“The network neutrality debate, which is expected to surface again this fall, is a faux issue that if mandated by Congress is bound to become a mess. Count me in the camp that Congress do nada about net neutrality,” Larry Dignan writes for eWeek.
“‘Net neutrality’ is a term few can agree on. For Google, Yahoo and eBay, mandating net neutrality means that telecommunications giants will have to treat all Internet traffic equally. For net neutrality’s staunchest supporters, the concept has become a quasi censorship issue (as if Verizon would tell its customers they couldn’t use Google). For those telecom giants like AT&T and Verizon, net neutrality means they couldn’t charge for enhanced services. For Internet users, profiled in eWEEK this week, the end of net neutrality would be downright scary because costs could go up—or not. Perhaps startups would be shut out—or not. No one knows what will happen, since the debate is really a fracas between Net and telecom behemoths battling over their interests and trying to prod Congress to fix a problem that doesn’t exist yet. In other words, the histrionic levels in this debate are high,” Dignan writes.
Dignan’s reasons why Congress shouldn’t get involved:
1. Congress will screw it up.
2. Fast lanes exist today.
3. All traffic isn’t created equal.
4. Telecom giants are already doomed.
5. Laws exist to thwart net neutrality concerns today.
Explanantions of the above five points in the full article here.
MacDailyNews Take: We don’t presume to know the best way to get there, but we support the concept of “Net Neutrality” especially as it pertains to preventing the idea of ISP’s blocking or otherwise impeding sites that don’t pay the ISP to ensure equal access. That said, we usually prefer the government to be hands-off wherever possible, Laissez-faire, except in cases where the free market obviously cannot adequately self-regulate (antitrust, for example). Regulations are static and the marketplace is fluid, so such regulation can often have unintended, unforeseen results down the road. We sincerely hope that there are enough forces in place and/or that the balances adjust in such a manner as to keep the ‘Net as neutral as it is today.
Related articles:
U.S. Senate committee rejects net neutrality proposal – June 29, 2006
House rejects H.R. 5252 Net neutrality amendment – June 09, 2006
This author is SO far off base. Prices may not go up? There may not be tiered service? Yeah, right!!! I guarantee this would happen. Just like after the Telecommunications Act of 1993 that deregulated the cable industry. “Competition will drive down prices!”, Newt Gingrich and his Republican cronies claimed. My prediction was the more accurate one – cable prices have more than doubled in the last 13 years and 99+% of cable markets are still monopolies with only one provider. So much for the free market!
This is what we have to look forward to if net neutrality isn’t mandated by federal law.
My take on Net Neutrality: Why don’t they turn the table on them?
Example http://www.freemacblog.com/living-without-google-for-36-hoursnot-fun/
Don’t leave out the option that may lead ISPs to charge consumers tiered access. They’ve already stepped down access speeds to create speed “choice”.
I learned a new word, “histrionic.” One that I will probably never use. It’s one of those words people use to appear more educated than they really are.
I vote for the free market approach. Net neutrality should be preserved for the types of internet access most consumers are using. I don’t mind the idea of corporations and research facilities paying more for enhanced services, but they are probably doing that already.
well, in Europe, there’s a lot of lack of freedom of speech when it comes to…
anything Nazi (pro or con)
anything not in French (in france)
anythig not politcally correct (they tried to get a british car show host fired for making a joke about german cars with GPS recievers that only take you to poland)
when it comes to freedom – governments have been pretty bad about it.
So far, the internet has seen censorship as damage and routes around it
I’m willing to stick with that for the moment…
You don’t know the histri of onics. But I’ll bet Tom Cruise does.
We KNOW it’s important to give more power to corporations. It’s what our 3 branches of Republican government are dedicated to.
The question here is, WHICH corporations should our leaders get in bed with?
Lacking the money of any of these corporations, our opinions matter little. But we can discuss anyway–this is the beauty of democracy in action!
You can start hijacking people for more money when you start paying me for the utility easement you use to make money on my land. You get it for free, courtesy of the people. Your effing greed knows no limits. Ed Whitacre can KMA.
Congress should leave the net alone. The net is driven by consumers making millions of choice decisions every day.
Legislated rules are too inflexible to account for the rapidity that consumers make choice decisions. If you don’t believe that then take a history refresher course in what happened to airline fares and the cost of telephone service, once Congress lifted price controls from the airline industry, and the court system broke up ATT. Those aren’t isolated happenstances. The same thing happens everytime price rules are discarded.
The market works. The big firms wouldn’t be looking for this legislation if they weren’t interested in thwarting an open and free marketplace.
“…especially as it pertains to preventing the idea of ISP’s blocking or otherwise impeding sites that don’t pay the ISP to ensure equal access.”
Net Neutrality laws have not been passed, and this hasn’t happened. Therefore, why do we need to have the government screw with it?
To Ray Lane:
Net Neutrality was needed before. Now it is, since the CEO of a major telecom proposed extorting more money out of high volume content providers, even though both they and end users already pay access fees to the Internet.
Suppose Walmart took over I-95 down the east coast, and told everyone that they were thinking about limiting the speed to 40 miles per hour, except for the big trucks, who they would let go 80 miles per hour if they pay them an extra $100 bucks for each trip.
Can you see how maybe in that case, a new law might be proposed in Congress that would run counter to so-called the ‘free market’? Wouldn’t you think such a law was justified?
Since when did a common word like “histrionic” became a “showoff” word?
Give me a break. Just because they use words with more than two syll-a-bles doesn’t make them “smartypants word nerds”.
People’s anti-intelligence stances always amaze me.
OK , Cubert,
tell me how an industry like cable is supposed to completely rewire a town and upgrade amps and replace equipment to digital along with internet sevice and phone service without affecting price. OH-and then pay HBO, Showtime, Cinemax, etc and provide customer support for all of it? you have no clue do you? Just wave your magical liberal wand like you do in the shower and all will be okay. And by the way, my basic cable was $33.00 in 1993 and it is $42.50 now. And while I’m sure some cable systems block access to some sites, I don’t know of any. And as far as competition, a cable system has a franchise agreemant with a town before it pours millions in to it. For another company to try to overbuild , it would need to gain 75% of customers to be profitable. Thats a big gamble. Why don’t you take YOUR money and do it?
Some people only have enough intelligence to complain.
For sure, costs will NOT go down.
Since when is this a free market. The Telcos have been so conglomerated ( I believe there are only 2 actual separate companies now) that any free market competition is nixed completely.
I am not a big fan of government regulation, but I think a lawsuit with the intention of setting a precedent might work too.
And this tweaks me out even more, because here in California, we have been paying a fee on our phone bills for years to give the telcos money to invest in fiber optics. Where is the fiber? oh yeah its either unlaid or dark. Where is the accounting for the tens of millions(or more) of dollars you’ve raked in?
And after all of this time, now you want to use the half of the pipe for your own ip tv services and then charge content holders for “prioritized” service. That is ricockulous!
The US Government should realized that internet access is a utility, and is not optional if you are going to have a successful economy in the 21st century. We are wayyy behind asia and europe in terms of cellular data and internet speeds.
That’s may be true, Ron, until a fiber to curb network is built by various companies. Then cable and phone companies will be relegated to a position like the water or power company-only without the content-they will simply build a pipe to your house and everything else will go through them but not by them. I believe you will get movies from HBO.com, tv from NBC.com, phone service will be more like video chat (except for wireless) and so forth. There will be no need for the local cable or phone co. to provide anything more than the infrastructure. Ad revenue and subscription will support most sites. They may pool and continue to let sites like iTunes handle their business for music and movies(and books and mags) so by 2015, your monthly bill(adjusted for inflation) will probably less than 1995.
In a free market where the consumer has several choices for internet access, you can pick the provider with the open access and let the market correct itself as the closed shops die out.
Most internet users still do not have several choices for a carrier. Monopolist providers will be able to do what the hell they like if there is no net neutrality. They charge too much money for access as it is.
Let’s keep the net neutral until stiff competition between providers means we no longer need to regulate it anymore.
I agree, Big Al. However, I live in a small market (63,000) and we have cable, DSL, dial up, and satellite to choose from, and WiMax is on the way. Not that these are all good choices, but the fact that you have them helps keep a company in line.
So in other words, what Steve Jobs has been arguing all along is for iTunes “Net Neutrality”. All songs for the same price. This model works. But what the greedy records companies want is tiered pricing, charging more for certain songs and 99 cents for the rest. (Yeah, right, they’ll charge less for less popular songs.)
Net Neutrality works for iTunes. Tiered pricing only really benefits the damn phone companies (record companies).
Peace.
Funny, I’ve always lived in a place where I’ve had 2 or more choices. There can only be competition where there is the will to compete, and competition costs, my friends. There are such things as natural barriers to entry, which is why there aren’t too many startup nationwide car companies. Learn some basic about economics!
Some other points…
1> Existence of one counter-example does not make a general statement null and void. You have to prove that the original idea is false everywhere, or false in so many places, that it can be deemed to be universally false. This refers to the deregulation of the cable industry.
2> If you’re going to argue against the free market, then you have a lot of explaining to do about who gets to run the show, how much interference is permitted, why it should permitted, and how having one more person between the customer and the producer of a good or service makes things better for the consumer. I eagerly await your explanations.
3> If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it. There are plenty enough laws and plenty of fingers already in the pie. There’s no reason to regulate something that’s working except to redistribute income, and that’s socialism.
4> For what I used to pay for dial-up, I now get DSL at 128/378 speeds. Technology, deregulation, and competition all have brought this to me, and I’m happy.
I thought that VoIP was big deal in this debate. From what I’ve heard, if Broadband phone doesn’t get enough bandwidth, the sound quality is terrible. This would allow the telecoms to charge for their own services and deny bandwidth to competing services. I say it should be regulated.
THE problem is there are several large companies very, very actively lobbying cogress to make laws which specifically implement the opposite of ‘net neutrality. It’s not *just* a tiered internet to worry about.
If people don’t push congress to make laws which specifically require ‘net neutrality and get them to implement such laws then these companies will keep at it until they get laws passed which are favorable to them.
If you don’t fight for ‘net neutrality it will eventually go away. The alternative possibilities are a bit too frightening to contemplate.
For me, it is a make or break issue. I’ve already formally put both my U.S. Senators and U.S. Representative on notice that I will *not* vote for any one of them if they cast any votes contrary to anything but full and complete ‘net neutrality.
If any of you feel similarly, I suggest you do likewise.
After reading your post, I have now contacted both of my Senators and US Rep. and put them on notice that I will vote against them if they support “Net Neutrality”–probably the most lame-brained, self-defeating concept I’ve heard of in decades. Net neutrality is simply a ploy by some major corporate telecom USERS to avoid paying the telecom corporate PROVIDERS what they should. That is ALL that this is about. Those who’ve been brainwashed on this issue are simply pawns helping one set of corporations fleece another set of corporations. If that was all there was to it, I frankly wouldn’t give a rat’s a**. But, in fact, net neutrality will create a MAJOR disincentive for the type of investment by telecom providers that we need for true high speed broadband. There is certainly choice right now in most localities regarding ISPs, and there will be a lot more as WIMAX rolls out over the next few years (e.g., Sprint). While we currently don’t have a real market in telecom, if the gullible advocates of net neutrality will just sit on their hands for a couple of years, we’ll have it.
Kate
MDN:..except in cases where the free market obviously cannot adequately self-regulate (antitrust, for example)
Monopolies can only exist where government creates them or protects them.
And Cubert, et al– my cable bills are also sky-high, not because of deregulation, but because my local government entity has signed an exclusivity deal with Comcast to keep out competitors. I’d bet your situation is similar.