Net Neutrality: Toward a Stupid Internet

There is one critical flaw with the reasoning of all these opponents of Net Neutrality. They claim the ISPs should have the right to regulate traffic to remain 'competitive', and that users who aren't happy with the regulation can simply choose another ISP. That's how the free market works.<p>Except this isn't really a free market. In most locations, consumers only have a single choice for broadband access (or two at most). Most ISPs have a regional monopoly. So if your local cable provider decides to charge you extra to access wikipedia, you're SOL.<p>You can't appeal to the 'free market' when there really isn't one. Your only choice is to create one, which is exactly what net neutrality aims to do.

Just because someone owns property does not mean that they have unending rights to do with that property what they wish. Go buy a piece of land in the middle of the city, build a giant bonfire, and see what happens. Due to state "regulation," your landlord can't just barge in on his/her property whenever he/she wishes. Laws like this have existed to protect the weak or meek for ages.<p>In a sense, "property" does not exist. Property only exists because laws exist to protect it. If the country you live in is invaded by a more powerful nation, how much do you think your "property" matters at that time? It's just a set of limited rights granted to you by the government, not unlimited license to do whatever you wish.

TLDR: This is exactly what you'd expect ultracapitalist Objectivists to say: ISPs should be allowed to do whatever they want because their networks are private property.

The problem with a lack of net neutrality is not how ISPs relate to their paying customers, it's how they relate to content providers. That's not to say that I agree with the arguments in the article; I find them extremely distasteful, although there is some reasoning behind them, based on ideas of morality that I disagree with but don't find completely invalid.<p>I'll outline the scenario that worries me. Comcast sends all internet data as second-tier data, unless the content provider pays Comcast to provide it as first-tier data. The difference between the two is small, say one or two tenths of a second in delivery time. The end user doesn't notice a difference. But, as Google has found, the extra tenth of a second has huge impacts on conversion for websites. So, Comcast effectively offers the same experience to users, but now also holds a huge sword over the head of content provides. Effectively, it is in an excellent position to leverage its ISP monopoly to create a massive extortion racket to content providers. And the magical free market isn't going to push back against Comcast, because the experience for the end-user has not noticeably suffered.<p>It's quite possible that under such a system the internet could actually be free, because it's subsidized by corporate content provider partners, and charging the content consumers becomes obsolete, although I doubt Comcast would suddenly drop a revenue source. However, it also raises the barrier to entry for small content providers, because they don't have the spare cash to pay Comcast for non-sub-standard conversion rates. In a (weasel) word, it's less democratic. Not to mention, Comcast can sustain its monopoly on ISPs by giving even shittier third-tier access to its competitors. The end result is a less-free internet, Comcast enriching themselves by abusing a monopoly, and all of this done without Comcast delivering a higher-quality internet to users. I think I'll take my stupid pipes, please.<p>I agree with the author insofar as I accept that his conclusion is consistent with Objectivism, although it's still debatable if owning the wires means owning the data that goes through the wires. Fortunately for me, I'm a pragmatist, not an Objectivist, and I think the loss of property rights (if any!) is perfectly acceptable for the benefits to expression and communication.

&#62; <i>Were it not for net neutrality, a start-up ISP might compete against Comcast by configuring its fledgling network to favor Bit Torrent’s peer-to-peer data packets, thereby earning it the business of serious movie downloaders without having to match or exceed Comcast in expensive infrastructure.</i><p>Really? If someone advertised their ISP as 'BitTorrent-friendly' they would have to contend with the MPAA, RIAA, BSA, etc trying to sue their company back into the stone-age.<p>&#62; <i>If an ISP were left alone to manage the transmission of data packets across its property, it could profitably improve the speed of its network, it could profit from charging more for more bandwidth consumption, and it could profit from providing special services to certain customers, such as smoothly streaming high-definition video feeds. But because none of these things is possible under net neutrality’s rules, the property of Internet service providers is worth considerably less to them in terms of its profit potential. Accordingly, their incentive to expand and improve the infrastructure on which the Internet relies is greatly diminished.</i><p>The government poured billions into the country's major ISPs to 'upgrade infrastructure' and there was little to no return on that investment. Infrastructure was <i>not</i> upgraded and we are now at a point where ISPs are trying to claim that their networks can no longer handle capacity, so they are <i>forced</i> to do filtering and 'QoS.' Where did all of that money go? Shouldn't the free market have allowed the ISPs to use that money to improve their networks so that they could reap larger rewards from those better built networks?<p>The problem with trying to treat Internet Service Providers as some sort of 'free market' is that it isn't. There are <i>huge</i> barriers to entry in the market, and well-established incumbents. Most places in the USA only have 1 or 2 choices for internet service. How is this in any way a 'free market' that the government should say out of? In fact, the governments created this mess in the first place by creating phone company and cable company monopolies. Now these telcos preach about how 'the market should be free' just because they have a huge advantage (i.e. established customers and deep-pockets) against any possible competitors. Which is a hypocritical stance seeing as they are where they are today due to government-granted monopolies.<p>tl;dr The ISP business model:<p><pre><code> 1. Get the government to give you a lead in the market through a monopoly 2. Grow your business by leaps and bounds during this monopoly period 3. Government opens market 4. Complain that government intervention in the market is evil and lobby against the government helping out any potential competitors</code></pre>

Government control of private property - this is how some public utilities operate. Private industry builds the infrastructure, but the government aims to bring stability through regulation to what a large part of the general population sees as an essential service.<p>This article makes the analogy to the printing press; that the Internet is changing our worldwide society dramatically. Those who are for net neutrality (myself included) would likely agree - that this transformation is a positive thing and should move towards becoming an essential service.<p>How this is accomplished - either through private industry or government ownership - is really just a matter of culture. Many countries have significant government ownership of network infrastructure.

I wonder if there's a simile to make with electric utilities.<p>A "smart grid" could potentially distinguish between surcharge-able electrons, just as a "smart internet" (one without net neurtrality) could distinguish between good and bad packets. Would you want an electric utility to be able to charge you more because you bought the wrong brand of refrigerator? Or were charging an imported electric car?<p>Of course utilities will charge more for peak hour usage right now, but at least every electron is charged the same at that time.<p>What do you think?

Bittorrent invented P2P... Stopped reading when I hit that.<p>--edit-- Read it again and he says "developed p2p" which could be construed as further developed I suppose. Benefit of the doubt.