The Story
The Washington Post has an editorial online about how the FCC’s recent decision to codify net neutrality is unnecessary. The reasoning for this is two-fold. First, the FCC will require internet service providers to be transparant about their policies, meaning that if Time Warner Cable wants to throttle something, they have to make that public if they don’t want to incur a penalty.
The second reason behind the claim that net neutrality doesn’t have to codified is that it’s a non-issue. The author says that the only time that an ISP has really done anything against net neutrality was when Comcast throttled traffic, and the author says that this was resolved when an enterprising blogger brought Comcast’s behavior to light.
Rebuttal
To start, I’m pretty sure the editorial is incorrect about Comcast: the FCC’s involvement is what ended Comcast’s throttling of torrent traffic. Comcast is still appealing the ruling right now.
Aside from just thumbing my noise at whoever wrote the editorial, I want to make the point that ISPs if given the option can and will throttle traffic. Quite simply, it is in their economic interest to do so: it costs less to operate a network – if people are paying to use a network but not doing so, you don’t have to pay maintenance costs, and that’s just a start. When it’s in the best interest of an entire business (in this case, the ISPs) to hurt their customers, then the government can and should do something to prevent that from happening.
One could say “but Michael, regulating the ISPs in this way is treating them as if they are utilities such that you’re locked into a very limited selection of companies based on the enclave in which you with.” To which I would reply “Damn right!” You might be able to pay a bit more for some crappy satellite-based broadband connection but more often than not, there are only two or three broadband options within any region in the United States. As such, the business should be regulated because the business does not allow the free market to run its course.
Why should we assume that just adding a provision saying that providers have to be up front with their network management is good enough? So what if Comcast has to tell me when they’re making the service I’m paying for less valuable? They can tell me and then it’s OK for them to do whatever they want? That thinking puts more faith in the kindness of big business than really makes sense.
