Meanwhile, AT&T asserts that while it prefers existing internet principles and does not want radical expansions under the FCC, if the Commission does choose to further regulate, "It absolutely must ensure that any such rules apply evenly - not just to network operators but also to providers of Internet applications, content and services. Anything less would be ineffective, legally suspect and, in all events, a direct repudiation of President Obama's call for a 'level playing field'."

In your opinion should Google Voice be subject to the same rules that apply to AT&T or do you believe that web-based telephony groups like Skype, Google and Jajah should fall under a separate set of regulations?

Photo Credit: Aislinn Ritchie

Why Do We Need Net Neutrality?

In his speech, Genachowski lists three reasons for why we need to be concerned about the future of the Internet:

• limited competition among service providers
• broadband providers, who generally sell phone service and cable TV subscriptions, and whose "rational bottom-line interests may diverge from the broad interests of consumers in competition and choice"
• as the Internet has grown, technologies for managing networks have become more sophisticated, but these tools "cannot by themselves determine the right answers to difficult policy questions -- and they raise their own set of new questions"

Back in 2004, then-Chairman Michael Powell proposed a set of four principles (PDF) based on the idea that ISPs should not be allowed to prevent users from accessing any lawful part of the Internet or from attaching "non-harmful" devices to the network. Today, Julius Genachowski proposed to add two more principles to this list.

Principle of Non-Discrimination

The fifth principle is one of non-discrimination -- stating that broadband providers cannot discriminate against particular Internet content or applications.

This means that ISPs would not be allowed to block or degrade lawful traffic over their networks or favor some content or applications over others. An ISP could not, for example, give its subscribers faster access to its own streaming video site, but slow down similar content from another site that is owned by a competitor.

Principle of Transparency

The sixth principle is a transparency principle -- stating that providers of broadband Internet access must be transparent about their network management practices.

Today, we often have to wonder if our ISP is actually shaping traffic and purposely slowing our torrent downloads. Google even got so worried about this topic that it released a number of tools that allow consumers to check if their ISPs are engaged in traffic shaping. If adopted, this would mean that broadband providers will have to disclose what kind of protocols they are blocking and how they are managing traffic on their networks.

According to Genachowski, the FCC has "an obligation to ensure that the Internet is an enduring engine for U.S. economic growth, and a foundation for democracy in the 21st century. We have an obligation to ensure that the Internet remains a vast landscape of innovation and opportunity." While he acknowledges that some parties would argue that innovation and investment are exactly the reasons why the government shouldn't adopt open Internet rules, Genachowski argues that an open Internet will ultimately benefit both consumers and businesses and that an open Internet "is the best thing we can do to promote investment and innovation."

As Kevin C. Tofel notes on jkOnTheRun, it is important to note that all of these principles will apply to platforms that have access to the Internet - including mobile devices. This could have major ramifications for mobile ISPs. For more about this, see Tofel's blog post which focuses on exactly what these rules could mean for mobile service providers and consumers.

Join the Discussion

If you want to join the discussion, the new OpenInternet.gov site allows for (moderated) comments. What's your point of view? Should the government take a more active role in keeping the Internet free and open, or is this an oxymoron and we should just let the market regulate itself?

If you think regular bloggers get trolled in their comments sections, the discussion on Blogband is likely to get heated. Comments will be moderated before being posted and any off-topic rants will appear on the Off Topic Comments page. While the page is currently empty, depending on the decisions made about fiber, ISPs and infrastructure, it's likely to light up like a Christmas tree and read like The Best of Craigslist.

BitTorrent accounts for a substantial percentage of traffic on the internet and some people believe it causes unfair slowdowns for web users doing anything else online. Many other people argue that ISPs have an obligation to treat all internet traffic equally regardless of content. This is a key battle in the Network Neutrality debate.

Comcast voluntarily stopped throttling in March, but today's FCC decision is important FCC Chair Kevin Martin says so that "consumers deserve to know that the commitment is backed up by legal enforcement." Martin, a Republican, is believed by some to be taking an out-of-charecter populist stance on the matter because he's preparing to run for a position in the US House of Representatives.

EFF Releases "Switzerland"

The Electronic Frontier Foundation today released software called "Switzerland" (as in, the neutral country) that can be used by consumers to test our networks for ISP interference.

The EFF explains:

"Switzerland is an open source, command-line software tool designed to detect the modification or injection of packets of data by ISPs. Switzerland detects changes made by software tools believed to be in use by ISPs such as Sandvine and AudibleMagic, advertising systems like FairEagle, and various censorship systems. Although currently intended for use by technically sophisticated Internet users, development plans aim to make the tool increasingly easy to use."

We'll keep our eyes peeled for a version of the tool that doesn't require using the command line, though every network in the land can now assume that it has users tech-savvy enough to be monitoring its behavior.

This quote from the EFF release puts things into context:

"The sad truth is that the FCC is ill-equipped to detect ISPs interfering with your Internet connection," said Fred von Lohmann, EFF Senior Intellectual Property Attorney. "It's up to concerned Internet users to investigate possible network neutrality violations, and EFF's Switzerland software is designed to help with that effort. Comcast isn't the first, and certainly won't be the last, ISP to meddle surreptitiously with its subscribers' Internet communications for its own benefit."

What Do You Think?

The FCC's ruling was narrowly decided, through a 3 to 2 vote. Do you think ISPs have a legitimate interest in favoring some web traffic over others? On one hand, a future where big players get preferential treatment could cause a major slowdown in innovation. Startups and unknown application providers could be prevented from leveraging maximum bandwidth to offer new types of services to consumers. The most common example given is that YouTube may have struggled to make online video so common if they were discriminated against in their earliest days.

On the other hand, people downloading long lists of huge media files over common networks could be seen as an onerous drain on the "bandwidth commons." Slowing down an entire neighborhood's web use because you want to get the entire archives of some TV show is arguably pretty anti-social behavior.

Discussion above hasn't touched on legal matters, but for many people that's a big part of this debate as well. The US Congress, for example, voted this morning to require US colleges receiving federal funding to make commercial music purchasing services available to students online and filter traffic to deter P2P music sharing. The music industry says thank you! Some scientists using P2P on college campuses to transfer large files used in academic research, on the other hand, probably don't appreciate it as much. (That's probably not going on over the same networks, but the point is that there are very legitimate and important uses for P2P as well.)

We'd love to get our readers' thoughts on these questions - and for those of you able to put Switzerland to use, let us know if your ISP appears to be doing the same kinds of shady things that Comcast was slapped for today. These are going to be very big issues for the near-term future of the web.

Photo: Im in ur Internets by Jason Walton