The Case Against Net Neutrality

jeek writes "While I certainly don't agree with it, this article tries to make the case that Net Neutrality may actually be bad for America. From the article: 'If the government regulates net neutrality, policies for internet access are set by one entity: the FCC. However, if the government stays out, each company will set its own policies. If you don’t like the FCC’s policies, you are stuck with them unless you leave the United States. If you don’t like your internet service provider’s policies, you can simply switch to another one. So which model sounds better to you?'"

Comments

Transparency not Neutrality...

[nweaver]

What is needed is network transparency, not necessarily network neutrality.

EG, under some definitions of network neutrality, various useful traffic shaping (such as placing heavy users in a different QOS tier when compared with light users, implementing per-user fairness, or doing Remote Active Queue Management to mitigate the effect of overbuffered access devices), would not be allowed.

Yet such shaping would generally benefit all users: it prevents heavy users from impacting light users (in the first two cases) and even reduces heavy users self-inflicted damage (in the latter case). But the same devices which could implement such beneficial shaping could also perform amazingly anticompetitive traffic manipulation, such as disrupting a user's VoIP calls.

Thus what we need is network transparency: ISPs must disclose what their policies are: how they shape and manipulate traffic in ways that may benefit or may damage users. And we need active verification of such policies, because although most ISPs will be honest, some won't be.

Re:Transparency not Neutrality...

[nweaver]

Where have you been for the past 10 years? Most ISPs (read: Telcos & Cablecos) have long demonstrated their inability to be honest.

Where have I been? In the trenches.

I was one of the researchers behind the web tripwires project for detecting ISP injected advertisements. I was one of the developers of the RST injection detector that was used to monitor how ISPs were disrupting traffic with injected Resets. And I'm one of the developers of Netalyzr.

And overall, most ISPs are actually honest, and even the dishonest ones have gotten a fair bit better.

EG, Comcast was incredibly dishonest at the start on their BitTorrent shaping (denying what they were doing altogether), but in the end were honest about it once they got caught (it did indeed only affect upload-only BitTorrent flows, we were able to independently verify this), and has become much more transparent about their traffic shaping and port filtering policies since then (they even have done IETF drafts on how their traffic management is done today).

And this is why I believe that thing that really makes a difference is being able to validate that what an ISP says is actually true: If ISPs know that manipulations will be detected, they have a much lower incentive to manipulate traffic. This is why I believe in network transparency.

You notice how you don't have ISPs talking about doing advertisement injection. Why? because its detectable. You notice how most ISPs no longer mess with BitTorrent? Why: because its detectable.

This is the biggest benefit of transparency and enforcing transparency by measuring for violations: it keeps honest ISPs honest, and punishes the dishonest when (not if, but when) you catch them.

Same old argument

[fermion]

This is the same old anti-regulation argument, and for some things I agree. If one is talking about the price of widgets, the only rule should be that the free market must be free to operate, that is competing businesses can't collude to set prices. The Nixon price fixing scheme does not work. The rules against collusion simply set up a even playing field that enhance the free market, by setting an initial state from which to compete. Things like the minimim wage and the forty hour work week, extremely ill thought liberal plots that codify the disastrous theory that we have to pay people just because they have done some work, are beneficial as they set limits which helps a business compete on more useful things, like innovative product and process rather than simply trying to minimize cost of labor.

So what does this mean to net neutrality. Net neutrality is a basic rules, like not colluding, or the work week, or code of building, that will drive innovation. Without such a rule companies will compete on which data is delivered quickly, instead of the speed of quantity data delivered. Collusion will be the norm as companies form ties to deliver certain data quickly, while making competing data not quick. As most of us only have one ISP, particularly for the last mile, and often without choice, we will be forced accept service not on the quality of content but on the availability of delivery(And before people take this to anti-iPhone rant, everyone has access to a competing company and a competing smarter phone).

With net neutrality, companies will be forced to invest in innovation, which is of course why many do not want net neutrality. No one wants the government to force them to spend money on innovation. Can you imagine the uproar when building codes required indoor plumbing? Sure it makes sense where it is cold, but down south it is a waste of money! But the fact is with net neutrality companies are going to learn to make efficient use of available bandwidth so that all content can be delivered quickly, not just the content the ISP chooses. It will be create real jobs, with people installing fiber, people looking at the data, and engineers developing solutions, instead of simply provided money so that top executives can buy dates.

Re:Personally?

[tilandal]

Last time I went to the DMV I walked in, picked up a number, waited about 5 mins, talked to a teller and was out the door all on my lunch break.

Last time I tried to buy high speed internet it took 2 hours on the phone, 3 customer service reps, and 2 canceled installer appointments (I got the self install kit) to get my cable modem registered. After all of that they didn't even remember to bill me for it. When they did remember to bill me for it several months later they sent some installers to put filters on the line. They didn't do it right and disconnected me instead. They sent another 2 installers over to fix it but those two forgot to put the filters on the line so it was all for nothing anyway.