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Neil Berkett, CEO of Virgin Media, Britain’s second-largest broadband provider, “called the principle of network neutrality—all content being delivered equally to all users—"a load of bollocks" per eWeek’s article: “Virgin Media may ignore network neutrality.”

• “Berkett said Virgin is considering a fee-based system for content providers wishing to have their traffic moved faster than others.”

After looking up the definition of “bollocks,” it is clear that his comments colorfully echo some of the same sentiments in America that prompted Google to work with Moveon.org to organize SaveTheInternet and ItsOurNet (the predecessor to the Open Internet Coalition) and manufacture the net neutrality issue out of whole cloth.

The comments and the article are a powerful reminder of the fantasy corporate welfare economics of net neutrality, where users are expected to bear all the costs of video distribution for companies like Google and Amazon.

Successful Internet musician, Damian Kulash wrote for the New York Times, the standard pro-net neutrality op ed -- Beware the New Thing.

• It looks like its was ghost-drafted by the FreePress/Moveon.org media machine, because it lip-synched SaveTheInternet's standard chorus -- that because the monopoly phone system was regulated as a common carrier... all internet service providers should be regulated like common carriers!

There are two big flaws in that logic.

It was very welcome, but not surprising news, that FCC Chairman Martin and a majority of the FCC plan to deny eBay-Skype's petition to apply 1960's "Carterfone" monopoly regulations on today's wireless competitors.

This was not a close call. Carterfone regulations were appropriate forty years ago with a monopoly and no competition. However, dusting off ancient regulations for a bygone monopoly era have no business or relevance today. 

The facts are that Americans enjoy more wireless competition than most any country in the world, enjoy the lowest or near lowest wireless prices in the world, and use about four times more wireless minutes than our european counterparts, because of the dramatically lower prices -- all per the American Consumer Institute. 

• The market is serving consumers excellently, and vastly better than regulators could ever hope to.

The Skype petition is an excellent evidence that the net neutrality movement does not believe in competition policy or a free market Internet, but believe in a government managed Internet.

• The FCC majority rightfully understands that government control and regulation of the Internet would be an unmitigated disaster for all concerned.  

Despite Japan having some of the fastest and cheapest broadband in the world, they still have to worry about network congestion and need to manage their networks and shape traffic, according to Adam Peake, a fellow at the International University of Japan who spoke yesterday at the Freedom to Connect Conference.

The takeaway here is that many in the net neutrality movement maintain that there is no need to manage the network if providers would just add more capacity.

• The Japan experience is powerful evidence of the fallacy of that argument.
• Experience shows that usage can often fill whatever capacity is made available.

Peake also explained that there is a pernicious p-2-p program called Winny, which is a major culprit in the network congestion and which is near universally reviled because it is one of those pernicious p-2-p programs that give all p-2-p a bad name because the protocol routinely makes the private content on users' hard drives available for identity theives and fraudsters.

Two leading proponents of net neutrality, believe the push for net neutrality is akin to FDR's pushing for the "New Deal," which was the penultimate Big Government, wealth redistribution effort in U.S. history.   

We learn this candid admission of true beliefs from the Washington Post, which today lionized Ben Scott, the amiable leader of activist organization Free Press, in an article entitled: "Net Neutrality's Quiet Crusader."  

• "Scott's kindred spirit at the FCC might be Democratic commissioner Michael J. Copps, also a student of history who recently read a biography on Franklin Delano Roosevelt. Scott and Copps recently bonded over the book, drawing comparisons between the New Deal and net neutrality."

• ""There have been policy moments in the past when the market has been shaped by decisions made in Washington -- radio in the 1930s, television in the 1950s and cable in the 1980s. That moment is now for the Internet," said Scott..."

Let's review the history here that Mr. Scott waxes nostalgically about. Radio in 1930's, TV in the 1950's, and cable in the 1980's -- was about Washington "shaping them market" by regulating these technologies and businesses much more than they were before. 

New evidence exposes that Google has much more serious financial conflicts of interest and is much less of an "honest broker" of online advertising than most appreciate. 

I was surprised and concerned to read in Comm Daily today that the FCC's broadband data collection rulemaking "is expected to swap the FCC minimum speed for broadband -- 200 kbps -- for a tiered approach. The lowest tier would set 768 kbps as the minimum speed, an FCC source said."

• I certainly hope this is not the case, as it could have a ton of negative unintended consequences which I will outline below.

How could changing the baseline minimum definition of what is broadband turn out to be anti-competition and undermine the universal availability of broadband?

Professor Tim Wu, who coined the term "net neutrality" is reportedly now advocating "law breaking" to advance the "information commons" agenda, which believes Internet infrastrructure, spectrum and content should be publicly owned and not privately owned.  

• Communications Daily quoted Professor Wu on March 11, 2008:
  • "To move things along, unlicensed users should start occupying unused spectrum for wireless broadband, Wu said: "You gotta start somewhere, and it always starts with law-breaking.""
• My experience is that Comm Daily is careful to accurately quote people and if Professor Wu did not to clarify his remarks, we can assume them to be accurate. I also have not seen a clarification of this after two more publications. 
• I would also like to extend the courtesy to Professor Wu to be able to qualify his remarks that they were meant to be flippant, or a joke, or that he really didn't mean to call to publicly encourage people to break the law.
  • He could resolve this issue with a simple blog post.  

That said, it is very troubling to any public civility minded person who believes in the rule of law and respect for property, that such a prominent person as Professor Wu (who coined the term net neutrality, and who proposed Caterfone open access rules for the 700 MHz auction) would advocate "law-breaking" to advance his political agenda.

The House Judiciary hearing on "Free Speech and the Internet" this afternoon was perilously close to being a non-event.

• While Net neutrality activists will claim and spin victory and momentum in getting a congressional hearing on the subject, anyone who listened to the hearing would have been surprised by how little actual support net neutrality got out of this hearing. 

What I found most interesting and telling at the hearing is that Michelle Combs of the Christian Coalition, who testified in support of net neutrality, was completely unable to answer simple softball questions by Ranking Member Sensenbrenner. Like a proverbial "doe in headlights" she could not answer the simplest of questions for a witness; she had to ask for help from her fellow panelists, which made it obvious that she was only a symbolic figurehead on the subject and did not understand even the most basic parts of the net neutrality issue. These were the two questions and answers paraphrased:  

Politicizing the Internet

Fabricating a Free Speech Threat to Justify Regulating the Internet and An“Information Commons”     American ISPs are facilitating an unprecedented explosion of free speech.