Psycho Sensei

Framing Net Neutrality:


Interesting bit of political framing here:

Put another way, if net neutrality passes, the AT&Ts of the world will
be forced to pay for all of their equipment upgrades themselves and
could not subsidize that effort by imposing premium fees for premium
services. If net neutrality fails, they will be able to recoup more of
those costs than they can now from the likes of Google Inc., Microsoft
Corp. and other major users of the World Wide Web.

At its heart, then, the battle is commercial -- over who pays how much
for improvements to the Internet that we all use and sometimes love.

No Neutral Ground in This Internet Battle
By Jeffrey H. Birnbaum
Washington Post
Monday, June 26, 2006; Page D01

I'd be more willing to believe that if the various incumbent carriers
or their predecessors hadn't already been promising us fast broadband
for everyone for many years now,
and if Japan and Korea hadn't already managed it without this kind of finagle.

Birnbaum makes several points, including this one:

Second, online firms already pay billions of dollars to network
operators. The quandary is, should they be assessed more for additional
or premium services, such as video streaming?

Hm, so why was it that when the World Wide Web came out around 1995,
despite all the complaints about it using far more bandwidth than other
applications and doing so in an ill-bred manner (web browsers started
opening 4 or more TCP connections simultaneously), why was it that
instead of extra charges being required, lots more people got connected
and used the Internet more, producing a great buildout that has lasted
through the dot com boom and bust, producing the Internet as we know it today?

Birnbaum's basic complaint seems to be that television ads about net
neutrality on both sides are dumbed down and print ads aren't much better.
He complains that you have to go to web pages to find out details.
Horrors.
Actually, Birnbaum points out a very good reason for net neutrality.
Yes, television ads are always dumbed down, because they're brief and
have to be tailored for the lowest common denominator,
and have to be carried by media which are mostly already owned by only
a few big corporations, who can choose what to broadcast.
Yes, print ads may be somewhat better, but are still limited in size
and have to be carried by print media which are mostly already owned by only
a few big corporations, who can choose what to print.
The Internet alone provides a medium for distribution of information
as detailed as necessary, in multiple formats for different audiences,
and, with net neutrality, still not yet under the control of any
particular group of companies.

One result of Birnbaum's argument, if you buy it, is to think that
there are two equal sides to this debate.
Actually, there are the big U.S. incumbent telephone companies, who are
the big ISPs stateside now, and pretty much everybody else.
Why it would benefit everybody else to grant oligarchic power over content
to a small group of telecommunications providers is not clear to me.

Historically speaking, it seems to me that what has permitted the
Internet to grow as fast and as large as it has and to provide
such varied content to so many users is exactly its decentralization
and distribution, one of the main aspects of which is net neutrality.
So it seems to me that the burden of proof for changing net neutrality
should be on the small group of U.S. incumbent providers that want to do so.
Unfortunately, they've already changed the previous U.S. regulations that
enforced it, and now they're opposing changing it back.
It's time for all those concerned to speak up.

-jsq