Net Neutrality Redux
Remember my post about Net Neutrality and the Brodsky Bill?
Net Neutrality is the realization of the First Amendment, except on the digital plane. Remember, Free Speech is government regulation. Imagine the ridiculousness of claiming that we don’t need the Bill of Rights, because “the market will sort it out”. Same deal with Net Neutrality.
In case the term Net Neutrality confuses you, Public Knowledge has crafted a quick three minute clip explaining the idea in an elegant and clean manner.
[ev type="youtube" data="l9jHOn0EW8U"][/ev]
Really, watch it. It’ll only take less than three minutes, and explains the whole deal very well.
Why all the talk of Net Neutrality in the last few years? Wikipedia explains:
internet access has always been categorized under U.S. law as an information service, and not a telecommunications service, and thus has not been subject to “common carrier” regulations. High-speed data links, (which make up the Internet’s core) are also not regulated by common carrier law. On the other hand, internet access across the phone network, including DSL, was for a long time categorized as a telecommunications service, and subject to common carrier regulations. However, on August 5, 2005, the FCC reclassified DSL services as Information Services rather than Telecommunications Services, and replaced common carrier requirements on them.
Speaking of common carrier requirements, there have been Network Neutrality style regulations and implementations throughout American History. For example, a telegraph regulation from 1860 stated
..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, excepting that the dispatches of the government shall have priority.
Telephones have the neutral Automatic Telephone Exchange, and of course Telecommunication companies are bound by Common Carrier rules, since they also produce a public good.
Telephone networks operate under common carrier rules because they operate under a sort of government-driven monopoly. It would be inefficient and a big pain for every telco to set up their own redundant telephone network. Thus, the government subsidizes that construction, and the telcos have to lend out their infrastructure to competitors in return.
The Internet is an information service layered ontop of the telecommunication wiring already in place. Due to the end of net neutrality, telcos don’t have to act as common carriers for the internet anymore. However, we only have one internet, and the subsidizies to prevent redundant wiring have already gone out/are still in place. Let’s have Wikipedia explain the implications:
Previously, thousands of ISPs had access to the telephone network. Now, with no broadband telecommunications carrier service available, there are generally only two Internet broadband providers in a residential market: the cable Internet provider and the DSL Internet provider. Cable ISPs and the DSL ISPs have market power and have both the incentive and opportunity to discriminate with regard to content and applications used over their networks.
Now that you see how Net Neutrality is the only way to ensure that the internet retains its essential nature as a conduit for the free flow of information, remember: The Brodsky Bill has (among other things) Net Neutrality provisions. Call the Guv and tell him to support the Telecommunications Reform Act today.
And in case you don’t have three minutes for a clean and elegant video, Ask A Ninja can chaotically and humourously explain net neutrality in half that time:
[ev type="youtube" data="cZSKsSTX-i8"][/ev]
A lot of the push for Net Neutrality came from belligerent comments from the new AT&T. Stephen Colbert explains:
[ev type="google" data="2004785759717366066"][/ev]
Ma Bell is back. We have to stop her from using her old tricks of gouging and anticompetitive practices.
Related posts:
Your first paragraph relating it to the bill of rights is possibly the clearest, most succinct description of Net Neutrality I’ve read.
you’re on a roll, kiddo. great post. any chance i could convince you to cross post?
A quibble:
Free Speech is codified in our Constitution as a pre-existing condition, meaning that it assumes we already have the right to free speech (which of course, we do) granted by being alive. In fact, the Bill of Rights enumerates pre-existing rights which cannot be denied, but anything not mentioned in the Constitution is de-facto considered our right as specified in the final clause of the main body of the Constitution.
All of that is to say that “free speech” is most definitely not “government regulation,” any more than breathing is.
But apart from that, great post! (I’m a stickler for Constitutional stuff)
You have a good point, and I agree with it.
However, you could argue that people have an inherent right to net neutrality as well. AFAIK, the beauty of TCP/IP was the neutrality of data, and DARPAnet / the Internet was created to promote the free flow of information. Seeing as there’s only one Internet, the concepts behind its founding sure include Net Neutrality.
However, the idea of an inherent right to Net Neutrality is not really a theory I could protect with any intellectual rigor.
Sure, the Bill of Rights contained “the inalienable natural rights of man”, but in other countries, people don’t have some of those rights. So free speech may not be government regulation in theory, but it sure is in practice.
[...] the opportunity to snag the snazzy graphic from Rochester Turning and Sayhar’s outstanding articles on the subject.ÂÂ It’s now featured prominently at the right of this blog.ÂÂ After all, if [...]
Thanks, and sure.
I’ll keep them a day apart, just like on RT.
[...] by the greed of Comcast, AT&T, and their ilk. To learn more about Net Neutrality, you can read my earlier work on the subject, or go to SaveTheInternet.com. Suffice to say: Net Neutrality is the thing that [...]