FreePress Blog

Just thought I’d bring this up here to find out what people think about it.

Even you non-techie people have probably heard about this in the news lately, but in case you don’t know what I’m talking about, I’ll give a brief overview of what it means (at least my understanding of it). Some people (or more accurately, companies, specifically large ones and internet service providers [ISPs - from here on out]) would like to start giving certain types of internet traffic from certain sites/domains higher priority than other traffic. The company that wants their content delivered to the customers more quickly can pay the ISP to increase the priority of their traffic, and it would then get more bandwidth allocated than some site that will not (or cannot) pay a similar fee. Proponents of “net neutrality” want to get a law passed that would prevent the ISPs from doing this.

There are benefits and drawbacks to both approaches. Without the “net neutrality” law to prevent this practice, the idea is that the cost of internet access to consumers could be dramatically offset by companies who would share the cost for the bandwidth, rather than just the user (like it is now), which could theoretically have the result of bringing high-speed internet to many more people who could otherwise not afford it. The main argument against the legislation that would prevent this is that it would involve the government regulating the internet (in some fashion).

On the other hand, proponents of net neutrality would say that it’s better to have the government enforce the level playing field that we have right now than to have the internet essentially taken over by corporate interests. The possibility that the cost of internet service will become cheaper for the average consumer as the cost is shifted to the content providers is one theory (assuming that the ISPs won’t just pocket the extra revenue), but the drawback to that is that it could potentially silence independent voices. If the large corporations are buying up large percentages of the bandwidth, it puts smaller companies and non-business sites at a huge disadvantage. Also, there have already been cases of ISPs (specifically ones that also happen to be phone companies) restricting certain types of traffic (like VOIP) because it makes some of their other products obsolete. It’s very likely that this type of thing would skyrocket if the practice of bandwidth shaping were allowed, and then you would be stuck using the VOIP offering provided by your ISP or none at all. VOIP is just one easy to see example, but the same could apply to any type of service.

As for it making internet access cheaper or more available overall to the average consumer, I would of course support that goal, but at the same time the benefits have to be weighed against what you’re giving up. Some would say that people who want unfiltered access could still pay for it, and lower cost filtered service would be available just as an alternative, and we should just let the market / consumers sort it out, and whatever methods work will stick. The problem I see with that however, is that the filtered service could theoretically be so much cheaper that it would drive any other types of service out of business, and then we would just see them raise the rates back up again. I just don’t think that there are enough people (at the moment) who would insist on maintaining the “freedom” they currently have, until it was too late. Not to be too cynical about the “majority” and the poor choices that they sometimes make (and yes, I’m struggling to resist making a political comment here), but in this case I would fear that most people just wouldn’t understand the difference well enough to realize what they would be giving up.

In case you can’t tell, I’m leaning towards the side of supporting net neutrality, although I do wish there was a better method of accomplishing it than by getting the government involved. I, for one, remember using AOL for a brief period of time before the “real” internet became widely available, and if anyone else remembers those times too, then I think that is the perfect (yet frightening) picture of what a “non-neutral” net would look like, and I sure as heck would like to avoid that at all costs.

I think in a perfect world, we would see the net neutrality bill (or similar legislation) passed with additional provisions that forever ban any sort of mandatory filtering of content by any party (ISPs or the government). Since that probably won’t happen, I guess we’ll probably have to live with a compromise.