Your Comprehensive Guide to Why We Should Preserve Net Neutrality
This has been a long time coming. There is a lot of misleading information out there. While the misleading information comes from both sides (I fell victim to the Portugal nightmare scenario that never was), the vast majority is attributable to Ajit Pai, Chairman of the Federal Communications Commission ("FCC"). It is not an exaggeration to say he is obsessed with getting rid of net neutrality.
Ajit was a former corporate lawyer for Verizon before being appointed to the FCC by Obama (yes Obama) and elevated to the chairmanship by Trump. While reading, keep in mind the motives of the players such as Ajit. That will help you assess the veracity of the claims being made. That exercise might be enough on its own for you to decide what side to come down on.
What is Net Neutrality?
Net neutrality is a core principle of the internet, which dictates that companies that connect us to the Internet (i.e. Internet Service Providers or "ISPs") treat all data delivered to customers equally. This means they may not block content, throttle content (i.e. slow it), nor speed up content for companies that pay for faster delivery to customers. In practice, net neutrality puts all internet content on the same level playing field. So under net neutrality Netflix, New York Times, Weather Channel, your personal blog, Redditt, and even porn sites are all treated equally.
The Internet architecture used to be such that the big data transmitting companies, e.g. Netflix, would experience lag because of this equal treatment. Improvements in capacity, bandwidth, traffic management, plus investment by major content producers in peering (which is a direct connection between the content provider (e.g. Netflix) and the ISP that bypasses most of the Internet) has greatly reduced buffering and led to overall improvement in network efficiency. Keep in mind that even though peering seems to create a ″fast lane″ that only the big companies can take advantage of, the direct connection only benefits getting content to the ISP. The content is then still subject to the same constraints as other traffic for that last connection to you.
Why Get Rid of Neutrality?<
Ajit Pai talks a lot, a lot, a lot, a lot, about ″light touch regulation.″ He argues that the Internet we love, and that is the envy of the world, developed when there was no net neutrality. Therefore, net neutrality is not necessary and is overly burdensome; stifling innovation and investment in expanding access to broadband networks. This is his PRIMARY argument, and it is misleading. Net neutrality has been the norm since the birth of the internet, with the exception of a couple months in 2005.
From the beginning, the FCC said all traffic should be treated equally and was in one stage or another of drafting regulations to that affect. The ISPs therefore conducted themselves as if net neutrality were in effect. So there was always a defacto net neutrality in place until Comcast blocked BitTorrent traffic in 2005. When the FCC told Comcast they could not do that Comcast sued the FCC. The court said the FCC did not have the authority but would if ISPs we classified as ″common carriers″ under Title II of the Communications Act. By then the Internet had become ubiquitous and communication such VoIP, Skype, email, etc. as well as the assertiveness of ISPs in using their power to treat certain traffic differently argued in favor of changing ISPs to common carriers and that gave the FCC the authority to enforce net neutrality.
So in reality, the light touch approach Ajit is advocating we return to never really existed. Pai′s other main argument, however, is that net neutrality has resulted in under investment in expanding access and infrastructure. The problem is that there is scant evidence that is the case, and the ISPs have admitted that reclassification had no impact on their investment plans. In fact Pai′s former boss told shareholders during an earnings call that the change in classification would have no impact on Verizon's infrastructure investment and long term planning. That is important because those statements have legal consequences and are therefore vetted and accurate vs. marketing statements where the company says just about anything regardless of whether it is true.
Pai also says that net neutrality is unnecessary because there is no evidence that the ISPs would act in an anti-competitive manner if net neutrality is ended because there is no history of anti-competitive behavior. That is blatantly wrong. Remember, Comcast unilaterally blocked BitTorrent traffic. And there are too many examples of ISPs throttling Netflix or offering incentives to use content provide by the ISPs. An Internet search will confirm this and I won't list all the examples. But the idea that there is no reason to believe ISPs need to be regulated fails to recognize current market conditions. ISPs all too often are now in direct competition with content producers. ″Cutting the cord″ is now a thing, where people cut cable television and just use services like Amazon and Netflix. So ISPs have tremendous market incentives to begin treating internet traffic differently. If there is nothing preventing them from charging us more money to use certain internet sites it is naive to think they won't. Just consider who the ISPs are.
To those that don't know, the ISPs include Comcast, TimeWarner, Sprint, Verizon, Charter, ATT, HughesNet, Cox, Sprint, etc. Comcast and Sprint have the distinction of being two of the top 10 most hated companies in America, and the rest of the ISPs populate the bottom tier of companies rated. These companies were actually dragged before the Senate to explain why they are so horrible. The reason is pretty obvious and will be discussed in more detail below; in short they all have regional monopolies and don't have to care about their customers and service.
What about the free market?
The next argument that you will see, and one that I have noticed is the golden child of the Libertarians here on Steemit, is to let the market work its magic. The argument goes like this: if your ISP starts doing some quirky pricing just change ISPs. What planet are they on? Consumers are lucky if they have any alternative to their current ISP because ISPs have regional monopolies. The vast majority of us have one ISP in our area and that is not going to change in our lifetimes. I will concede that if the ISPs gave up their monopolies and stopped interfering with startups like Google Fiber from being able to offer service then we may be having a different discussion. But when has a monopoly ever willingly given up their position? In response to this current state of affairs we will hear the Libertarians proclaim that the monopolies are the result of government regulation. Well that is fine, no argument here, it doesn't change the facts that there are monopolies and the problems that presents, so it doesn't help the discussion and is just a distraction.
Who benefits and who loses from getting rid of net neutrality?
Well lets look at what changes with the elimination of net neutrality. There will be smaller changes, but the major change is that ISPs will be free to treat internet traffic differently. The ramifications of this change are tremendous and the big reason why the vast majority of people oppose getting rid of net neutrality. As discussed earlier, ISPs have a lot of market incentives to take advantage of their gatekeeper function. Without net neutrality nothing will prevent the ISPs from charging for faster access or blocking content they don't approve of (imagine if the owners of Hobby Lobby bought Comcast and decided what they would allow on their network).
You may remember that the ISPs got Congress to get rid of regulations that would have required the ISPs to get your approval before collecting all of your internet activity and selling it. Now they can do that by default and it is up to you to tell them you don't want them to collect it. Good luck navigating the terms of service to figure out how to tell them to stop. But you could get a Virtual Private Network (VPN) and encrypt all your internet activity right? Well not if the ISPs decide that it is hurting the bottom line and start charging you for using a VPN or worse banning you from being able to use them.
Advocates of getting rid of net neutrality, especially the Libertarians here on Steemit, say it gets the government out of regulating what we can see on the Internet. That is a very disingenuous argument because the net neutrality regulations are all that guarantees that we have access to whatever we want. Remember, if the FCC decided tomorrow to start censoring the Internet, we have the Constitution, the courts, and the ballot box to stop the FCC. If Verizon or Comcast decide to censor the Internet they are not accountable to us. So the threat from the ISPs is more pernicious than the government. Frankly, I would rather have an accountable government regulating the internet than the ISPs.
So there are two groups who win or lose if net neutrality is eliminated. The winners are the ISPs because they will be free to innovate creative ways to charge its customers more, steer them to ISP provided content through incentives and disincentives, and be able to charge content producers more to carry their content and prevent the little start ups from get a toe hold in the market. The losers are everyone else.
Look at who is arguing in favor and against. What are their incentives? The ISPs have a lot of reasons to mislead us. But companies like Amazon and Google (who would arguably benefit from the removal of net neutrality because they could pay to further entrench their market dominance), the interest groups, and individuals arguimg against removing net neutrality are looking at the larger social and political implications.
As for Ajit Pai, what could be motivating him? I doubt he will stay at the FCC until he retires. I give him another year. After that I wonder were a former corporate attorney for one of the big ISPs will go when he has finished giving his former employers the goose that laid the golden egg...any ideas?
The Internet we have today is the result of net neutrality, not despite it. The potential for a dystopian version of what we take for granted isn't worth the risk. But if you inherently trust Ajit Pai (he looks like a nice guy and says some funny things he may be quite likable), Comcast, and the other companies to do the right thing...good luck.