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Network Neutrality   Rating: (2.2 / 10)    Views: 4,135

Submitted By: hiskeyd on 10/15/2006. (  |  Share  |  Clikk It! )   



Network Neutrality

Network neutrality is one of the most important issues that we face today in terms of telecommunications and the exchanging of information on the web. Network Neutrality is still not clearly defined, for now it is loosely defined as “the principle that Internet users should be in control of what content they view and what applications they use on the Internet… Fundamentally, net neutrality is about equal access to the internet.”[1] Without this fundamental principle the Internet will no longer be the economical and innovative powerhouse it is today.

The origins of network neutrality as a guiding precept in communications development goes all the way back to the telegraphing systems. In 1860 the United States government subsidized a coast to coast telegraph line with the explicit pre-condition that “messages received from any individual, company, or corporation, or from any telegraph lines connecting with this line at either of its termini, shall be impartially transmitted in the order of their reception…”[2] Because it was a government subsidized operation the government was able to assert this. Likewise the internet was also government subsidized and built on a similar precept.

The idea that everyone on the internet should have equal access to the internet’s backbone lines, with their only restriction being on how much bandwidth they are leasing from their internet service providers, has allowed the internet to grow rapidly into an economic force. If one is to start a normal “brick and mortar” business, they would need money to lease or build the building, money for managing the building, as well as the individual costs of the specific business.

The internet being designed such as it is allows people with nothing but a great idea and some technical knowledge to build services and companies that normally would never have been built, due to lack of funding. For example, a couple of Stanford students, Larry Page and Sergery Brin, were able to build a system that allows better and faster access to the wealth of information available on the internet. Without network neutrality this would not have been possible; from the beginning they would have been required to pay significant sums of money in order to provide the service that their users were demanding from their system.

We would not have ever had Google. This may seem a small thing, but think of the implications this would have. Google is a driving force in the US economy. They also are the driving force behind many of the innovations and policies Microsoft has recently begun to implement. This is mirrored in the moves we see Yahoo making. These companies are all driving each other to provide better services to the end user. Without network neutrality only Microsoft would have existed. This is a common story that can be retold with just about every major internet company that exists today.

Not only does network neutrality allow small companies with great ideas to get off the ground, but it also is not hurting the companies that are against it as they assert that it is. The opponents of network neutrality say that they are providing a service for which they are not being paid. The most famous outburst was made by AT&T’s Chairman Edward E. Whitacre Jr. when he complained that internet content providers were getting a free ride: “They don’t have any fiber out there. They don’t have any wires…. They use my lines for free and that’s bull! For a Google or a Yahoo or a Vonage or anybody to expect to use these pipes for free is nuts!”[3] However, the truth of the matter is that Google, Yahoo and Vonage pay millions every year for their bandwidth. In addition to existing business revenue streams, every year consumers pay the telecommunication industry billions for their respective internet bandwidth.

It is true that not all this money goes to the people who own the backbone lines and routers; however enough of it goes their way to allow companies in Japan and France to offer 100 MB / sec lines at roughly the same cost the United States citizens pay for 1 MB / sec lines [4]. The United States companies just want more without producing more. They are already double charging by receiving money from both the consumer and producer of internet content for the transmission of the same individual packets; now they wish to triple charge by forcing companies to pay for yet another tier of service.

This has very dangerous implications in terms of the future of the internet. Allowing these companies to have a tiered internet allows them power to crush their competitors like Vonage or Skype by simply not allowing them access to the “fast” lines. It centralizes the power over the internet squarely on the backs of companies that are failing, not because people are using their lines “for free”, but because they are mismanaged and refuse to change with the times.
The idea that they are somehow loosing money because people are using their lines “for free”, does not hold weight. In a recent testimony by Gary Bachula, Vice President for External Affairs for Internet 2, to the Senate Commerce Committee’s Hearing on Network Neutrality in early 2006, he stated that

“When we first began to deploy our Abilene network our engineers started with the assumption that we should find technical ways of prioritizing certain kinds of bits, such as streaming video, or video conferencing, in order to assure that they arrive without delay. For a number of years, we seriously explored various ‘quality of service’ schemes, including having engineers convene a Quality of Service Working Group. As it developed, though, all of our research and practical experience supported the conclusion that it was far more cost effective to simply provide more bandwidth.” [5]

Our country not too long ago suffered from a DOT COM crash that resulted in the American economy going down the tubes. Stifling network neutrality threatens to cause a second crash very similar to the first. Companies like Google, Yahoo, and Microsoft will not be hurt significantly by this. They have ample money to pay the toll keepers, but there are thousands of web companies out there who will not be able to afford this. All these companies will be forced to go out of business not long after network neutrality is abolished. With the economy seemingly always teetering between shooting up and shooting down, this will have catastrophic effects.

All this being said is it really wrong for a few companies to try and pass laws that benefit themselves if they can? Kantianism would seem to say these companies are acting unethically. They are effectively trying to use someone else for more gain. They already make money from the producers and consumers on the internet. Now they are trying to make more money without offering a better service than they already provide.

How would this work out if this type of action were “willed” into a universal law? Perhaps companies like Vonage would say, “We should charge AT&T for the fact that we bring them customers to use their lines that they normally wouldn’t have had. AT&T does not pay us to advertise for their lines. They owe us!” Applied universally this sort of “law” would end up having companies forcing the government to allow them to charge each other incessantly for things that they ought not charge and would destroy our fragile economic entity, such as it is.

An Act Utilitarian on the other hand might say it was a good thing. After all, the total happiness of the companies who will receive the extra money will be significant, whereas the total unhappiness of the companies that have to pay will be less. The one’s who can pay are likely to see more customers because many of the other small companies that offer the same service as them will be put out of business. Consumers could be hurt by this, but this is hard to quantify and hard to predict so we can throw this out of the Act Utilitarian calculation. In fact these consumers might even be benefited monetarily speaking in that the internet service fee they pay might become cheaper because they no longer are paying as much of the development fees for the lines the telecommunication companies lay; now more of that is shouldered by “big business”. All in all this might be a good thing from a utilitarian point of view.

In contrast, this would definitely fall under “unjust” in terms of the Social Contract Theory ideals. Passing an act like this benefits a few companies, while hindering and killing thousands of other existing and future companies. These companies provide services to billions of people, who will then have to go without or be offered lesser services due to stifled innovation. This squarely contradicts the social contract precepts concerning inequalities in society. Namely that “Any social and economic inequalities must satisfy two conditions: first, they are associated with positions in society that everyone has a fair and equal opportunity to assume and second, they are ‘to be to the greatest benefit of the least-advantaged members of society’” [6]

This issue of network neutrality has not been adequately covered in the media, largely because the general public does not understand the potential ramifications of destroying neutrality on the internet. The internet as it stands today has been widely successful. It has driven the United States economy to heights it had never seen before and lows it had not seen in half a century. Abolishing network neutrality threatens to kill the recent, seemingly stable, high our economy is currently enjoying. It also threatens to kill many future internet innovations which may now require substantial sums of money to get off the ground. This will effectively reduce the creation of new internet businesses down to the sluggish state of innovation enjoyed by normal “brick and mortar” business, thus killing one of the great innovations humanity has ever devised. “The neutral communications medium is essential to our society. It is the basis of a fair competitive market economy. It is the basis of democracy, by which a community should decide what to do. It is the basis of science, by which humankind should decide what is true. Let us protect the neutrality of the net.” (Tim Berners-Lee, Inventor of the World Wide Web)[7]


References

[1] Google Team, “Net Neutrality” Google, 2006. http://www.google.com/help/netneutrality.html

[2] Wikipedia: “Network Neutrality”, from an act to facilitate communication between the Atlantic and pacific states by electric telegraph, June 16, 1860. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_Neutrality

[3] Christopher Stern, “The Coming Tug of War Over the Internet” Washington Post, January 22, 2006. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/01/21/AR2006012100094.html

[4] American Electronics Association, “The case for keeping network neutrality” AeA Competitiveness Series Volume 11, September 2006.

[5] Gary R. Bachula, “Testimony of Gary R. Bachula, Vice President, Internet2 Before the United States Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation Hearing on Net Neutrality”, February 7, 2006. http://commerce.senate.gov/pdf/bachula-020706.pdf

[6] Michael J. Quinn, “Ethics for the Information Age” Pearson Education, Inc, 2006.

[7] Tim Berners-Lee, “Neutrality of the Net”, May 5, 2006. http://dig.csail.mit.edu/breadcrumbs/blog/4

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