Onward
With the defeat of the Markey net neutrality amendment, and the passage out of the House Energy and Commerce Committee of the COPE bill [pdf], the action is moving to the Senate.
Sen. Stevens's (R-Alaska) comprehensive bill isn't public yet, but we do have a draft network neutrality amendment [pdf] being circulated by Sens. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) and Bryon Dorgan (D-N.D.)
It's becoming clear that a good thing that could happen this year on this front may be nothing. Even if the well-intentioned and well-drafted Snowe/Dorgan amendment is put in place, we won't necessarily have the unfettered internet that SaveTheInternet wants.
The amendment requires broadband providers “not to block, interfere with, discriminate against, impair, or degrade the ability of any person to use a broadband connection to access, use, send, post, receive, or offer any lawful content, application, or service made available via the Internet.”
That's good, yes. But the bill goes on. It provides that network providers:
(1) are allowed to offer “to users a broadband video service or other service that requires prioritization of content, applications or services,” (as long as those video services don't amount to bocking or interfering),
(2) are allowed to prioritize in a most favored nation sense (nonaffiliates get the same quality of service as affiliates),
(3) are allowed to discriminate based on “type of application,” and
(4) aren't required to provide symmetric transport up and down.
Under this amendment, we're still in a swamp of provider control that will be infinitely malleable in the providers' capable hands. What's a similar “type of application” (and who gets to decide this question)? What's a “broadband video service”– won't that be anything the provider prefers? What's “similar content,” access to which has got to be at the same speeds under the bill?
These are hard issues. It may not be possible to write a better “network neutrality” description that both takes the current provider structure as a given and tries to legislate an open network. I fully accept that the drafters of this amendment did the very best they could. I'm sure there will be many more attempts to write these concepts down.
But it would be simpler — given the concentrated market in broadband access that we're dealing with now — just to go back to required interconnection with competitive access providers.