Net Neutrality
2015–01–23
THE GRID
The FCC is currently revisiting net neutrality legislation, and next month there will be a vote that determines the future of the internet. Open Internet legislation will be a central issue.
Current Open Internet or Net Neutrality legislation was passed May 15, 2011. It simply states that anyone, anywhere, can host their own content to the internet and the Internet Service Providers (ISPs) that have built and operate the hardware infrastructure of this distributed network must treat all traffic the same. This ensures that the spread of ideas — even unpopular, offensive, dangerous, or misguided ideas — will continue to propagate freely. Effectively, this ensures that we don’t end up with something akin to the Great Firewall of China, where by which information is tightly controlled by those who control the network infrastructure.
This legislation is extremely important. To a large extent, the dissemination of information, opinion, entertainment, business, etc is now online. If the private companies had the ability to dig into the packets of information coming through their systems, and to selectively block or slow down content based on their interests, this would be tantamount to a threat to free speech. You could imagine these practices starting out relatively harmlessly. Perhaps Comcast starts by blocking radial Islamist recruiting websites. But this is a slippery slope; an ISP with certain political interests could affect the entire outcome of an election.
Open Internet legislation says nothing about last-mile grants or about guaranteeing consumers access to high speed internet. Part of the debate has increasingly become about whether broadband ISPs can tier their services to consumers, offering higher speed more expensive “premium services” alongside slower cheaper “throttled” internet services. This menu pricing exists today; consumers can pay for higher speeds, satellite dishes, optical fiber connections, DSL, or just stick with standard 56/256 Kbps dial-up internet through their phone line. There is a debate to be had here, for sure. But this tiered-pricing and consumer-side throttling isn’t actually related to the net neutrality issue.
THE DEBATE
The Net Neutrality issue has centered on a deal between popular streaming video provider Netflix, and Comcast, now the largest ISP in the US. Comcast argues that Netflix uses so much of it’s network capacity with DVD-quality streaming videos that Comcast has been forced to use new anti-congestion routing protocols to ensure delivery of Netflix’s content. In March 2014, Netflix signed a deal in which it would pay Comcast a fee in order to guarantee that these “congestion-free routes” would be used for Netflix traffic. This effectively amounts to Netflix paying for preferential treatment of their service on Comcast-operated networks, and it is clearly illegal.
Like any good debate, this one has become immediately politicized. One of the arguments I have heard focuses on the fact that the development of the internet precursor, ARPANET, was government government-sponsored. If the government truly developed and built the backbone of the internet, it should be treated as a public utility. The government should have a right to mandate that ISPs treat all traffic equally, and furthermore should be able to determine the prices that broadband providers can charge consumers. Al Gore and Barrack Obama have both committed famous gaffes in claiming the government’s role in “building the internet”.
The internet is a decentralized and distributed network-of-networks. Some of these networks were, at one point, public. However, the last vestige of this joint public-private internet was privatized in 1995, effectively ending the government’s involvement in building and operating the hardware of the internet. The hardware fabric of the internet in 1995 looked a LOT different than it does today. Can you imagine trying to stream a DVD quality video in 1995? The internet is not a public utility, and there may be risks associated with classifying it as such in the future.
Open Internet legislation makes a lot of sense when you assume that all websites as use roughly the same amount of available network capacity. However, a quick examination of who is using most of the network capacity reveals that almost 70 percent of all internet traffic can be attributed to just 10 large companies. Under current net neutrality laws, the packets of data from Hulu.com are treated the same as packets of information from isaacstoner.com. Hulu.com uses billions of times more capacity than a standard website, yet they pay nothing for this utilization. Private internet providers argue that companies like these ten large content companies should pay based on utilization. These content firms are using such a disproportionately enormous amount of the internet capacity that constant infrastructure improvements and additions must be made. It is consumers like us that have generated such a high demand for the services that these top ten companies offer. We have directly funded infrastructure improvements through our (increasingly high) broadband internet bills. Should internet companies bear some of this cost, or is this “double-dipping” by ISPs?
It is of the utmost importance that the internet remains free and open. ISPs need to be carefully monitored to make sure that they don’t make sketchy moves like this in the future. Netflix is equally culpable for striking this deal ensuring preferential treatment of its traffic. The American people need to sit up and pay attention to the FCC rulings next month. Do we want content companies like Netflix and Google to effectively subsidize some of our broadband internet bills? Or do we want to make sure that collusion between these large companies will not lead to “pay-to-play” fees by providers?