Editor’s Note: This post was originally published on Seattle 2.0, and imported to GeekWire as part of our acquisition of Seattle 2.0 and its archival content. For more background, see this post.

By Alyssa Royse

In case you haven’t heard, Google and Verizon have conspiredto kill free speech and free markets. They have combined their megalomaniacalpowers to squeeze the life out of all that is sacred by choking-off independentcontent producers while jerking-off major content producers, who are, as we allknow, evil. (No, that is not what Google means when they say, “do no evil.”)
 
The sky is falling, right?
 
Wrong. The world is not ending, the Internet is not goingaway, and you and I will still be able to play games, shop, rant and watchvideos of cute little kittens, (or any other perky pussy that strikes ourfancy.)
 
But someone has to pay for it. And someone has to sort itout. The Internet has grown and changed a lot since Al Gore invented it, andalthough he may be able to justify selling people carbon credits for his ownprofit, even he wasn’t clever enough to predict all the ways that such a widevariety of people would use the Internet – some for free speech and some forprofit. People use it differently, which impacts the Internet differently, andI can see no really good reason not to treat those uses and users differently.I’m on the Information Superhighway in my rickshaw sending photos to Aunt Ednawhile Paramount is driving a semi-truck and streaming movies. There is nothingneutral about putting a rickshaw and a semi-truck on the same highway andwishing them a fair race. That’s what we have now. 
 
And when the system gets clogged withtoo much traffic, your trip gets slower and more annoying. That sucks.
As with any highway, there is limited space and a lot oftraffic that has to get where it wants to go, for a variety of reasons. Thehighway needs maintenance, updates, rerouting, repairs etc….
 
Lots of things can happen on and around the highway that arefun. Someone sets up a series of funny billboards, and we’re all happy aboutit. (Like, for instance, LOL cats.) There can be fruit stands on the side ofthe road, which means that someone is running their own little mom and pop shopthanks to the freeway, and that’s pretty great too, especially if you want afresh peach. (The cute couple in Baltimore from whom I buy shea butter.)
 
But what about when someone fills the stretch of highwaythat you’re using with a convoy of semi-trucks that makes it hard for you toget where you’re going. (Like, movie studios, major news sites, Amazon….) Andwhat happens if the weight of all those trucks actually causes harm to thehighway itself, and requires extra maintenance as a result? Who should pay forthat?
 
What if that convoy of semi-trucks is only on the road forthe sole purpose of making money, which it couldn’t do without using thehighway? It is dependent on the highway as a distribution channel, and in usingit makes the experience bad for other people and increases the “toll” on thehighway? All so that it can make money.
 
In non-internet terms, that makes The InformationSuperhighway the primary means of distribution for the goods and services thatmany – some of them HUGE – companies use to generate their revenue. Why shouldthey get that distribution for free?
 
What about all those commercial truckers that clog our pavedinterstates? They pay for the privilege to do so. They pay federal fees, localfees, extra taxes and tolls in order to mitigate their impact on the “public”roadways that you and I also use, to a much smaller extent. Why should the TheInformation Superhighway be any different? I think an Information Super Tollwayis probably a good answer.
 
This is where it gets tricky. Richard Luck, in an email tome, summed it up nicely in saying:

Personally, the whole concept of “NetNeutrality” (“NN”) strikes me as an oxymoron.  The Net is abusiness – and business (the kind that thrives) cannot do so in”neutral”.

Here’s my issue with the argument:  those who aredemanding NN for the most part don’t own the content, they don’t own thenetworks, they don’t own the city-size server farms that keep thingsrunning.   By and large, the NN community is comprised of consumersand small “b” broadcasters (ie: bloggers, vloggers and the like) whofeel the only way they can compete against the big “b” Broadcasters(ie: AOL, Google, et al) is through regulation.
In short: they incur all of the benefits but none of thecosts of maintaining the internet.  And they think even that is unfair.
It’s like people think that the Internet is some bigmagical and infinite network of glee that is powered by unicorn breath todeliver us joy however we pixelate it. That it is free, public and thebirthright of all. It is not. 
 
The internet is not a magical public resource any more thanour Interstate System is. Our Interstate system is paid for with tax dollars.The Internet, on the other hand, is run by companies of varying sizes, each ofwho play a role. These companies support enormous infrastructure – ranging fromserver farms to salaries – that other companies use as their distributionchannel for very profitable – and large – companies.
 
Why should they not pay for the distribution of theirproduct? Why should consumers not pay for the resources they use? (Because youknow those costs would get passed on….)
 
While many people are saying that the sequestering ofspecial toll-lanes for “types” of Internet traffic will mean that we are allshackled into a caste system of sorts, it looks to me like this might be ahuge step towards an Internet that is more efficient and more egalitarian. Bycreating special toll lanes for huge content producers that run enormousbusinesses, they create a way to keep their big trucks off the roads that youand I are driving our rickshaws on. Further, it allows the money raised fromthose tolls to support the maintenances, innovation and infrastructure that weall want to make it better.
 
And it’s good business. It’s also reality. Would having topay commensurate to the resources we use change our behavior? Probably.
 
Yes, there are red flags and caution signs all around, butit seems a bit early to panic. A quick query to the Seattle Tech Startups Listflooded my inbox with a variety of responses. Most of which were favorable tothe Google / Verizon proposal and not particularly alarmist. But some veryvalid points were made.
 
From an anonymous voice:

Google saying QoS ‘toll lanes’ are fine is nothing new,they have always said this.  What does appear to be new is them sayingthat they are OK with operator discrimination (including exclusive deals) inthose QoS toll lanes.  By that logic the provider could sign an exclusivedeal with Google such that only YouTube traffic gets low latency, lowjitter/packet loss treatment.  So now how does anyone compete withYouTube?  You almost can’t by definition. Imagine that same scenarioin any area Google or any other large corporation has a vested interest. 

Yup, that’s scary. But the agreement does explicitlyprohibit ISPs from hindering their users ability to transfer any lawfulcontent, using any lawful application to any lawful device, as was outlined byFCC Chair Julius Genachowski. Any prioritization of traffic, beyond simplyseparating general types of traffic, would not be allowed unless, according tothe agreement, it could be shown to cause no “meaningful harm tocompetition or to users.” Granted, that’s more like the Hippocratic Oathof “First Do No Harm,” rather than “Do No Evil,” but that oath seems to workpretty well.
 
It also MAY make it even easier to block illegal content,and that might be a good thing. The cost of piracy to content producers isenormous whether you’re talking about Hollywood blockbusters or adult-industryball-busters. And that’s good for business.
 
Another STS voice pointed out (though did not necessarilyagree with) the following Doomsday Scenario for internet startups:

Your competitors can outbid the bandwidth with the serviceproviders so even if you pay you might not get your “fair” share. Maybe ISPs will start a program called “kill your competitors -bandwidth auction.

I dunno. This gets back to the distribution question, andyour distribution costs should be part of your business plan in the firstplace. No matter what your business is, that cost is never “zero.”
 
That same STS voice added,In one change, the ISPs arerewriting startup rules – the first thing isn’t to innovate; it is to secureagreements for favorable bandwidth treatment.” Wait, that’s an old rule: Secure distribution for yourproduct.

David Albrecht, who’s been knee-deep in these legal andtechnical issues writing a Master’s Thesis that I’m sure I’d drown in, pointsout:
Network neutrality originated from the same thinking that brought us”common carriage” on railways.  Building the network was socapital-intensive, the thinking went, that it made the most sense for oneentity to control the entire network.  Like utilities, the network was soexpensive that trying to get several competitors in the space (and the pricediscipline that came along with that) just wasn’t going to work. So regulators decided to let one company/small groupcontrol the resource, and regulate how access to the resource was permitted.

Net neutrality is blatantly anti-capitalist.  Whetherthis is the right thing depends as much on one’s own political leanings asanything else.  But given the state of the Internet today, the case issubstantially weakened by the level of competition in Internet access generally. Unlike in the past, when phone lines were the only game in town, we nowhave cable, PSTN/DSL lines, EDGE, 3G, WiMax, and probably half a dozen othertechnologies (Iridium?) to get on the Internet.  I feel there’s scope forcompetition in this space (and I have pretty pro-capitalist political leaningsoverall), so I don’t see a strong case for the FCC to get involved; and byextension, I see little problem with Google’s deal with Verizon.

Without confessing to you whether I believe in Ayn Rand orUnicorns (or both,) I feel pretty strongly that we have a lot of hysteria overnothing. The Internet, and how we use it, is in a state of rapid evolution, andthe transition to an Internet that truly gives equal access to all users, whopay according to their usage, is going to be filled with potholes anddead-ends, and will likely involve legislation and lawmakers to sort it out.This is the beginning of a process, not the end. But, as was pointed out to meby a beloved and geeky friend, laws are like sausage, it’s best not to see them being made.

Unless, like the Highways, we just want the government totake it all over. Because, you know, that always works well for consumers and small business.
____
Alyssa Royse has no connection to Google, Verizon or Ayn Rand. She would love to have one of those awesome 4G Android phones that operates on the Sprint network, so she can update Facebook and shop for Shea Butter while working  on her unicorn ranch in Galt’s Gulch, somewhere over the rainbow.

 

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