H 82°, L 63° | Tomorrow: With all of the debate in Washington over cap and trade and health care it’s not hard to see how the regulation of things other than our air and health can get lost in the shuffle. One such item is the Internet. So-called net neutrality regulation is starting to be enacted by the Federal Communications Commission, and some members of Congress are pushing for legislation that would take things even further.
To phrase things a bit more simply than the FCC does, net neutrality is regulation that mandates that, provided you aren’t violating any laws, your Internet service provider must treat all content, applications and devices equally. While I’m normally all for equal treatment, not permitting an entire industry to engage in any sort of price discrimination wouldn’t make any sense anywhere else and doesn’t make sense for the Internet.
Firstly, when you go to a store to buy everything from food to cars, cell phones to sports equipment, different items cost different amounts. Limiting the ability of sellers to base their prices on only certain aspects of the items they are selling would clearly not make any sense, leading to a lack of consumer choice and stifling innovation. There is no reason the Internet is any different than these other consumer goods in that respect.
Secondly, the Internet in its current form has been an indisputable success. Although the need for regulation and oversight are matters of debate for industries like airlines, health care and anything that emits carbon dioxide, making the case that regulation and government oversight have in any way made the Internet what it is today is damn near close to — if not outright — impossible. Anyone with a computer, a couple of hours and a bit of motivation can go start his or her own website or take even less time to blog, tweet and e-mail on websites created by other people.
While regulating Internet service providers is a far cry from something like a license to go online, I for one have no desire to start testing just how slippery that slope may be. Potentially interfering with the breakneck speed at which innovation occurs online ought to require more than hypothetical problems that have yet to materialize.
Banning price discrimination by Internet providers functionally forces everyone to purchase the same Internet. Think of the Internet post-net neutrality as a Cadillac, not too shabby as a form of transportation, but clearly not for everyone; there are many people who would be just as happy to save their money and go with the beat-up Chevy. Net neutrality is intended to force everyone to have access to the same version of the Internet, and just like transportation, a one-size-fits-all approach just doesn’t cut it.
I’m sure there are some people out there who have no idea what “bit torrent” means and would be happy to save a couple bucks each month in exchange for giving up their ability to do so. I would also be willing to bet there are some people who would be perfectly fine with their Internet service provider favoring certain content or devices if it would save them a couple of bucks each month. Maybe Disney will want to slow down content from NBC or Google will find it worth its while to offer a monetary incentive if you use their browser. There is no reason to limit the ability of Internet service providers to offer that beat-up Chevy version of the Internet, especially when people could be spending saved money on everything from paying down their credit card debt to health care bills to college tuition. Forcing them to buy a Cadillac just to have transportation doesn’t help anyone.
On the other hand, there are those people who would be willing to pay for an Internet connection even better than that being offered today. Who knows what form that connection might take? Maybe it will be in the form of the 1 gigabit per second connections promised by the mythical Google Fiber; maybe something else.
Whatever it may be, forcing everyone to purchase the same Internet won’t help us get there. Allowing Internet service providers to charge differing amounts for different versions of the Internet will allow innovation to be channeled into the highest demanded areas in terms of the ability of consumers to access the Internet.
People are so caught up in trying to encourage innovation in the content and applications that they are willing to sacrifice innovation in the way people access the Internet. It would be a shame to kill innovation in how people are able to access the Internet in the name of encouraging content-based innovation. But in the end, the important thing is that we all have the ability to go online and write angry blog posts, tweets, e-mails and comments complaining about whatever decision is ultimately made.
Patrick McEwen ([email protected]) is a junior majoring in nuclear engineering.
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Patrick, you’ve got the argument completely wrong. I agree with your conclusion that we should prevent actions “leading to a lack of consumer choice and stifling innovation”, but Net Neutrality actually provides an arena for greater innovation.
In a packet-neutral network bandwidth can still be limited (i.e. although the ISP can’t charge me more for watching YouTube, they can charge me more for having a bandwidth cap at 10Mbps instead of 1Mbps) to allow for price discrimination. I personally see denying Net Neutrality as going further toward the opposite slipper slope leading to troubled global networks.
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You seem to really not understand net neutrality. This will not stop ISPs from differentiate their services based on bandwidth and data limits. This will however, prevent ISPs from making deals to discriminate certain traffic types where consumers are left out of the decision process. In my area there are only two choices for consumer wired high speed internet. Not exactly a free market, especially to the barriers of entry for low latency wired connections.
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“Whatever it may be, forcing everyone to purchase the same Internet won�t help us get there. Allowing Internet service providers to charge differing amounts for different versions of the Internet will allow innovation to be channeled into the highest demanded areas in terms of the ability of consumers to access the Internet.”
Net Neutrality allows for internet providers to charge different amounts for better internet. It just basically about private corporations not getting better treatment than citizens.
So I don’t really get your points, you kind of line it up in some members of congress want it to go even further but you don’t even line up what them want to do? What do they want to do that goes beyond basic net neutrality?
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Nice article, although what you are writing about and net neutrality are two completely different things. Like you say in the second paragraph, net neutrality can be described by “your Internet service provider must treat all content, applications and devices equally”. You say the government is trying to regulate it, but it is actually the opposite. A net neutrality would mean that ISPs wouldn’t be allowed to throttle download/upload speeds of users who are considered bandwidth hogs. They also wouldn’t be allowed to block advertisements for other ISPs or anything at all for that matter. So in fact, it is the exact opposite of regulation. The general idea of net neutrality is that ISPs can’t regulate the content on the internet, or the platforms that the internet runs on. For example, if I’m sucking up TONS of bandwidth on AT&Ts 3G network because I’m streaming TV over it, they currently are legally able to slow my connection speed to discourage me from keep doing that. Although you are correct, in that the some NN proponents want to introduce a tiered pricing system of internet access, they are not trying to make everyone pay a single price.
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I totally agree- this method of regulation is bad for the internet. However, I am not totally against regulation itself. I would be fine with saying that there should be a standard rate for the service being offered- that ISPs couldn’t charge ABC x amount for service and NBC twice as much for the same service. Regulation isn’t inherently bad- just this idea.
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Net Neutrality is not adding any new regulations to the internet. It actually keeps the internet the same. Synonymous with net neutrality is, Fuck Off Telecoms I’ll Take My Internet As Is.
If the AT&Ts of the world have their way with the internet, they will have a strong financial incentive to tweak the market for the benefit of their own content and services.
How will a tiered internet structure, such as the one the telecoms are pushing for, allow innovation like you say? The internet has improved leaps and bounds since it first began. Why? Because people have been allowed to do anything they can dream of without permission. There’s been failures, but holy hell have there been successes. With telecom pay structures, the little guys and small start ups will not determine their own success. AT&T and Comcast will be the gatekeepers.
I don’t believe you know what you’re talking about. I don’t believe you actually researched net neutrality before writing this. You have a responsibility as an opinion page writer to write a cohesive argument. All arguments have holes and people will disagree with you. But, in this case, you came up with an argument that was sloppy at best and an insult to advocates on both sides of the issue.
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Patrick, I have to disagree with you on this one: http://madtownmemoranda.wordpress.com/2010/03/24/net-neutrality-is-necessary/
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I’ve never before read such an otherwise well-written argument that so badly misses the definition of the issue it argues against.
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Did you research this topic at all before writing this article? Net neutrality legislation would keep the internet exactly the same as it is- ie: providers can charge different amounts for different speeds, but can’t base the cost/speed on what sites you’re going too. There is absolutely no legislation on the table about “forcing everyone to purchase the same Internet.” Try doing some basic homework next time you submit an article that’s going to be read by thousands.
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Patrick, you really should have actually researched the topic before writing your opinion article. A basic internet search would have provided you with information that didn’t make you appear to be totally ignorant of how the internet and network communication work as well as the whole topic of net neutrality. Next time I would suggest searching out a computer science student before writing something about technology.
Yours sincerely, A Computer Science Student
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This article is absurd, and I don’t feel the need to reiterate points that commenters above me have pointed out.
There is a difference between writing an opinion article and spouting baseless nonsense, which this article is.