Still more thoughts on Net neutrality

Posted on | June 27, 2006 | 2 Comments

Interesting blog post by Information Week’s Mitch Wagner on the burning topic of [tag]Net neutrality[/tag] this morning.

He starts out by blowing great big holes that could accommodate a few 18-wheelers in the arguments that the telecomm companies and cable giants have been using to convince us that pro-Net neutrality legislation would be a bad thing.

Telcos and the cable TV industry don’t exist in the vicious jungle of the free market. They live a protected existence, in partnership with government. Their businesses wouldn’t exist if not for government regulation granting these companies the right to supersede the rules of private property and lay their cables through other people’s land. Communities give cable TV companies monopoly rights to be the only vendor offering service in an area.

So it’s hypocritical when companies that owe their very existence to government regulation scream bloody murder about the holiness of the free market when they’re faced with the prospect of government regulation that doesn’t suit them.

Then, too, Mitch points out (as others have before him) that it doesn’t make sense for the telecomms to call content providers freeloaders when we’re already paying for access. Consumers pay for access, too. Why should they get paid again?

And anyway, people go online to access content; when they go on sight-seeing tours on the Information Highway, content providers provide the sights they see. Without us, what would they have? A highway to nowhere. What would be the point of that?

Fact is, they need us.

At the same time, Mitch also made the very valid point that the feds have not exactly covered themselves with glory when they’ve written laws to address the problems of this medium, and they are never less effective when they try to address its commercial aspects. CAN-SPAM serves as a grim reminder of how they are very good at making everything worse.

So, you see, it might not be quite as cut-and-dried as a lot of people (me included) make out.

Speaking personally, I just have a problem with any industry that uses the [tag]government[/tag] to the extent the [tag]telecommunications industry[/tag] does to soak the American consumer. I don’t know, something about that just bugs me.

And, as an online [tag]microbusiness[/tag] owner, I think it is in the best interests of the U.S. economy for the government to take whatever steps are necessary to preserve the closest thing to an even playing field that has existed between the Brachiosauruses and the Compsognathuses — and let’s get real, the Net is not Microbusiness Utopia by any means, but it’s the closest thing we’ve got.

At a time when the [tag]economy[/tag] is trending nano and the economic activities of individual citizens have proven useful in softening the normal gyrations of the business cycle, the last thing we need is for greedy telecomms to pull the plug on microbusinesses.

Mitch challenges his readers to answer this question: Okay, then what kind of law should Congress write?

I think the key is KISS. Keep It Simple, Stupid.

A federal law should very simply do two things. It should stipulate that consumers are delivered online content based on the access speed they pay for. And it should stipulate that access providers may not interfere with the transmission of any online content, either to improve it or to degrade it.

What do you think? Is this too simplistic? Am I forgetting something?

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