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

Choices

[space_jake]

What other service provider?

Re:Choices

[kage.j]

Unless you're surrounded by a monopoly, or other 'choices' that are vastly substandard. Such as 56k or very-slow adsl, versus high-speed, low-latency cable. 'Choices' -- I'd have to move to get another choice. Hogwash to that point, I say.

Re:Choices

[jd]

Even if there was competition in each region, the removal of source-based routing means that you can't dictate which path the packet goes down, which means you can't control how much it is going to cost. The notion of peer-to-peer agreements is going to be shot all to hell without NN, so you WILL end up footing the bill according to the choices made by routers not under your control. Oh, and remember, any router that calculates the weight of a path according to what it is told is very likely to be told that extremely expensive paths have low weight. Again, not under your control, you can do bugger all about it. Since costs are likely to migrate straight to customers, intermediate network providers won't give a damn. They don't have to pay for any inefficiencies caused elsewhere, and since all customer-level ISPs will likely use one of a tiny handful (or a single) intermediate provider, it doesn't matter what ISP you use or which city/State you are in (so long as you're in a State that has that intermediate provider).

This is one of the bigger problems caused by the threat of abolishing NN. Especially in this day and age. Remember that guy a few years back who mapped out the cable routes using public info and had his thesis classified? If you cannot legally know who connects to what, where, and how at the level 1 and level 2 tiers, you are denied access to ANY information which could reveal which ISPs are likely to cost what amount for the work you intend to do over the Internet. The only way to perform the necessary market research is, in effect, to be a criminal. Not just any old criminal, Gitmo-level criminal.

Is this over-worrying? Not really. There was once a service that did not have NN. It was called the IPSS (International Packet Switch Stream) service. Do you know, even remotely, how expensive that was? $25k per year even for relatively low-volume use was not unusual. Anyone here want to spend that on Internet connectivity?

Re:Choices

[SanityInAnarchy]

The goal of society and government is to benefit certain people to the detriment of other people, based on who is part of the largest group and hence has the most votes.

That's a cynical analysis, not a goal. Let's try again:

The goal of government and society is to benefit most people most of the time, to the detriment of the few individuals who violate the social contract -- in this case, those who have enriched themselves massively at the expense of everyone else, using ethics which are questionable at best.

Who do you think runs the "large mega telecommunications companies"?

If you're referring to all the employees, certainly, we should benefit them. As it is, government and society tends to benefit the board of directors and a few top executives, to the detriment of everyone else.

It's America.

[lymond01]

If you don't like the FCC regulations, write your congressperson, get them changed.

Re:It's America.

[Meshach]

If you don't like the FCC regulations, write your congressperson, get them changed.

You must be new here...

beware of idealists

[Tom]

If you don't like your internet service provider's policies, you can simply switch to another one.

Assuming, of course, you actually do have a choice, the market works, the providers do not collude on anything and the big players don't dictate de factor policies.

Or, in other words: In the ideal dreamworld of the free market fanatics, there's always this "competition" solution that solves every problem and gives the best answer to every question. In the real world, things are quite a bit more complicated.

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...

[TubeSteak]

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.

I have one choice for highspeed internet.
Transparency will not help me if my ISP decides to implement shitty policies.
All things being equal, government regulation is less of a burden to me and millions of other Americans than boxing up our lives and moving.

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.

Re:Transparency not Neutrality...

[Hatta]

under some definitions of network neutrality, various useful traffic shaping

QoS falls under no one's definition of network neutrality. Those who conflate QoS with network neutrality are engaging in FUD. They are deliberately confusing the nomenclature in order to scare people away from true network neutrality.

Funny

[BJ_Covert_Action]

If you don’t like your internet service provider’s policies, you can simply switch to another one.

Hahahahaha! That's a good one. And here I thought I was already tolerating ISP abuse, crappy upload speeds, poorly maintained infrastructure, and false service tech. arrival times because I just felt it was the right thing to do. Now that I know I have a choice to work with an ISP that will treat me with respect and dignity well, gosh darn, I'll just hop on over this month.

Oh wait.

I don't know if this article was written by someone in another country or what, but like most of our shitty national industries (cell phones, auto insurance, medical services, political parties, etc.) we in the U.S. don't have any choice in what services are provided to us by our ISP. We might have the illusion of choice in one area or another, depending on how badly your local branch wants to maintain reputation, but real choice? Nah, this is the freedom lovin' US of A. We don't do that sort of thing here.

Which one indeed

[EdIII]

So which model sounds better to you?

How about the model in which it is illegal for a company to both own the pipes and have any interests in the IP that may be flowing through it? The model in which their would be huge fines (more than what they actually earned to make it an actual penalty) when it is shown that they had any deals to profit on the IP flowing through them?

Cuz, I don't know... maybe the worst possibility is one in which the vastly huge amount of choices I have in ISP providers will limit, or aggressively manage, the content I can access because it conflicts with their goal to monetize their own copyright catalogues?

Re:Which one indeed

[Rich0]

Yup - the vertical integration is what is killing us.

How about this - split the pipes from the traffic entirely.

The telco provides a cable that routes ethernet packets from your house to a central office. Full stop. They can sell by the byte - just like your water bill. They are PUC regulated - costs plus minor profit - just like the water company. If the uplink is dedicated (no shared wires between the home and the CO), then they couldn't meter use at all - only charge to rent/maintain the line (and that is based on technology - no implementing intentional bottlenecks to abuse billing).

Once the packets get to the central office they can go to any number of ISPs, and the telco isn't allowed to own any of them, or invest in any of them. The telco charges by the rack and kWh to have space in that office - full stop. You pick your ISP, who provides traffic to the internet, email, etc. Since ISPs don't own the last mile, I'd expect there to be a fair amount of competition. Oh, and if you want you can be your own ISP if you put a router in that CO and pay for the power and uplink (probably not a practical solution for small customers, but companies could do this).

The last mile is the natural monopoly, so the goal should be to make the last mile boring. Last mile providers should get nice steady incomes, and little company growth. Your water company doesn't need to grow (unless you build more homes) - it needs to keep your water going. Utilities get steady almost-guaranteed rates of return, in exchange for heavy regulation and PUC-set prices.

This really isn't a complicated model - we've been doing it for a century.

This way the "internet" itself can stay nice and unregulated, like the free-marketers want. Once you get past the CO ISPs are no longer a natural monoply, and barriers to entry are much lower. Your town could run a co-op if they wanted. ISPs like AOL could flourish next to ISPs that provide nothing more than IP carriage (no email, no web, no support, no home router, etc). Some ISPs would throttle connections, some would not but charge by the byte. You can buy whatever you want that way.

Re:Personally?

[Mongoose Disciple]

Meat inspections? Waging war on a grand scale? Roads?

Government isn't a good solution to many problems, but that doesn't mean it isn't a good solution to some problems. A wise society has government as one of the tools in its toolbox, but doesn't try to pound in nails with a wrench either.

Free-Market Mad-Libs

[Glires]

Hmmm... this line of thought sounds familiar for some reason.

If the government regulates [mortgages], policies for [mortgages] are set by one entity: the [FTC]. However, if the government stays out, each company will set its own policies. If you don't like the [FTC]'s policies, you are stuck with them unless you leave the United States. If you don't like your [mortgage banker]'s policies, you can simply switch to another one. So which model sounds better to you?

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.

Re:Switch to another one...?

[nine-times]

I live in NYC and ultimately I have 4 options:

1) Time Warner Cable
2) dialup
3) cell phone data plans (expensive, slow, and capped)
4) don't use the Internet

That's in one of the biggest/densest cities in the world.