Last month, former labor secretary Robert Reich wrote a funny post about network neutrality:
If the phone and cable companies get their way, it will take you five minutes to download this blog. In fact, you can forget blogs altogether. In fact, you can forget anything put into the Internet by small guys like me (literally and figuratively)…
The phone and cable companies want to charge content providers depending on how fast and reliably their content is delivered–so, say, eBay, Yahoo, and Google pay a bundle for first-class fast service while you and I and the other millions of small guys who want to put stuff up are shoved into the slowest of slow lanes because we can’t afford to pay the freight.
I wonder if Reich realizes his blog is hosted by Google.
The New Republic seems to believe that the lack of network neutrality will somehow lead to the end of the blogosphere:
[The Internet] is where Americans can not only search for the best deal on a new digital camera, but also debate the country’s future. Unlike the telephone, it is a medium in which thousands, even millions, of people can participate in the same discussion at the same time. Unlike television, it is interactive. But it can’t function optimally if content is prioritized or filtered by telecom companies. Allowing companies to levy a toll on information providers is not just a blow to consumer choice–it’s a blow to democracy.
Andrew Kantor of
USA Today (who reader Raphy points out recently had a change of heart on the issue) has a column that nicely rebuts this kind of silliness:
I’ve read quotes from bloggers saying their content wouldn’t be delivered as quickly as that from, say, USA TODAY–thus depriving people of information that isn’t from the mainstream media. And people speak of the “little guy” not being able to compete with monster corporations with monster bandwidth.
But that makes no sense. Small information providers like bloggers don’t connect directly to the Internet; they buy space on hosting sites, either maintaining their own or on a shared blogging site (e.g., Blogger.com). It’s those hosts that buy the bandwidth, and they often tout their connection speeds.
Think about it: Google owns Blogger. Do you think Blogger users are going to be deprived of bandwidth for lack of funds?
And Jim Lippard points out that TNR repeats the falsehood that network neutrality rules always applied to the Internet before the evil Bush administration stopped enforcing them.
I’m ordinarily a big fan of the
New Republic‘s articles. It’s sad to see them repeating bogus MoveOn talking points.
TechDirt points to an excellent article on network neutrality:
Reality check: why doesn’t your landline phone do most of the things your cellphone does? It doesn’t have to worry about either battery life or size? The reason is that it’s attached to the traditional phone network on which innovation simply can’t happen. Telcos would like to make the Internet a similar innovation-free and profit-safe zone.
OK. This shouldn’t be allowed to happen. Proponents of net neutrality legislation say there oughtta be a law. But plenty of smart people–perhaps represented best by Martin Geddes–argue that a net neutrality law would be counterproductive. Turns out that neutrality itself is very hard to define. Should a neutral network be prohibited from blocking packets which attack the network itself? What about spam–does it have to be treated neutrally? What if someone invents a special purpose network good for connecting vending machines to something or other; does that network have to provide Google access in a non-discriminatory manner?
Once neutrality is defined by regulation and enforced by bureaucrats, the requirement itself could become an obstacle to innovation. Even more scary, given the skill of the telcos in manipulating congress (can you say “campaign contribution”?) and the FCC, could the neutrality requirement end up being enforced only against innovators? What if there were a five year wait for a “neutrality” permit before a new application could be deployed. Wouldn’t the telcos love that? Come to think of it, they have been pretty good lately at getting the FCC and the courts to throw obstacles in the way of VoIP.
The article goes on to argue that the real issue is the lack of competition in the broadband market. As some commenters to Tuesday’s post point out, there’s a lack of good data about exactly how many choices the average consumer has, but I think everyone can agree that more choice and competition would be better.
I also think it’s worth pointing out something about the traditional telephone network: the phone network is precisely the model that Larry Lessig holds up as a model for beneficial “common carrier” regulation. I suspect that a big part of the reason that cell phones have become so much more capable than their tethered counterparts is that the Baby Bells have been slowed down by the FCC’s “common carrier” regulations from offering new products and services. Lessig argues, with some plausibility, that those regulatory requirements led to the fiercely competitive dial-up Internet market, but it also caused the landline telephone market itself to be pretty stagnant. That doesn’t strike me as a good model for the Internet.
The past week has truly been a miserable one for supporters of neutrality regulation. Last Thursday, they got shellacked 269-152 in the House vote on the issue. Despite earlier talk of GOP members joining the pro-reg crowd, only 11 actually did so. But a surprising 58 Democrats voted against it. Then, yesterday, the Washington Post–no, not the conservative Washington Times, but the Post–editorialized against regulation. (By the way, no extra points will be awarded for guessing that pro-regulation advocate Jeff Chester responded to this by making an ethics charge, claiming that the Post didn’t disclose its conflicts of interest. Anyone sense a pattern here?)
The third shoe fell on the regulation crowd yesterday, when Senator Ted Stevens released his revised telecom reform bill in the Senate. Contrary to expectations, Stevens did not add neutrality regulation provisions to his bill. Instead he stood firm, with the bill only calling for a study of the issue. Kudos to Sen. Stevens for holding his ground on this.
Of course, the neutrality debate is far from over–and momentum could change. However, with only a few months left in the congressional schedule, regulation proponents must be looking nervously at the calendar, and hoping it won’t bring any more weeks like this one.
My side of the network neutrality debate may have resorted to paid astro-spam commenters to get their point across, but as far as I know, no regulation opponents have stooped to writing a cheesy song about the issue:
Three singer/songwriters met at a Los Angeles recovery center for those suffering from internet-related anger issues. How could Congress vote to destroy one of the only good things left in America? This made no sense! How could so few people be enraged? What were people doing to keep network neutrality the law of the land?
I get tired of repeating myself, so you can click here to see why this is nonsense. Oh, and you can listen to their cringe-inducing ditty here.
The Washington Post editorialized yesterday in opposition to regulating the Internet:
The advocates of neutrality suggest, absurdly, that a non-neutral Internet would resemble cable TV: a medium through which only corporate content is delivered. This analogy misses the fact that the market for Internet connections, unlike that for cable television, is competitive: More than 60 percent of Zip codes in the United States are served by four or more broadband providers that compete to give consumers what they want–fast access to the full range of Web sites, including those of their kids’ soccer league, their cousins’ photos, MoveOn.org and the Christian Coalition. If one broadband provider slowed access to fringe bloggers, the blogosphere would rise up in protest–and the provider would lose customers…
The serious argument for net neutrality has nothing to do with the cable TV boogeyman. It’s that a non-neutral net will raise barriers to entry just slightly–but enough to be alarming. To use a far better analogy: Competitive supermarkets aim to please customers by offering all kinds of goods, but the inventor of a new snack has to go through the hassle of negotiating for display space and may wind up on the bottom shelf, which dampens his incentives. Equally, if the owners of Internet pipes delivered the services of cyber-upstarts more slowly than those of cyber-incumbents, the incentive to innovate might suffer. Would instant messaging or Internet telephony have taken off if their inventors had had to plead with broadband firms to carry them?
This concern should not be exaggerated. Cyber-upstarts already face barriers: The incumbents have brand recognition and invest in tricks to make their sites load faster. The extra barrier created by a lack of net neutrality would probably be small because the pipe owners know that consumers want access to innovators.
Mike Masnick correctly notes that the Post exaggerates the competitiveness of the broadband market a bit–60 percent of zip codes may have four broadband service providers, but that doesn’t mean that 60 percent of consumers do–the vast majority have two or fewer. But I think the broader point of that paragraph–that there’s no danger of the Internet turning into a non-competitive service like cable TV–is exactly right. The value of the Internet stems from the availability of hundreds of thousands of small sites. The telcos would be shooting themselves in the foot if they cut off their customers’ access to those sites. And most broadband customers do have at least one option, so their ability to jerk their customers around is limited.
The editorial’s conclusion gets it right:
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Today, Tyler Cowen posted some cautious, but surprising words about his stance on the net regulation issue:
I favor net neutrality in the current environment. Without neutrality, Comcast and Verizon would use differential pricing schemes to extract more revenue and thus diminish some forms of Net output, including Google, Amazon, ebay, and possibly blogs. … If the cable and telecom companies had no legally-backed monopoly powers, I would not favor legally enforced net neutrality. “Let the market decide” would be a good answer.
You should read his whole post for more of his argument. But I wonder: If a lack of competition is caused by a government-backed monopoly power, as Cowen suggests, wouldn’t removing the regulations that create that power be the preferred course of action? Shouldn’t adding a new layer of “legally enforced net neutrality” regulation be our last, hopeless recourse? And aren’t we headed in a generally pro-competitive direction? Even putting aside the tremendous growth in competition over the past 25 years, don’t steps like the COPE Act’s streamlining of franchising help to continue to eliminate the very government-imposed barriers to entry that create market power?
I don’t know the answers to these questions, and that’s why I will remain “neutral” and simply moderate a panel discussion on neutrality regulation this Thursday, June 15, hosted by America’s Future Foundation. TLF’s own James Gattuso will be joined by Patrick Ross of PFF on the anti-regulation side, while Alex Curtis of Public Knowledge and Frannie Ross of Free Press will take the pro-neutrality side. The event will take place on the Hill with drinks beginning at 6:30 and discussion at 7. I hope you can join us! More information here.
Here’s Patrick Leahy’s take on network neutrality:
The last thing we should do is fix a problem that does not exist. We should also carefully examine any approach that would allow law enforcement agencies to set technology mandates, particularly given the challenges we have seen this year in the FBI’s own mishaps in its technology development.
The federal government so far has successfully allowed the Internet to flourish by avoiding design mandates and other limitations. We all must keep that important lesson in mind… The United States developed and nourished the Internet, and the world watches whenever we attempt to regulate it.
Oops, I’m sorry. That’s not about network neutrality, it’s another quote from his CALEA statement. My mistake. When it comes to network neutrality, Leahy seems quite comfortable with fixing problems that don’t yet exist.
Never mind fees for priority broadband service. What this nation really needs is a fee on anyone still using the term “trickle-down economics.” In a post yesterday on Digital Destiny, Jeff Chester of the Center for Digital Democracy pulled the Commodore-era cliche out of his white hat, in a blogpost entitled “Memo to Heritage’s James Gattuso: The era of trickle down media economics is over.”
The trickle down era is over? Well, ok. I never said it wasn’t. I never said trickle down at all. I honestly don’t know what “trickle-down media economics” even means.
Chester’s memo follows an earlier post criticizing my recent Heritage Foundation paper on neutrality regulation as “a litany of rationalizations and under-developed analysis.” Sensing that he disagreed with me on some points, I read on to see where my paper had gone wrong. But he didn’t say. Instead he focused on Heritage’s funding, promising a substantive response in “our next post.”
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Not only is eBay lobbying to impose government regulations on the Internet, but they’re lobbying for more draconian restrictions on Internet gambling, too. Radley Balko gives them a a well-deserved spanking in his Fox News column:
Goodlatte’s bill bans the use of financial services to facilitate Internet gambling sites. It’s already illegal to operate a gaming site on U.S. soil. But most experts agree it’s still legal to “place” a bet. Goodlatte wants to put up a wall between the domestic “bet placing” and the offshore “bet taking,” which FirePay and Neteller make possible.
If banks and other financial institutions are going to be responsible for policing what their customers do online, as will happen should Goodlatte’s bill become law, it’s safe to assume that they’ll comply by simply banning all transactions with offshore payment services.
Which means that Goodlatte’s bill’s main effect will be to shield PayPal, a domestic company, from foreign competitors (foreign competitors that, ironically, are doing exactly what PayPal’s founders envisioned).
What’s more, the letter eBay government relations director Brian Bieron sent to Goodlatte announcing the company’s support of his bill actually goes above and beyond what any gambling foes in Congress have called for. Bieron in fact calls for the actual prosecution of Internet gamblers themselves, a policy which could only be enforced by allowing law enforcement officials to essentially begin monitoring everyone’s online activity, including tracing visited websites back to IP addresses.
Instead of lobbying for the so-called “the First Amendment of the Internet,” perhaps they should show more concern for the actual Bill of Rights.
The Technology Liberation Front is the tech policy blog dedicated to keeping politicians' hands off the 'net and everything else related to technology.