Net Neutrality: Demand It

I think I finally understand all this Net Neutrality stuff. And now that I do, it's very simple for me. I want it. If there's anybody who ought to be clear on the principle, it's Tim Berners-Lee, and I'm signing on to his position:

Net neutrality is this:

  If I pay to connect to the Net with  a certain quality of service, and you pay to connect with that  or greater quality of service, then we can communicate at that level.

That's all.  Its up to the ISPs to make sure they interoperate so that that happens.

Net Neutrality is NOT asking for the internet for free.

Net Neutrality is NOT saying that one shouldn't pay more money for high quality of service. We always have, and we always will.

There have been suggestions that we don't need legislation because we haven't had it. These are nonsense, because in fact we have had net neutrality in the past -- it is only recently that real explicit threats have occurred.

Quite simple really. So what kind of crap is clouding up the picture? Well, you could start by reading the Wikipedia entry, but I guarantee it will give you a headache.

Fzample:

Opponents argue that (1) Network neutrality regulations severely limit the Internet's usefulness; (2) network neutrality regulations pose a danger to become the basis for even more intrusive regulation of the Internet; (3) imposing such regulation will chill investment in competitive networks (e.g., wireless broadband) and deny network providers the ability to differentiate their services; and (4) that network neutrality regulations confuse the unregulated Internet with the highly regulated telecom lines that it's shared with voice and cable customers for most of its history.

#1 is silly. The internet is plenty useful just as it is. We never even needed Web 2.0 for the Web to be extraordinarily useful. If there was not another drop of innovation and we froze web technology in place where it is, it would still be extraordinarily useful.

#2 is just a fallacious inversion. ISPs are always going to be regulated to some extent. The way to insure that the commons is facilitated is through regulation. Regulation in and of itself is not a problem, bad regulation is a problem. We heard this shill argument for unabashed deregulation before, remember? That was Enron talking. We in California are not going to forget that anytime soon.

#3 Competitive networks need to innovate in their own way. For example, I think of XBox Live as an innovative network. It uses the Internet but it's not necessarily http traffic. If we had to wait for wireless broadband before we got XBox Live, that would have been fine. It could have existed as a network completely outside of the scope of the internet, just like all the cellphone traffic on the planet. Wireless broadband can exist separate and distinct and doesn't need to crowd the internet or change the rules of the internet. Apple could, for example, invent a wireless iPod that could communicate with the iTunes Store completely independent of the internet. If the applications are that killer, then they can deserve their own networks, like HDNet which also doesn't use the Internet. Don't pollute the Internet just because you want to innovate. Innovate your damned self.

#4 I'm not clear on how it is that this is a problem other than for Telcos who are mad because they didn't get it the first time. ISPs are profitable. Telcos could be profitable moving internet traffic too.  If this were so impossible, then I don't think Michael Powell would support Net Neutrality. He's seen the big picture. I bet that Cisco could, starting from scratch today, build a network that would be profitable on a completely different protocol than telcos and ISPs carry.

In short, I like my Internet just the way it is, pure peer to peer with no tiered services or discrimination. If I want something more than that for some specialized service, then let it be over some other network, like cable or satellite or wireless.