Ebay

Tim Wu, the "father of net neutrality" because he made up the term a few years back, was surprisingly candid in a CNET article that: "the whole net neutrality issue is really about a power struggle."

• Well we now know net neutrality is not about:
  • A supposedly longstanding non-discrimination "principle" of the Internet;
  • all bits being equal; or
  • freedom of speech.
• It's about "power."
  • We knew it all along. 
    • It's really about the "power struggle" over corporate welfare for the dotcom billionaires at Google and eBay who want the consumer to subsidize their piggish bandwith demands in order to maintain their 90% gross profit margins.  

I also found another candid quote by the Moveon.org/FreePress folks that also tells us what they are up to:

The Moveon.org/FreePress petition to the FCC to declare Comcast's reasonable network management illegal, is a deceptive back-door scheme to reverse FCC deregulation of broadband as an information service and to (de facto) reinstate common carriage for broadband.

• The petition will be found to be a bogus and manufactured scheme to deceive the FCC and the public that necessary, responsible, and "reasonable network management" -- that serves consumers and the Internet public by delivering quality of service and protecting consumers from the harm of viruses, spam etc. -- should be declared illegal "degrading" of an Internet application.
• Upon full FCC airing of this issue, it will be clear that the offending P2P application traffic is the culprit that is in fact harming the overwhelming majority of Internet consumers by "degrading and imparing" the responsiveness and utility of the Internet for the many because of the irresponsible bandwidth hogging of the few.

First, if managing out-of-control p2p traffic that is degrading and impairing the responsiveness and utility of the Internet for the many by the few is not "reasonable network management" then no network management is reasonable.

The American Consumer Institute did some more great work on the importance and impact of broadband. Kudos!

• I recommend you take a look at their eye-opening new study: "Broadband Services: Economic and Environmental benefits." 
• The premise is that promoting broadband is smart national policy because of the tremendous cumulative productivity and energy savings that more broadband use enables.

The summary table on page 48 encapsulates the study's findings well.

Why is net neutrality not Green?

• The current free market broadband policy is succeeding greatly in rapidly deploying broadband to all Americans and in promoting facilities-based broadband competition.
  • The FCC's latest broadband competition report that just came out shows that U.S. high speed connections grew an astounding 61% in 2006 from ~50m users to ~80m users.
• Even the serious prospect of net neutrality legislation becoming law would chill investment and discourage continuation of the broadband success that the current free market policy has generated.
  • Net neutrality is not Green because it would slow the extremely environmentally beneficial trend of increased broadband use, which creates massive national energy savings as the American Consumer institute study attests.  

The unanimous passage of a new seven-year Internet Tax Moratorium, is powerful evidence of how far out of the political mainstream the net neutrality movement is.

• The fact that everyone in Congress, from the right and the left, came together and supported extending the Internet tax ban for twice as long as Congress did in the past, proves unequivocally that political consensus is possible in Congress on mainstream Internet issues.
• Moreover, the near unanimous passage of the 1996 Telecom Act by Congress was another powerful example of how the left and right could come together and agree overwhelmingly on sound Internet/communications policies like:
  • "...preserve the vibrant and competitive free market that presently exists for the Internet... unfettered by Federal or state regulation;" and 
  • "To promote competition and reduce regulation in order to secure lower prices and higher quality services for America telecommunications consumers and encourage the rapid deployment of new telecommunications technologies."

Sound mainstream policies can attract near unanimity in Congress -- despite rampant partisanship. 

If net neutrality was truly a long-standing "principle" of the Internet, like its proponents have claimed, it would attract strong political consensus.

Isn't it illuminating that eBay, the online auction monopoly with 95% market share per Jupiter Research, and the owner of Skype that is lobbying hard for regulation and legislation to force the "unlocking of phones" and mandate net neutrality regulation -- is so uncooperative with law enforcement trying to crack down on organized theft?

• Could it be that calling for others to be "open" is just code, cover and justification for stealing other's property or property rights?

Reuters reported last week: "U.S. retailers want online sellers to fight theft." 

•  "U.S. retailers and police called on Congress on Thursday to require online auction sites such as eBay to post the serial numbers of items for sale to help crack down on gangs of professional shoplifters." 

• ""Operators of sites such as eBay have historically failed to provide any meaningful information to retail investigators," said Karl Langhorst, director of loss prevention for Randall's and Tom Thumb stores, a division of Safeway Inc.""

Seems like more hypocrisy and situational ethics from eBay, where they seek corporate welfare from government, while not cooperating fully with law enforcement to fight "organized theft."

• Maybe there is "Honor among thieves."

I think I see the beginning of a backlash trend against those advocating unfettered "openness" on the Internet. 

According to the Columbus Dispatch, the Ohio Fraternal Order of Police is pushing for legislation to limit the availability of police and firefighters' property records to anyone on the Internet.

•  ""Our major concern is the criminal element that's using the Internet for a number of criminal ventures, one of which is to seek retribution on law enforcement," said Mark Drum, a lobbyist for the Ohio FOP."

I'll be surprised if their isn't a growing number of people, from all walks of life, who will want to protect their privacy/safety and be able to remove some of their information from public view on the Internet.

With all due respect to all the folks I read often at Business Week, I have to challenge the thinking behind Stephen Wildstrom's column in Business Week where he shares that he switched his year-long position opposing new net regulation, largely because of Verizon's admitted mistake in delaying by one-day a text messaging approval code to NARAL. 

After Verizon and the rest of the industry have handled literally billions upon billions of communications for years without significant similar incidents, one company makes an admitted mistake, takes full responsibility, immediately fixes it, changes its procedures so it won't happen again, -- and Mr Wildstrom's answer is to now throw the common-carrier regulatory book at Verizon and the whole industry? 

The recent AP story "Comcast blocks some Internet traffic" has refocused many on the real question at the core of the net neutrality debate -- "should broadband networks be managed?"

• This is a debate we are more than happy to have because it is obvious to most all who truly think about this question that broadband networks must be managed to preserve quality of service and to protect users.  

The pro-net neutrality point of view, which the AP reporter ably represented in his article, is essentially making the standard net neutrality movement case that:

I normally consider myself a big fan of Walter Mossberg's technology reviews in the Wall Street Journal, but for today I am a big critic of Mr. Mossberg's woefully uniformed and one-sided opinion piece on public policy "Free my Phone."

Obviously frustrated at the technical reality that the bandwidth availability of telecommunications devices has not kept pace with the faster growth in computer processing, Mr. Mossberg lashes out at public policy as the cause in an emotional diatribe that illogically concludes that "if the government...breaks the crippling power that the wireless carriers exert today, the free market will deliver a... happy ending."

It's important to highlight yet another official/legal repudiation of the net neutrality movement's common carrier regulation agenda.

• As reported by Comm Daily yesterday, but largely ignored by the mainstream press, the U.S. Appeals Court 3rd circuit, upheld the FCC's decision to classify DSL as a competitive "information service" and not a common carrier telecom service potentially subject to net neutrality regulations.

Why is this important?

• It was this very FCC decision made in August 2005 that net neutrality supporters made their rallying cry for new net neutrality legislation!
• This August 2005 FCC decision implemented the Supreme Court's earlier "Brand X" decision, which affirmed that cable modems were appropriately classified by the FCC as an un-regulated competitive "information service."
• In addition to applying the "Brand X" cable modem info services classification on DSL, the FCC has also applied it consistently to other functionally-equivalent broadband technologies: wireless broadband service and Broadband over power line service.

The significance of this appeals court affirmation of the legitimacy of the FCC's highly-market-successful broadband deregulation policy is that the legal precedents for maintaining broadband as an unregulated competitive service are piling up and becoming extremely difficult to reverse in the future.