Net Neutrality vs. Net Neutering
Views on Linux in Business
--by Doc Searls, Senior Editor of Linux Journal
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Net Neutrality vs. Net Neutering
It's time to define the Internet. We haven't done that yet--certainly
not in a way that allows lawmakers and regulators to operate from the
same set of assumptions that we do.
As I pointed out last November in "Saving the Net: How to Keep the
Carriers from Flushing the Net Down the Tubes":
linuxjournal.com , carriers subordinate the Net
to the pipes that carry it, which they own. To them the Net is a
container cargo system for the stuff we call "content", it's and
subject to whatever traffic control regime they wish to impose on it.
That includes tiered service akin to airline service, divided into
first class, business and coach. This brings up doomsday scenarios
that are easy for many of us to imagine, if the carriers succeed in
lobbying this definition and service regime into law.
Meanwhile, copyright extremists of the Hollywood school see the Net as
a big "content" business and carriers as ideally positioned to offer
"piracy" protections at the backbone level. So they find the carriers'
Net definition agreeable as well. So they are lobbing in roughly the
same direction.
As I also pointed out in that same piece, our best hope for saving the
Net from the carriers and copyright extremists lies in defining it and
understanding it as a place--as something everybody goes to and builds
on, not just something stuff goes through.
As a place, the Net is an ideal habitat for business, culture and much
more. In Our Space:
doc.weblogs.com the other day I wrote:
...the Net is not a form of carriage, even though it might appear
that way to the carriers and the copyright extremists. The Net has
an existence that encompasses carriage and content but is not
reducible to either--just as human beings have an existence that
encompasses the circulatory system and its constituents but is not
reducible to either.
There are higher principles involved. Life is larger than the
systems that sustain it. The principle we call net neutrality is as
essential to Internet life as consciousness is to human life. When
we subordinate Net neutrality to the systems that sustain it, we
reduce it to those systems. The Net becomes a cable system, a phone
system, a content delivery system. And nothing more. In human
terms, this is called brain death.
By framing the Net as a neutral place, we assure that it will
continue to serve as what it has already been for more than ten
years: a public marketplace where private enterprise of all forms
cannot only grow and thrive, but can do both better than it ever
has anywhere, ever, before.
The principle we call Net Neutrality has its own natural laws, akin to
those of gravity, motion and thermodynamics. The judicial laws we
make, as we move toward new telecom regulation, need to respect the
natural laws that define the Net and make it such an ideal habitat for
business and culture.
In his testimony at the Senate Commerce Committee's Net Neutrality
hearings:
commerce.senate.gov on
February 7 of this year, Prof. Lawrence Lessig said this, among many
other things:
...this Committee must keep in view a fundamental fact about the
Internet: as scholars and network theorists have extensively
documented, the innovation and explosive growth of the Internet is
directly linked to its particular architectural design. It was in
large part because the network respected what Saltzer, Clark and
Reed called "the 'end-to-end' principle" that the explosive growth
of the Internet happened. If this Committee wants to preserve that
growth and innovation, it should take steps to protect this
fundamental design.
Meanwhile, Kyle McSlarrow, President & CEO of the National Cable &
Telecommunications Association, said this:
commerce.senate.gov in his testimony:
I would like to focus this morning on three main points. First,
Congress's policy of leaving the Internet unregulated has been a
resounding success. The resulting network flexibility has
encouraged billions of dollars in investment. Companies that
include high speed Internet services among their offerings have the
freedom to experiment with multiple business models, producing more
choices and competition in content and providers for consumers, and
more innovation than ever before.
Second, any change to this policy could have serious repercussions
to continued network innovation and investment. Government, by its
nature, is ill-equipped to make judgments about the best business
models for an industry. This is especially true for a business as
dynamic as the provision of high speed Internet services. It is
clear that how those business models develop will directly affect
the level of investment and innovation we can expect over the next
few decades, but no one today can predict which business models
will most effectively promote those goals.
Finally, in the absence of any problem calling for a legislative
solution--and since the broadband services marketplace is
characterized by robust competition--Congress should refrain from
premature legislative action and allow the marketplace to continue
to grow and change so network and applications providers can offer
consumers the fullest range of innovative service options.
Congress's Decision to Leave the Internet Unregulated is an
Unquestioned Success.
Keeping the Internet free of regulation has helped to spur
tremendous investment and competition in broadband networks and
services. Left free to create new business opportunities and
services, broadband providers (including cable operators, DSL,
satellite and wireless operators) have invested billions of dollars
to bring high-speed Internet access services to consumers across
the nation. With bandwidth usage growing at a rapid pace, continued
investment will be needed to keep broadband services robust.
If broadband providers are to continue to make these investments,
and if consumers are going to be given the levels of services and
innovative new products and features they desire, all at prices
they can afford, broadband providers need to have continuing
flexibility to innovate in the business models and pricing plans
they employ. Likewise, websites and content providers also need the
flexibility to experiment with business models, and to partner with
broadband providers in doing so.
Many of the sounds McSlarrow makes are harmonious with my own
Libertarian sympathies. I do worry about the unintended consequences
of legislation that burns Net Neutrality into law. But McSlarrow's
real agenda shows up in that last sentence. The carriers still think
the Net is about "delivering content to consumers". In other words,
Cable TV. And they would like to use the "free market", in which they
enjoy government-protected monopolies, to shake down Google, Yahoo,
Microsoft and other large "content providers" that look to the
carriers like new forms of ABC, CBS and CNN.
The carriers' goal is to convert the Net into a paid content delivery
system. That's where they're headed with this argument. While pro-Net
advocates wish to liberate the Net by burning neutrality into law,
anti-Net advocates wish to neuter the Net by preserving the current
regulatory regime--or by otherwise re-regulating it to favor their
cable TV model.
Meanwhile, all the success the Net has enjoyed--all the good it has
done for business and culture around the world--has had everything to
do with its end-to-end neutrality and relatively nothing to do with
paid content delivery. In fact, the asymmetrical build-outs of service
to homes has done enormous harm to market growth by preventing
countless small and home Net-based businesses from starting and
growing.
Specifically, by provisioning big bandwidth downstream and narrow
bandwidth upstream, while blocking ports 25 and 80--in crass violation
of the Net's UNIX-derived network model, in addition to the end-to-end
principle--the carriers prevent customers from running their own mail
and Web servers and whatever server-based businesses might be
possible. Again, all the carriers can imagine is Cable TV. That's been
their fantasy from the beginning.
After I wrote Our Space, I asked Eric S. Raymond to give his best
Libertarian take on the situation. He wrote:
esr.ibiblio.org
Telecoms regulation, to the extent it was ever justified, was
justified on the basis of preventing or remedying market
failures--such as, in particular, lack of market incentives to
provide universal coverage.
The market failures in telecoms all derive from the high
fixed-capital costs of conventional wirelines. These have two major
effects: (1) incentives to provide service in rural areas are weak,
because the amount of time required to amortize large fixed costs
makes for poor discounted ROI; and (2) in higher-density areas, the
last mile of wire is a natural monopoly/oligopoly.
New technologies are directly attacking this problem. Wi-Fi,
wireless mesh networks, IP over powerlines, and cheap fenceline
cable dramatically lower the fixed capital costs of last-mile
service. The main things holding these technologies back are
regulatory barriers (including, notably, not enough spectrum
allocated to WiFi and UWB).
The right answer: deregulate everything, free the new technologies
to go head-to-head against the wired last mile, and let the market
sort it all out.
Let's think seriously about this. What would happen if we deregulated
carriage at the federal level and encouraged it at other levels as
well? How about if we opened up more spectrum as well? (Including TV
channels 2-13, which are due to be liberated by 2009 in the US?)
Wouldn't we like to see the carriers get some real competition? Why
should your neighborhood be limited to a choice of one cable and one
phone provider? Why not drop the definitions of both and let everybody
carry whatever they want?
By a similar (though not the same) token, how about regulating Net
Neutrality (insisting on it, essentially), while deregulating
everything else? Can we characterize Net Neutrality as a modern
equivalent of a market incentive to universal coverage?
I lean toward insisting on Net Neutrality, because I know what the big
carriers are up to, and it creeps the crap out of me. But I also lean
toward deregulating telecom to let carriers new and old come into the
market and fight to build the best possible infrastructure for the
fully neutral Net. That's one that includes symmetrical service to
every end in the whole end-to-end system.
Symmetricality has to be on the table, or Net Neutrality is largely
meaningless. Asymmetricality is the non-neutrality we already have.
Getting rid of it will open the market to countless new businesses and
business opportunities for everybody.
--
Doc Searls:
mailto:doc@ssc.com is Senior Editor of Linux Journal. He writes the
Linux for Suits column for Linux Journal. He also presides over Doc
Searls' IT Garage:
garage.docsearls.com, which is published by SSC, the publisher
of Linux Journal.
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