Archive for the 'Net Neutrality' category

Esther Dyson on Net Neutrality

Feb 08 2007 Published by under Bloggers, Net Neutrality, Technology, The Internet

I’ve been a big fan of Esther Dyson since I read a profile about her, the unbelievable mess that is her office, and her status as a future theorist and “big thinker”. She came across as being a) incredibly smart, and b) incredibly down to earth given her family.

I was very curious to see her thoughts on Net Neutrality.

The big fight is in essence two interest blocks arguing over who owns the consumer: Is it the big content-providers and carriers, who can make money by offering content in exchange for audience?… and, oh, to get those audiences, they’d like to get exclusive access, please. Their pitch to consumers is that without us, you’d have to pay more for your Net access.

When you compare this to my own comments on the subject (which, again, are mine alone and do not reflect the views of my employer), I come off sounding almost exactly like a world renowned “big thinker”.

Now, it appears that the NY Times has bought into the arguments made by net neutrality proponents. It really is unfortunate that the wrong side of this issue has come up with the best messaging. I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again. This is not a debate between the little guy and the big guy. This is a debate between content providers and access providers over who has to charge the little guy more for service. Period.

Now that Esther has confirmed my position, do you think the Save the Internet guys will finally have an honest debate about this?

(Disclaimer: While I work for the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, this post should in no way be construed as an official position of the Association. Thoughts in this space are mine and mine alone and do not reflect the views of my employer.)

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More On Net Neutrality

Jan 31 2007 Published by under Congress, Legislation, Net Neutrality, The Internet

Forbes magazine has been running a series of columns on telecom issues lately. Guest commentators have written on such topics as video franchising and net neutrality.

Today brings a different look at Net Neutrality as seen by a telecom lawyer. Peter Huber argues that the one group net neutrality will definitely be good for are his fellow lawyers.

The new Congress is determined to enact a “net neutrality” bill. Nobody yet knows what those two words mean. The new law won’t provide any intelligible answer, either. It will, however, put a real drag on new capital investment in faster digital pipes by making it illegal for many big companies to help pay for them, while leaving everyone guessing about the details for years. That last bit is great news for all the telecom lawyers (like me) who get paid far too much to make sense out of idiotic new laws like this one…

…A simple two-word law is all we really need–an equal rights amendment for bits.

It will be a 2 million-word law by the time Congress, the Federal Communications Commission and the courts are done with it. Grand principles always end up as spaghetti in this industry, because they aim to regulate networks that are far more complicated than anything you have ever seen heaped up beside an amusing little glass of chianti.

If anything should make you nervous about a net neutrality bill, it should be the gleeful amusement of a telecom lawyer chortling about the billable hours he’ll incur trying to make sense of it for a bewildered public. That alone should tell you this bill is not what its proponents would have you believe.

(Disclaimer: While I work for the National Cable and Telecommunications Association, this post should in no way be construed as an official position of the Association. Thoughts in this space are mine and mine alone and do not reflect the views of my employer.)

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Scott Cleland on Google’s Partisanship

Jan 30 2007 Published by under Net Neutrality, Politics, The Internet

Scott Cleland runs an outfit called NetCompetition.org that is opposed to Net Neutrality. He and I have crossed paths on the net neutrality debate and he’s a good guy – he’s also a solid Republican (in the fiscal conservative, responsible government way). On his company blog he took a look at Google’s plans to insinuate itself into the political discourse and to become the measure of what’s true and what isn’t in candidate debates.

Given the fact Google’s contributions to political candidates in the last election leaned Democrat by a ratio of 49 to 1, that thought should scare Republicans. At what point do Google’s “impartial” search results become nothing more than an indoctrination into liberal philosophy? What the Democrat says is true but the Republican lies. Is that how it will work?

At any rate, Scott has an interesting take.

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Someone Else’s Rant Against Net Neutrality

Jan 08 2007 Published by under Congress, Legislation, Net Neutrality, The Internet

Forget just for a moment the fact that this guy looks like he recorded this on the set of Mel Gibson’s apartment in Conspiracy Theory. He does, however, make some valid points in a kooky, the-government-is-out-to-get-me kind of way.

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What Do Santa Claus And The Internet Have In Common?

Dec 18 2006 Published by under Miscellany, Net Neutrality, The Internet

The shills for the billion dollar content companies (also known as “Save The Internet”) have launched a new video. It’s pretty amazing how blatantly they’re misrepresenting the facts of Net Neutrality – especially given their proclivity for claiming that’s what phone and cable companies do.

First of all, the “founding principle” of the Internet is not Net Neutrality. Net Neutrality is a big government intrusion into the net. The government had previously understood that regulation of this still nascent medium is a terrible idea. Yet now the Net Neut proponents want to freeze development in its tracks – ostensibly convinced that innovation can go no further.

The proponents will tell you that net neutrality has always been – based on a law that applied to 40% of the broadband connections carried by DSL lines. It never applied to cable – which accounts for about 60% of the broadband connections. So NN was never “the founding principle”. It was a hindrance to DSL, and the lack of it allowed cable to arrive on the scene and steal the market (well, that and the fact that cable had faster lines and a $100 billion network investment to make it better).

The video also fundamentally misrepresents the state of what we call the Internet today. I’ll get into why there really is no Internet as most people think of it in just a moment, but let’s look at their definition first.

They claim the Internet is a series of pipes and the phone and cable companies are not allowed to mess with what is in those pipes. That’s simply not true. Phone and cable companies mess with what’s in those pipes 24/7. It’s called “managing the network.”

What that means, for instance, is they give video and VOIP traffic preference over e-mail. They move video and voice to the front of the line so you see smooth video instead of the choppy, buffer-problems you used to see a couple short years ago. As more and more video is watched, it requires more and more management (which requires investments in administrators and equipment).

What Net Neutrality argues those pipes should just sit there and let e-mail spam duke it out with YouTube to see who gets there first. They call that “dumb pipes”.

“Dumb pipes” really is a founding principle of the Internet. That’s how it used to be, but managed networks made it better for everyone. Occasionally they’ll allow for management and priortization of video and voice over other traffic, but it’s usually for disingenuous purposes (but more on that later).

Now the Internet, as you probably think of it, does not exist. A lot of people hear about DARPANet and the government creation of “the internet” and they think there is this great big thing out there somewhere – some sort of tangible item.

That is not the case.

“The Internet” does not exist. It’s like Santa Claus. It’s a great myth perpetrated on the uninformed people of the world. The Internet is a series of interconnected networks – not one big thing. The term “Internet” is exactly what the Latin root of its name implies. Inter- means between and Net is short for networks. The Internet is nothing more than a method of exchanging data and traffic between separate, usually privately-owned, networks.

That becomes important when you consider what net neutrality really means. It means someone who invested $100 billion dollars in a network is now being told they cannot manage it as they see fit simply because someone who invests $49 is afraid they may not be able to access CandyTheDominatrix.com.

Let’s say you have a network in your home – say three computers all linked together – for you, the wife and little Johnny. Johnny wants to spend all day downloading the complete director’s cut of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. That, however, brings your network to a crawl, so you, and the router in your closet, set to work to prioritize the rest of the traffic on your network so Johnny has fast access to educational sites, and the rest of the family can use the net, and The Lord of the Rings is throttled back.

That sounds like a great solution except Little Johnny, not happy with your choices, decides to petition the government to get involved, and they pass a law saying you cannot manage the network to impede Johnny, regardless of the negative impact to the rest of the family.

That is exactly what Net Neutrality does.

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