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The original appearance of this entry was in Danny Weitzner - Open Internet Policy

I’ve just posted a paper on the ‘Net Neutrality’ issue, entitled “The Neutral Internet: An Information Architecture for Open Societies [PDF]. This paper argues that it is important for Congress to enact legislative protection for the essential non-disciminatory and neutral aspects of the Internet.

The United States Senate is likely to take a key vote on the issue this week, so it’s an important time to pay attention and make your voice heard.

The paper identifies four key aspects of the Neutral Internet that must be protected:

1. Non-discriminatory routing of packets
2. User control and choice over service levels
3. Ability to create and use new services and protocols without prior
   approval of network operators
4. Non-discriminatory peering of backbone networks.

I suggest that:

These principles taken together constitute the social contract among Internet service providers that has been indispensable to its great openness and success. They are equally important regardless of whether the service is broadband or narrowband, wireless or wireline, fiber optic, copper pair or coax. Understanding the Internet requires taking this holistic view of the Internet as a set of business, technical and social arrangements. While traditional telecommunications policy thinking divides the world into ‘facilities’ and different bandwidth levels, these are not the appropriate categories within which we should regulate or de-regulate the Internet. Indeed, the very foundation of the Internet is its ability to connect efficiently a broad array of quite different networks, allowing a publisher of information to reach a global audience without regard to which or what kind of network the recipient is on. To allow the nation’s leading Internet access providers to upend this fundamental global understanding would be to undermine the Internet itself.

There are those who argue that it’s dangerous to ‘regulate’ the Internet and therefore there should be no non-discrimination rules enacted. Some network operators are simply self-serving and want the freedom to take advantage of the tremendous wealth that the Internet generates without playing by the simple, common rules that make it so economically powerful and socially useful. Other well-meaning friends of the Internet worry that getting the FCC involved will risk mendlesome regulation and lead to unintended consequences. I worry about this too, but think that Congress should be able enact Internet Neutrality protections (for example by creating a right to complain against discriminatory conduct at the FTC or FCC) without too much risk. Think of regular old telephone service, whose cornerstone has been for more than 100 years basic commn carriage non-discrimination. True, many countries, including the US have all but eliminated the prices regulation aspect of common carriage. But we still maintain the prohibition against content discrimination simply because it’s vital to the way the telephone system works. This doesn’t result in burdensome regulation, but rather reminds everyone of the importance of maintaining an open voice telephone system.

At the same time, I suggest that some of the Net Neutrality proponents have actually distorted the debate (and hurt our changes to protect the Internet) by trying, intentionally or not, to extend Internet non-discrimination principles to other broadband services such as cable television. The paper explains:

By distinguishing between Internet Neutrality and more general NetNeutrality, it is possible to establish basic non-discriminatory neutrality requirements that will preserve the neutral aspects of the Internet that have brought commercial and non-commercial benefits to hundreds of millions of people around the world. At the same time, policy makers should carefully monitor the evolution of new broadband networks and services. As long as those new networks operate in a manner that does not actively interfere with or unfairly compete against Internet services, policy makers should allow the private sector a freer hand in designing and operating new broadband infrastructure.

I’d welcome comments on the paper and will likely write more about this in the coming days.

Update: Associated Press coverage of the paper: “All Online Traffic May Not Be Equal, 20 June 2006.”