I don’t know much about this. Here is a summation of what I understand the proposals and the relevant issues to be, then hopefully others can comment.
What Net Neutrality seems to be:
Net neutrality seems to be a proposal to make it illegal for ISPs to throttle or restrict users’ bandwidth to certain websites. It may also encompass restrictions/throttling for certain applications (like upstream bittorrent, or streaming video, &c.).
The fear is of a large ISP, like Verizon or Comcast, entering into an agreement with, say, Microsoft, to provide a new, cheaper, internet access package (presumably subsidized by Microsoft) that would allow customers to use Bing, but not Google, for search. One could also imagine “tiers” of internet access, where, for, say, $15/month, a customer would have access to perhaps 100 large websites like google, microsoft, cnn, nytimes, etc., and for $30/month, a customer could have access to more webpages, and for $60/month, to the whole internet. One could also imagine pricing schemes that allowed use of certain applications – perhaps for a little more money, a user would be allowed to use his upstream bandwidth to seed torrents, or would have unrestricted access to the ports used for battle.net, and so on.
I don’t think there’s a clear idea of how these behaviours ought to be curtailed. Some people seem to want the FCC to be ordered to issue regulations that would make these sorts of internet restrictions illegal. Others, presumably, would want a different (perhaps newly-created) agency to oversee the internet, or have certain internet restrictions prohibited by an Act of Congress.
Critiques (and counter-critiques):
1. Would this be so bad?
Advocates of net neutrality seem to envision a “net-partial” future as some sort of apocalyptic nightmare, but it may not be so bad. Cable TV companies already engage in similar behaviour; customers have to pay more to have access to certain channels – pricing is determined by agreements between content-providers and cable companies, and by competition (to the extent that there is any). No one has a problem with this as far as I can tell. Perhaps a particular customer prefers Bing to Google; why should he be unable to pay less for a customized internet package?
2. Would the market allow this?
The ISP space is considerably less fragmented than it was when most ISPs were small dial-up providers, but I don’t think there are many places where customers have no choice at all. Even if a single cable company dominates an area, usually there is DSL, or satellite internet available. If net-partial internet access is bad for consumers, it’s likely that they would switch to a provider that is net-neutral.
3. If this would make more money for ISPs, why hasn’t it happened?
The technology to monitor users’ internet access has existed for years, and large ISPs are sophisticated businesses that would be able to deal favorable with large websites. These companies are unlikely to have dismissed an idea like this out of hand. Do we really need prophylactic regulations where there seems to be no sign of disease?
4. Allowing that this is a problem, are regulations the way to deal with it?
The McCain internet bill (S.1836 – which does not seem to be available online yet) would prohibit the FCC from regulating the internet. The FCC has not had a great track record; it’s unlikely to get better w/r/t the internet. More generally, technology changes very quickly, but agencies are slow to change regulations. Regulations that are intended for cable internet may have unintended and negative consequences when applied to wifi, for example.
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I tend to agree with the critics, for most of the reasons I’ve listed. Most convincing to me is (1) – net-partial packages seem like they could be good products, and (3) – why haven’t we seen them yet?
I do worry a little about the potential for abuse, especially in markets where one large provider dominates. Google, for example, might be able to leverage its near-monopoly on search to squeeze out other search competitors – by offering kickbacks to ISPs that signed customers on to Google-only internet packages, it would make it near-impossible for other search engines to compete. It seems to me, though, that these situations can be handled on a case-by-case basis, rather than with blanket regulations.
