Telecommies

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.

Net neutrality hearing merely a ’show trail’ by Derek Hunter

Edited Highlights Version:

On Feb. 25, the Federal Communications Commission went to Harvard Law School to hold a hearing on the Internet management practices of Comcast, the largest provider of broadband Internet access in the country. Why Harvard, when the FCC is located in Washington? Because Harvard is near the district represented by Rep. Ed Markey, chairman of the House Subcommittee on Telecommunications and the Internet, who has been a longtime advocate for regulation of the Internet.

The hearing was a typical show trial: two panels weighted heavily with experts opposing Comcast, Verizon (the only other company to participate) and all other Internet service providers on the grounds that they can’t be trusted to do what they have done since the inception of the Internet: keep it open and available for all legal traffic. The heart of the matter was whether Comcast’s rerouting of traffic using the file-sharing software BitTorrent to less crowded areas of the Internet at peak hours constituted “blocking” traffic or was simply a reasonable Internet management technique that harmed no one while ensuring improved browsing experiences for the majority of its customers.

Without managing traffic (think timed traffic lights), ISPs say there are certain times of day when Web traffic is so high (think rush hour) that there’s a risk of not having enough bandwidth to accommodate it. Abandoning network management could end up slowing the Internet for everyone. Since bandwidth is limited (as are lanes on the freeway) and BitTorrent is designed to consume as much bandwidth as possible (think a double-wide semi), Comcast has a program that bounces a tiny minority of heavy BitTorrent users to less crowded areas of the Internet during these peak times to ensure the vast majority of users simply reading e-mails, checking news or blogging don’t have their speeds slowed to a crawl. Seems like common sense — but it’s actually not common, because it rarely happens[…]

In a perfect world, there would be more than enough bandwidth to go around and management practices wouldn’t be needed, but we don’t live in a perfect world. Bandwidth costs money, and like any commodity, its use must be maximized to be efficiently distributed. The economics of this seemed to make sense to everyone except those who believe that access to the Internet is a right[…]

One point made by witnesses is that there isn’t enough competition when it comes to ISPs. Most broadband consumers have a choice between two providers, at most, so switching services if one does something you don’t like is a possibility only for some — and a limited one, at that. There’s truth to this, but increased regulation will hurt, not help, the problem of insufficient competition. What competitor in its right mind would ever enter a heavily regulated market?

(read more…)