, all the "real" innovation exists at the edges, not in the core of the network.

Funny thing is, you need people willing to invest in that core before you get to the stuff at the edges. I recently got FiOS after waiting two years. We live in a nice area. Ya' think it'll roll out more ubiquitously and faster if that roll out is compelled through government policies?

Nope.