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List:       dmca-discuss
Subject:    [DMCA_Discuss] Searls: Net Neutrality vs. Net Neutering
From:       Seth Johnson <seth.johnson () realmeasures ! dyndns ! org>
Date:       2006-03-06 0:17:33
Message-ID: 440B7F9D.8D04D0D4 () RealMeasures ! dyndns ! org
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Subject: pho: Net Neutrality vs. Net Neutering (fwd)
Date: Sun, 5 Mar 2006 01:57:21 -0500 (EST)
From: Jay Sulzberger <jays@panix.com>
To: pho@onehouse.com


---------- Forwarded message ----------
  Subject: Net Neutrality vs. Net Neutering
  X-URL: http://www.linuxjournal.com/node/8910/print


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Net Neutrality vs. Net Neutering

By Doc Searls

Created 2006-03-03 02:00


The fight for Net Neutrality is for the place we call the Net.
The fight against Net Neutrality is for a neutered Net biased
toward carrying the next form of Cable TV. But what about the
fact that most of us never have experienced Neutrality in the
first place?

An earlier version of this article was presented in Doc's March
2, 2006, SuitWatch newsletter. Click here [1] to subscriber to
SuitWatch.

It's time to define the Internet. We haven't done that
yet--certainly not in a way that allows lawmakers and regulators
to operate from the same set of assumptions that we do--"we"
being the Net-savvy techies of the world.

As I pointed out last November in "Saving the Net: How to Keep
the Carriers from Flushing the Net Down the Tubes" [2], carriers
subordinate the Net to the pipes that carry it, which they own.
To them the Net is a container cargo system for the stuff we call
"content", and it's subject to whatever traffic control regime
they wish to impose on it. That includes tiered service akin to
airline service, divided into first class, business and coach.
This brings up doomsday scenarios that are easy for many of us to
imagine, if the carriers succeed in lobbying this definition and
service regime into law.

Meanwhile, copyright extremists of the Hollywood school see the
Net as a big "content" business and carriers as ideally
positioned to offer "piracy" protections at the backbone level.
So they find the carriers' Net definition agreeable as well,
because they are lobbing in roughly the same direction.

As I also pointed out in the same piece, our best hope for saving
the Net from the carriers and copyright extremists lies in
defining it, and understanding it, as a place--as something
everybody goes to and builds on, not merely as something stuff
goes through. Here's how I put the case last Monday in Our Space
[3]:

  ...the Net is not a form of carriage, even though it might 
  appear that way to the carriers and the copyright extremists. 
  The Net has an existence that encompasses carriage and content 
  but is not reducible to either--just as human beings have an 
  existence that encompasses the circulatory system and its 
  constituents but is not reducible to either.

  There are higher principles involved. Life is larger than the 
  systems that sustain it. The principle we call net neutrality 
  is as essential to Internet life as consciousness is to human 
  life. When we subordinate Net neutrality to the systems that 
  sustain it, we reduce it to those systems. The Net becomes a 
  cable system, a phone system, a content delivery system. And 
  nothing more. In human terms, this is called brain death.

  By framing the Net as a neutral place, we assure that it will 
  continue to serve as what it has already been for more than ten 
  years: a public marketplace where private enterprise of all 
  forms can not only grow and thrive, but can do both better than 
  it ever has anywhere, ever, before.

The principle we call Net Neutrality has its own natural laws,
akin to those of gravity, motion and thermodynamics. The judicial
laws we make, as we move toward new telecom regulation, need to
respect the natural laws that define the Net and make it such an
ideal habitat for business and culture.

In his testimony to the Senate Commerce Committee's Net
Neutrality hearings [4] on February 7 of this year, Prof.
Lawrence Lessig said this [5], among many other things:

  ...this Committee must keep in view a fundamental fact about 
  the Internet: as scholars and network theorists have 
  extensively documented, the innovation and explosive growth of 
  the Internet is directly linked to its particular architectural 
  design. It was in large part because the network respected what 
  Saltzer, Clark and Reed called "the 'end-to-end' principle" 
  that the explosive growth of the Internet happened. If this 
  Committee wants to preserve that growth and innovation, it 
  should take steps to protect this fundamental design.

Meanwhile, Kyle McSlarrow, President & CEO of the National Cable
& Telecommunications Association, said this in his testimony [6]:

  I would like to focus this morning on three main points.

  First, Congress's policy of leaving the Internet unregulated 
  has been a resounding success. The resulting network 
  flexibility has encouraged billions of dollars in investment. 
  Companies that include high speed Internet services among their 
  offerings have the freedom to experiment with multiple business 
  models, producing more choices and competition in content and 
  providers for consumers, and more innovation than ever before.

  Second, any change to this policy could have serious 
  repercussions to continued network innovation and investment. 
  Government, by its nature, is ill-equipped to make judgments 
  about the best business models for an industry. This is 
  especially true for a business as dynamic as the provision of 
  high speed Internet services. It is clear that how those 
  business models develop will directly affect the level of 
  investment and innovation we can expect over the next few 
  decades, but no one today can predict which business models 
  will most effectively promote those goals.

  Finally, in the absence of any problem calling for a 
  legislative solution--and since the broadband services 
  marketplace is characterized by robust competition--Congress 
  should refrain from premature legislative action and allow the 
  marketplace to continue to grow and change so network and 
  applications providers can offer consumers the fullest range of 
  innovative service options.

  Congress's Decision to Leave the Internet Unregulated is an 
  Unquestioned Success

  Keeping the Internet free of regulation has helped to spur 
  tremendous investment and competition in broadband networks and 
  services. Left free to create new business opportunities and 
  services, broadband providers (including cable operators, DSL, 
  satellite and wireless operators) have invested billions of 
  dollars to bring high-speed Internet access services to 
  consumers across the nation. With bandwidth usage growing at a 
  rapid pace, continued investment will be needed to keep 
  broadband services robust.

  If broadband providers are to continue to make these 
  investments, and if consumers are going to be given the levels 
  of services and innovative new products and features they 
  desire, all at prices they can afford, broadband providers need 
  to have continuing flexibility to innovate in the business 
  models and pricing plans they employ. Likewise, websites and 
  content providers also need the flexibility to experiment with 
  business models, and to partner with broadband providers in 
  doing so.

McSlarrow makes sounds that resonate with my libertarian
sympathies. I do worry about the unintended consequences of any
legislation that restricts opportunities for doing business.
But...exactly what kind of business do the carriers wish to
pursue freely? The answer shows up in McSlarrow's last sentence,
above. The carriers still think the Net is about "delivering
content to consumers". In other words, Cable TV. They would like
to use the "free market" where they enjoy government-protected
monopolies, to shake down Google, Yahoo, Microsoft and other
large "content providers" for the same favored treatments their
cable systems give ABC, CBS, NBC, Fox and CNN.

The carriers' plan from the beginning has been to convert the Net
into a paid content delivery system--of some kind. That's all
they were ever able to imagine. That's why they've screwed Net
Neutrality from the beginning, offering crippled asymmetrical
service to customers whom they expected only would consume, never
producing much more than clicks that brought down more to
consume. Most of us have never known anything but an asymmetrical
relationship with the Net, which is why so many of us barely can
imagine what it means to be a producer as well as a consumer in
the Net's end-to-end world. A couple of days ago, a woman I
know--middle class, white collar--told me she doesn't like the
Net because "I don't like mass media in general".

In fact, the asymmetrical build-outs of service to homes has done
enormous harm to market growth by preventing countless small and
home Net-based businesses from starting and growing.

Specifically, by provisioning big bandwidth downstream and narrow
bandwidth upstream, while blocking ports 25 and 80--in crass
violation of the Net's UNIX-derived network model, in addition to
the end-to-end principle--the carriers prevent customers from
running their own mail and Web servers and whatever server-based
businesses might be possible. Again, all the carriers can imagine
is Cable TV. That's been their fantasy from the beginning.

So, while pro-Net advocates wish to liberate the Net by burning
neutrality into law, anti-Net advocates wish to neuter the Net by
preserving the current regulatory regime--or by otherwise
re-regulating it to favor the Cable TV model they've built their
infrastructure for since the beginning.

Yet the colossal success the Net has enjoyed, including all the
good it has done for business and culture around the world, owes
everything to the neutral nature of its end-to-end architecture
and nothing to paid content delivery.

A few days ago, I asked Eric S. Raymond to give his best
Libertarian take on the situation. He wrote: [7]

  Telecoms regulation, to the extent it was ever justified, was 
  justified on the basis of preventing or remedying market 
  failures--such as, in particular, lack of market incentives to 
  provide universal coverage.

  The market failures in telecoms all derive from the high fixed-
  capital costs of conventional wirelines. These have two major 
  effects: (1) incentives to provide service in rural areas are 
  weak, because the amount of time required to amortize large 
  fixed costs makes for poor discounted ROI; and (2) in higher-
  density areas, the last mile of wire is a natural 
  monopoly/oligopoly.

  New technologies are directly attacking this problem. Wi-Fi, 
  wireless mesh networks, IP over powerlines, and cheap fenceline 
  cable dramatically lower the fixed capital costs of last-mile 
  service. The main things holding these technologies back are 
  regulatory barriers (including, notably, not enough spectrum 
  allocated to WiFi and UWB).

  The right answer: deregulate everything, free the new 
  technologies to go head-to-head against the wired last mile, 
  and let the market sort it all out.

Let's think seriously about this. What would happen if we
de-regulated carriage at the federal level and encouraged it at
other levels? How about if we opened up more spectrum as well?
(Including TV Channels 2-13, which are due to be liberated by
2009 in the US?) Wouldn't we like to see the carriers get some
real competition? Why should your neighborhood be limited to a
choice of one cable and one phone provider? Why not drop the
definitions of both and let everybody carry whatever they want?

By a similar (though not the same) token, how about regulating
Net Neutrality--insisting on it, essentially--while de-regulating
everything else? Can we characterize Net Neutrality as a modern
equivalent of a market incentive to universal coverage?

I lean toward insisting on Net Neutrality, because I know what
the big carriers are up to, and it creeps the crap out of me. But
I also lean toward de-regulating telecom to let carriers new and
old come into the market and fight to build the best possible
infrastructure for the fully neutral Net--one that includes
symmetrical and unrestricted service to every end in the whole
end-to-end system.

Symmetricality has to be on the table, or Net Neutrality is
largely meaningless. Asymmetricality is the non-neutrality we
already have. Getting rid of it will open the market to countless
new businesses and business opportunities for everybody.

On another hand--because there are not just two, although
thinking so always simplifies things--Bob Frankston has another
take on Net Neutrality:

  It's simple.

  The Internet has won. Why negotiate terms of surrender?

  We mustn't settle for negotiating "Net Neutrality". We must 
  demand the basic right to connect and not just an enumerated 
  list of what we are allowed to do. It's no different from 
  having to negotiate free speech by listing what is allowed. 
  Having to beg for permission to speak is offensive.

  What we need is very simple: a recognition that Internet-style 
  connectivity is our right as fundamental infrastructure just 
  like the roads are. We can share them like the roads or power 
  lines.

When I asked Jim Thompson to review what I wrote above, he added,
"perhaps we should insist (and legislate) that no service
provider can violate end-to-end".

Architecture is what matters most. Neutrality is a result of
end-to-end. Make end-to-end the subject of law, and we cover both
at once.

Or so it seems to me at deadline on a Thursday.

Doc Searls is Senior Editor of Linux Journal, for which he writes
the Linux for Suits column. He also presides over Doc Searls' IT
Garage [8], which is published by SSC Media Corp., the publisher
of Linux Journal. [9]

Links

[1] http://www.linuxjournal.com//xstatic/community/suitwatch
[2] http://www.linuxjournal.com//article/8673
[3] http://doc.weblogs.com/2006/02/27#ourSpace
[4] http://commerce.senate.gov/hearings/witnesslist.cfm?id=1705
[5] http://www.linuxjournal.com/
[6] http://commerce.senate.gov/pdf/mcslarrow-020706.pdf
[7] http://www.linuxjournal.com/
[8] http://garage.docsearls.com
[9] https://www.ssc.com/lj/subs/NewUSA.html

Source URL: http://www.linuxjournal.com/article/8910

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