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 true, the Father of the Internet, Vint Cerf may be reconsidering his views on net neutrality given his statement of three years ago that "a lightweight but enforceable neutrality rule is needed to ensure that the Internet continues to thrive."

Richard Bennett believes the plan would simply put Google on an equal footing with Akamai, who already has a footprint inside major ISP networks, and that network neutrality is nothing more than a myth.

"The Internet is not a network, it's a complex set of agreements to interconnect independently owned and operated networks in various ways. There is no standard agreement, and this story doesn't report on a new one. What it simply shows is that money buys performance in the technology space, and that should come as no surprise to anyone. Google has to do something like this to avoid being clobbered by ISP-friendly P4P as well as by Akamai.

Om Malik, who has contacted Google in an attempt to get more information, suggests that Google would essentially put the majority of its content closer to the service providers' infrastructure.

"It is not clear how this is different from the kind of deals Akamai has for its CDN network. Of course, Google could go for preferential arrangements that mimic the deals it has cut in the wireless arena with T-Mobile, which makes it easy to access Google services on its mobile phones."

While the WSJ article points out that cable and phone companies are supposed to treat all traffic the same, and what Google is doing risks net neutrality, it also describes how Microsoft and Yahoo have already forged partnerships with the phone and cable companies. So it appears that in this instance that it's okay for Microsoft and Yahoo to get involved with providers, but Google? Not so much.

Regardless, Google has always been a huge supporter of net neutrality. In a letter to the Committee on Energy and Commerce dated November 8, 2005, Vint Cerf writes:

"Enshrining a rule that broadly permits network operators to discriminate in favor of certain kinds of services and to potentially interfere with others would place broadband operators in control of online activity. Allowing broadband providers to segment their IP offerings and reserve huge amounts of bandwidth for their own services will not give consumers the broadband Internet our country and economy need."

More recently, at the San Fran Music Tech Summit in October this year, ReadWriteWeb spoke with Google Policy Analyst Derek Slater on net neutrality, copyright and other public policy issues (video below), and once again we heard Google reiterating the importance of net neutrality:

"I spoke about net neutrality today and that's been a fundamentally core issue for us. Google's story starts in the garage; starts with two people Larry Page and Sergey Brin being able to create a search engine without having to ask ISPs permission first. Being able to innovate and put that technology out there for millions of users. And that's the story for all sorts of startups - us eBay, YouTube, Wikipedia - all started from small beginnings and grew to large enterprises"

"Net neutrality is about: what are the principles that allow that sort of innovation to thrive? How do we protect that sort of free and open innovation as the Internet moves forward? And the worry is that parties who are not really gatekeepers before ISP's may take more of a gatekeeping role and create bottlenecks to innovation."

So, what do you think? Is Google creating bottlenecks to innovation itself or is this something Google must do as suggested by Richard Bennett?

An Interview with Google Policy Analyst Derek Slater from alex williams on Vimeo.

Update: In an attempt to clarify the WSJ story, Richard Whitt, Washington Telecom and Media Council, Google, wrote a blog post explaining Google's stance. You can read it here.