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Rep. Markey’s Internet Freedom Preservation Act of 2008 (HR 5353) ironically does just the opposite, opening a Pandora’s box of bureaucratic regulation and internet governance.

Currently the internet is open and free. There are many options for consumers to get online, some are faster while others are cheaper. In hindsight one of the distinctive differences between the old telephone industry and the internet lays in enormous innovation and competition, possible only in a non-regulatory environment. A critical congressional colleague complains:

Markey is trying to turn the Internet into a highly regulated industry like the waterways and railroads of the 19th century, according to Republican Reps. Cliff Stearns, ranking member of the subcommittee, and Fred Upton of Michigan.

In defense, Ben Scott, policy director for Free Press, claims there’s an urgent need for internet regulation.

Free Press supports the right to network management, but draws the line at discrimination based on content or a particular application, like BitTorrent, Scott said. “That’s the kind of targeting and selectivity that should be left to the consumer.”

But should it? BitTorrent software is uniquely designed to gobble up bandwidth, and as a side-effect can harm the internet service of other customers nearby (see yesterday’s post). Comcast shouldn’t have initially lied about not managing internet traffic, but that doesn’t mean what they did is wrong. Comcast had a legitimate grievance.

If two of my neighbors decide to pirate the whole Star Wars movie collection simultaneously with BitTorrent, tying up the internet to such a degree that I can’t check my e-mail… where’s the justice in net neutrality there? Strict net neutrality could restrain an internet service provider (ISP) from protecting it’s own customers.

Preserving a free internet means thumbs down for HR 5353. Markey has a strange vision that the internet will fail to produce great new ideas without government protection. Government… bureaucracy is where good ideas come to die. This bill will empower bureaucrats to change the internet; and bureaucrats only go one direction, red tape.

Bill Toland of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette asks, “Is it traffic management or is Comcast just being a bully?”

Tired of all those negative ads? No, I’m not talking about the latest primary battle between Hillary and Obama.

The big ISPs appear to be in the midst of a marketing war. It’s a sign of vibrant competition between service providers… better service should follow.

Comcast, the target of scorn in the net neutrality struggle, isn’t alone in disrupting P2P traffic. A study released by Vuze (a Comcast critic and business competititor) concedes all major broadband providers disrupt P2P software.

Even Canadian internet providers, where “net neutrality” is already law, disrupted P2P traffic in a similar fashion.

[For background on P2P software and net neutrality, click here]

-UPDATE 11:45

You can read the full Vuze Study here

Vuze is a startup internet distributor that supports FCC regulations preventing P2P internet traffic interruptions (i.e. net neutrality). “According to Vuze’s data, a number of Comcast connections recorded the most frequent interruptions, but the top 20 highest reset rates also included users with Cablevision, BellSouth (an AT&T property), and AOL subscriptions.”

AT&T denied charges from Vuze on blocking P2P, and keenly responded “[g]iven that Vuze itself has recognized these problems with the measurements generated by its Plug-In, we believe that Vuze should not have published these misleading measurements, nor filed them with the FCC.”

Clash of the cable titans: Verizon slowly growing on Comcast’s turf from The Eagle-Times

Verizon’s FiOS launch (offering super high speed internet and TV service) in South Florida seems to be stumbling over basic customer service issues. A recent customer complaint is the Herald Tribune:

“I have continually been stalled, lied to, deceived and to date nobody at Verizon seems to have a clue what is going on,” Weisenbacher’s complaint reads. “It seems to me that Verizon is deliberately playing games with the general public assuming people will get so frustrated that they will simply drop the issue.” (read full)

Weisenbacher is one of 543 customers filing complaints with the Florida attorney general.

Verizon’s negligence is Comcast’s opportunity

Meanwhile, Comcast offers disgruntled customers a good alternative:

Competitor Comcast has begun offering to pay the termination fees for Verizon customers wanting to return to the Comcast.

“If you have become a Verizon customer and are unhappy, we have some win-back offers that will allow you to recoup your termination fee and come back to us,” said Mark Lipford, vice president and general manager for Comcast West Florida. “It’s interesting for every video customer we lose, we get 37 percent back within 30 days, either because they’re having technical problems, customer service problems or they can’t get SNN 6.”

This is the free market at work.

Richard Bennet wrote a great article yesterday in the San Jose Mercury News entitled, In neutrality debate, carriers get blamed for Net’s weakness. Highlights blow:

Little light came from the Harvard hearing, where FCC Chairman Kevin Martin badgered Comcast’s solitary witness with loaded questions and failed to display any insight into broadband carriers’ management challenges.

Bennet addresses the P2P software issue.

Peer-to-peer applications are designed to consume a disproportionate share of network bandwidth, so carriers have to limit their traffic to provide good service to most of their other users. Japan, with the fastest residential broadband in the world, applies similar practices, having learned that adding capacity isn’t enough. Peer-to-peer consumes the largest share of the pipe, no matter how big the pipe is…

Broadband carriers struggle to balance cost, performance and fairness, all the while hectored by well-meaning activists oblivious to the Internet’s real technical underpinnings…

The public is unlikely to benefit from the FCC’s protracted hearing process unless there’s a change of emphasis. Comcast has already announced upgrades to its network that will make it more application-agnostic, so the basis of the complaints is already moot.

Comcast’s new alliance with BitTorrent(a popular peer-to-peer file sharing software) shows private mediation is still the best solution for online conflicts. While impractical activists clamor for regulation, strictly enforcing neutral internet service, they fail to recognize some basic internet management is both desirable and necessary.
ISPs Need Freedom to Overcome Challenges

Back in 2004 internet service providers(ISPs) had a glut of extra bandwidth (a measurement of internets capacity for traffic). However four years later (an eternity in the world of technology), this is no longer the case. During peak hours internet use now reaches full capacity (you may notice the internet seems a little slower in the early afternoon).

What’s disappointing is, most internet bandwidth is consumed by a small minority. Comcast estimates, on congested links, two percent of the users occupy fifty percent of the bandwidth. This problem sparked the net neutrality controversy. Comcast found, during peak hours in particular, only five percent of the users consumed seventy percent of internet traffic. BitTorrent, useful for trafficking huge files, was a likely culprit. In hopes of restoring a greater degree of equal access among customers as a whole, Comcast reduced the speed of BitTorrent users. Objection to such management gave birth to the present “Net Neutrality” movement, a reactionary group opposed to any ISP management what-so-ever.

Should ISPs lose the right to manage service and protect their deeply invested internet infrastructure? In an online environment plagued by malicious spam, viruses, and spyware, do absolute net neutrality policies make sense? What good is a free internet if it doesn’t work? And should a free internet respect property rights, or conflicting utopian ideals?

Consider enacted net neutrality in Canada:

[A] Canadian court judge sentenced a London, Ontario man to nine months in prison for hate crimes. The defendant was brought to justice through the dogged efforts of Canadian civil rights lawyer Richard Warman. In response, operators of several hate websites targeted Warman, making explicit death threats against him.

Warman was justifiably was concerned that these threats could result in violence to him or his family. So he turned to Google in the U.S. and to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC) (Canada’s FCC) and asked that the death threat web sites be blocked. Google, which was hosting one of the sites through its Blogger service, immediately complied, saying, “We want Blogger to enable free expression, including the hosting of views that are unpopular. However, advocating violence against a person is not acceptable.”

But in Canada – where there is the equivalent of net neutrality regulation – the bureaucratic red tape has resulted in inaction and the death threats remain online there(source).

Internet activities don’t deserve blanket protection, regardless of merit.

Meanwhile, a few weeks ago Comcast and BitTorrent announced a cooperative effort for enhanced service. The ISP and software designers are adjusting their operations to better complement each other. Tony Werner, chief technology officer of Comcast Cable, explained,

This means that we will have to rapidly reconfigure out network management technique that is more appropriate for today’s emerging Internet trends… We have been discussing this migration and its effects with leaders in the Internet community for the last several months, and we will refine, adjust and publish the technique based upon feedback and initial trial results(source).

You don’t have to understand the technical side to appreciate successful mediation between private parties. No regulations could produce such a constructive solution. An Internet run by the people, not the government, will always produce a better outcome for the consumer.

FCC Commissioner Robert M. McDowell commented,

The private sector is the best forum to resolve such disputes… It is precisely this kind of private sector solution that has been the bedrock of Internet governance since its inception. Government mandates cannot possibly contemplate the myriad of complexities and nuances of the Internet marketplace(source).

Considering the complex issues as a whole, the best way to preserve our treasured online resource, a free internet, is a continued U.S. commitment to non-regulatory polices.

Peer-to-peer (P2P) file sharing online is the flash point of the present political conflict surrounding net neutrality. The ball started rolling when Comcast allegedly started discriminating against users of BitTorrent, a popular P2P file sharing software. Either way, the real issue is P2P software has a bad reputation for facilitating software piracy.

Clogging the internet with large illegal file transfers is disagreeable on several levels. This is where the Internet Service Provider (ISP) network management comes in.

But it’s important to stress that P2P software offers unique advantages of efficiency . Like any tool, it’s how you use it. There’s nothing inherently wrong with Bit Torrent, it just happens to be a popular tool for nefarious activities.

That’s why Verizon’s new development, P4P technology, is such good news. The Statesman explains:

“The advance is an enhancement of peer-to-peer file-sharing technology, which provides Internet users with faster downloads by gathering up pieces of a large file from the computers of many users and then cobbling them together… Sending files with the new technique along faster, cheaper paths resulted in download speeds that were an average of 60 percent faster…”

What differentiates P2P from P4P? PCMAG points out, “P4P actually works to push file’s packets from within the ISP’s network, avoiding paying for the extra bandwidth needed to reach an Internet backbone.” Theoretically, it would be a managed form of file sharing from the ISP end. It’s performance without the piracy

Verizon’s P4P holds great potential, the kind of potential a government regulated net neutrality environment threatens to destroy.

Any discussion of net neutrality should start with clarification.

First, it has nothing to do with bandwidth (at least not directly). It won’t limit the type of connection you can get (i.e. dial-up, DSL, or cable) or how much you pay for it. So those “all you can eat buffet” analogies out there don’t really fit.

Net Neutrality is about whether internet service providers (ISPs) have the right to monitor and discriminate users traffic speeds. This is a meaningful issue because until very recently, it simply hasn’t been done. Comcast allegedly got the ball rolling, discriminating against the use of bit torrent, a peer-to-peer file sharing network.

While freedom is a much cherished value online, the perceived internet rights of consumers are clashing with the responsibilities of ISPs. Should all online activities be treated equally? If bandwidth is indeed a limited resource, what happens when Mr. Smith can’t get his e-mail because too many people are swapping bootleg movies? This is a worthwhile discussion for public discourse. However, what does disturb me are calls to erect internet regulation.

At a present point when many Federal officials still struggle to understand what the internet is, granting them full micro-managing authority is a scary prospect.

My greatest fear is internet regulation encouraging a pattern of monopolies as we’ve seen in the phone, electric, oil, and cable industries.

I want a vibrant internet with fierce competition for services. If Comcast is as evil some complain, I want a new start up to capitalize on contempt, popping up like a daisy and providing faster internet service. Regulations will never do that, but they can certainly stop it. That’s the problem.

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Net Neutrality is a new issue on my plate. As I learn more and share thoughts on this issue, this blog should grow and evolve.