Remarks for the University of San Francisco Net Neutrality Symposium
January 26, 2008
Thank you for including me in this forum and debate on net neutrality.
- I have a very different point of view than most everyone on the panel save for Richard Bennett.
- Full disclosure, I am Chairman of NetCompetition.org which represents broadband companies on the issue of net neutrality.
I believe net neutrality is largely a contrived issue and a fabricated “problem.”
· The issue is on political life support in Washington, because it is all slogan and little substance.
· The movement has lost credibility with policy makers because it has been all accusations and assertions and little argument or accuracy.
Let’s put this so-called “problem” in perspective:
However, in response to legitimate criticisms that net neutrality is a “solution in search of a problem,” the net neutrality movement has been desperately digging to find real world examples -- in hopes of proving their point.
Unfortunately for them, the dearth of examples, combined with the lameness of the problems the movement supposedly has identified -- are powerful testimony that there is no real net neutrality problem almost two years since the movement first started “crying wolf.”
- Consider what they have come up with:
- An admitted and corrected short-code messaging mistake by Verizon.
- An admitted instance where Comcast scheduled traffic to ease congestion; and
- A fully-disclosed desire by AT&T to use new technology to potentially better filter for illegal pirated content.
- And this is supposed to be a clear and demonstrable pattern of a problem requiring a new law?
Let’s look at these alleged examples of net neutrality violations more closely one by one.
Supposed net neutrality smoking gun #1:
- In late September of last year, Verizon made a mistake of not authorizing text short codes for NARAL and then immediately admitted its mistake and corrected it within 24 hours.
- A major corporation makes a human mistake, immediately takes responsibility for it, immediately corrects it so it won’t happen again, and caused no irreparable harm.
- There was no intent or conspiracy to limit constitutionally protected free speech.
- There is no controversy or problem here.
- A mistake happened and was immediately corrected.
- Move on.
Supposed net neutrality smoking gun #2:
- FreePress and the AP allege that Comcast violated the FCC’s net neutrality principles by interfering with p2p traffic, while Comcast admitted to delaying p2p traffic because it degrading the quality of service for a vast majority of users.
- This FreePress petition is more of a temper tantrum than a serious policy question.
- At its core, the FreePress petition asks that the FCC to take away the right and contractual obligation of network providers to reasonably manage their network to ensure quality of service to customers by prioritizing and scheduling traffic to prevent network congestion.
- Huh? Managing a network to alleviate traffic congestion is somehow a bad thing?
- This unreasonable FreePress petition is the equivalent of saying that a driver of a car has the right to a neutral road system that never requires the driver to yield, slow down or stop at a traffic light because any limitation or interference of his driving is discrimination or a limitation of his constitutional right to assemble.
- This petition is the regulatory equivalent of a two-year-old having a temper tantrum because he was told he can’t run into the street.
- Move on.
Supposed net neutrality smoking gun #3:
- The net neutrality movement is now all up in arms because AT&T is considering using technology to filter for illegal pirated content.
- The movement is screaming that unavoidable “false positives” would limit people’s free speech and that it would be “Big Brother-like.”
- Where have all these indignant whiners been the last decade?
- Filtering for illegal content has been commonplace for years on the Internet!
- Spam filters routinely block email that should go through.
- Why haven’t these same people complained that spam filters limit people’s free speech to email – by creating false positives?
- Why haven’t these people complained that virus or phishing filters limit the free speech with false positives of innocent hackers and fraudsters?
- Why?
- Because filtering is a proven and consensus technology to deter and catch illegal activity that harms people.
- What’s really going on here?
- There is a hidden information commons agenda here, which does not see p2p file sharing as illegal or piracy.
- They are attacking AT&T on free speech and privacy grounds because they know few would agree with them if they “openly” proposed expropriation of digital property and “openly” opposed enforcement of the law.
- Neutral network or not -- stealing is stealing.
- Move on.
So what is “Reasonable Network Management?”
To start with, the whole net neutrality notion that all Internet traffic should be treated equally is unreasonable and unworkable in practice.
- The net neutrality movement made a grave strategic error in attempting to apply a rule or law specifically -- before its merit has been proven generally.
- The shift in strategy from a top-down law to a bottoms-up operational-precedent -- exposes the huge flaws in the thinking and logic behind the slogans – in the real world the policy is unreasonable and unworkable in practice.
Net neutrality proponents naively think that just by slapping pejorative labels on network management like “discrimination,” “blocking” and “degrading,” or “forgery” -- that real world practitioners are going to roll over and not prioritize, schedule or manage their network to deliver quality services to their customers.
- Any reasonable person knows that prioritizing multiple demands is not discrimination.
- Any reasonable person knows that scheduling multiple tasks is not discrimination.
- Any reasonable person knows that managing scarce resources is not discrimination.
Strip away all the pejorative labels, accusations and assertions, and what you are left with is that a neutral Internet is about banning human involvement, management, oversight, caretaking, improvement or investment, because people do not treat everything absolutely neutral because every competent person has to prioritize, schedule and manage their work to get it done – it doesn’t get done magically by itself.
· The Internet is comprised of thousands of private networks, hundreds of technologies, and tens of thousands of people behind-the-scenes to make it all function.
· A neutral Internet devoid of human involvement or management is naïve and potentially disastrous.
Does any reasonable person not want to prioritize bandwidth for public safety, in a disaster so first responders can download maps and blueprints faster than other people?
Does any reasonable person not want to schedule real time voice communications that can’t suffer latency, ahead of non-real time traffic?
Does any reasonable person not want scarce resources managed so that a few do not abuse the rights of the many?
Net neutrality assumes one-size-fits-all and that any human intervention, prioritizing, scheduling, or managing is inherently discriminatory.
That’s preposterous.
· Prioritizing multiple demands,
· Scheduling multiple tasks, and
· Managing scarce resources,
o Is central to any quality or complex process.
Net neutrality may work as a slogan, but not as an operational practice for the Internet.
Thank you for the opportunity to share my views.
