Comments on: Save Internet freedom--from regulation

Stanford Law School's Larry Downes warns that the information superhighway to hell is surely paved with good intentions.

[LarryLo]

I don't know where to start......

First, if you want to use the train analogy, then it would sound something like this... the railway would simply not ship your freight, even though you paid for it. Or worse (like Rogers in Canada just got caught doing) They would change your freight midway down the line to suit their purposes. You sent 10 tonnes of coal, and 8 tonnes of hay arrive.

Clearly there are issues that needed to be clarified around net neutrality but that doesn't make it a mutually exclusive proposition. I am amazed how any can not clearly see the need to protect the internet from this sort of manipulation.

You talk about new services and applications that no one has thought of yet being affected by these regulations. How about the new services that people have thought of like bit torrent, and how they were/are effected? How Comcast was caught red handed spoofing packets to save them a few dollars on bandwidth? Before we start with the theoretical lets deal with reality.

No regulation is perfect, and in a sense you are right, the answer is not regulation of the terms of service, instead its regulation of the ISPs, its mandating consumer choice by forcing the owners of the pipes to open them up to any ISP, its the FCC demanding that broadband availability statistics accurately represent area penetration. Then the free market forces will work wonders for the Internet. Until then, we have a duopoly, which is ripe for abuse, real not theoretical.

[scdecade]

Did you start?

10 tons of coal turn into 8 tons of hay? O my. Your major point seems to be the one you end with. Only after the internet is regulated can it be free. Sure sure.

[Archus]

Start here.

I fully agree that the governemtn should stay out of the actual manipulation of the internet itself. Everytime we bring them in to something that should be private sector we relinquish another foothold on our freedom to decide for ourselves. If you want the government in on this, why not have them focus more on the fair marketing principles that should have created the necessary competition to ComCast? With proper competition these types of problems would never manifest, since users could simply move from, or boycott, the offending company.
If you want to spend tax dollars ineffectively the wouldn't it be better to simply have the government spend millions posting these "infractions" to freedom somewhere that they could be queried easily? That way atleast consumers could have a choice before they have to decide on things like who their providers will be.
There are thousands of things the government could do effectively that they don't. Instead they pay millions on ineffective regulation developed by the people who have financial interest involved.

Keep the government out.

[gjl229]

Missing the Point?

I suspect our definition of the Internet is based on what exists about us now. That approach pretty much obviates innovation. We're steering by looking in a rear view mirror.

In any case, carriers (please note that I didn't use the term "ISPs")can provision multiple services across their IP networks. One can be the Internet as we know it, another can be voice services (plenty of cablecos and telcos are using IP for voice transport and delivery without being accused of non-neutrality), another can be TV (a technology in current deployment), and another can be ..... well, other sorts of services in need of high-quality, predictable network performance.

In that case, the "Internet" is very, very neutral and very, very limited. But certain other premium or expedited services are delivered over the carriers' IP network at a premium price charged to someone or another.

The Internet, then, is neutral as can be while perhaps diminishing in importance.

[fgoldstein]

Distorted history

As usually happens with the partisans in this debate, the Professor misstates history. The railroad analogy is quite apropos, but not as he states it.

The railroads opened up much of the USA's land to viable agriculture in the mid-19th century. And they had monopolies to most places. Some of the railroads got too clever, though. Instead of being just carriers, charging a fee for freight based on, for instance, the weight and type of freight, they became shippers, buying the raw goods from the producers and selling them to consumers at the other end. Of course as monopolist shippers, they were able to squeeze down the price at the farm end and extract huge profits. In response to this abuse, the ICC was created. The ICC imposed common carrier regulation on railroads, separating the shipper from carrier functions.

The FCC has long imposed common carrier regulation on telephone companies. That is what made the Internet possible -- ISPs paid the telcos to transport their bits, not for the value of the information that the bits represented. In 2005, the FCC overturned this longstanding principle and allowed the ILECs to be shippers of bits. For instance, AT&T now considers the content of its customers' IP sessions to be their own "business documents", not private. That's the kind of abuse we're now facing.

The answer is not to regulate shippers (the Internet). The answer is to regulate carriers (telephone companies), so that there is always a common carrier available, and therefore the market for competitive ISPs can operate as it used to, and as it still does in civilized countries.

[jwwjr47]

Excellent Post

I don't know you, but this is one of the best posts related to this issue I've seen.

I'd like to paraphrase it and use it for advocacy in my local community.

[bjbrock]

Regulation needed to protect...

us from ISP's. Rogers Cable is packet inspecting and inserting their own content in web pages you request. This is outrageous. We definitely need some regulations to stop this kind of nonsense.

[ShoutingLoudly]

No, we DO need net neutrality

This article is deeply flawed, not least because it makes deeply flawed historical comparisons.

All of the analogies with bureaucrats who could not set the right price are wholly misleading. The price Verizon can charge websites (with their own separate server hosts and ISPs) for access to my eyeballs should be $0.00. Ditto third-party applications like video and music services and VoIP. I've paid for my bits; let me use them as I see fit.

If I'm using too many, tell me what the cap is (i.e., be honest that there is one and help me monitor my usage) and cut me off or charge me more. Or just traffic shape so that my first MB of the day comes through much faster than my 2,000th. (Comcast is already using this latter option, which makes their BitTorrent blockade unnecessary.)

I pay Verizon already, and the websites pay at their end. Verizon, Comcast and friends want to add a third charge, the "protection" of not messing with internet data. "Gee, you got a nice web business here. [http://Cracks knuckles.|http://Cracks knuckles.] I'd hate to see anything happen to it, ya know? Let us help you make sure that doesn't happen."

This is only possible because they have an incumbent market position in an industry that is noncompetitive due to substantial market failures?especially the problems of sunk costs and unusually steep economies of scale?creating virtually insurmountable barriers to entry. (Why is it that free marketeers never want to admit that a given market fails to meet the axiomatic basics, especially competition? Why are they satisfied with duopoly?)

The internet cost contract now is "pay at the edges." ISPs want to add a third charge that would be easy to spot and ban. Ban that charge, and ban nefarious forms of "network management" that rely upon targeting specific programs, content, etc. (Comcast: demonstrably guilty. See: http://www.eff.org/wp/packet-forgery-isps-report-comcast-affair)

Even Kevin Martin could enforce that.

Instead, we have neoliberal industry apologists like Downes and Christopher Yoo insisting regulators couldn't possibly get it right. This rhetoric is built on urging you to remember the history of transportation regulation?and ignore the history of telecommunications regulation.

Ignore the long and steady decline in long distance prices due to regulations such as mandated interconnection. Forget about the explosive growth of dial-up internet services built on regulation that forced the Bells to treat all "calls" equally?even when they desperately wanted to surcharge those carrying data. Forget AT&T's attempt to ban the Hush-a-Phone; large companies have a great track record of permitting third-party innovation on their networks without anybody forcing them to do so. Ignore the fact that broadband providers in the US have already throttled VoIP traffic and that Telus in Canada blocked a website that supported telecom workers in their strike against the company.

The bad historical analogies with transportation policy are misunderstood and misapplied so often that the trope has become cliché. Yet no matter how many times sensible folks point out that zero is a pretty easy price to set, Downes and his ilk are invoking the complexities of transportation policy.

Just leave it to "the market" and all will be fine? News flash: there is no competitive market, and the incumbents are already beginning to destroy the internet.

For an even more thorough rebuttal of these industry apologists (shameless self plug), please see:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=902071

[Skylarbrown]

regulating the internet

It certainly seems obvious to me that one place government should leave alone is the net. Without fail, Do-Gooders will try to fix something that is not only not broken, but not even fully developed yet. The rational thing to do would be to step back, and watch this process evolve on its own. Interfering in the groth process will only lead to some sort of mal-formed end product.

[LarryLo]

Is not broken?

I realize this is your first post to New.com so I will try to be easy on you. How can you possibly say something is not broken? The Internet has been around for 30 years in one form or another, and yes new things are coming, but lets look at reality.

1. we have no real choice in broadband internet providers. DSL (Telco) or local Cable provider

2. Broadband providers are looking for a bigger piece of the pie (It came right from the mouth of Verizon's CEO). They want to unfairly double dip and they make no bones about it.

3. Broadband providers have already shown they are willing to do sneaky things to our traffic (spoof it, rewrite it on the fly).

The US, the country that invented the internet is now sadly lacking in broadband connectivity (behind Japan, south Korea etc), precisely because we just sat around and trusted "the market" aka the Telco's and the Cable companies, and the FCC to look out for our best interests. So its time to step in, step up and do something about it.

[hpew]

Yes, and why don't we

give the right of way to Ferraris and other expensive sports cars?

THE INTERNET BELONGS TO EVERYONE - EQUALLY - GET THAT
THROUGH YOUR LIBERTARIAN HEAD!!!!