Explaining net neutrality
I've been working steadily for quite a while on a paper comparing the IP battles to the network neutrality battle. As we've all discovered, these are very hard issues. There aren't clear answers, although the social benefits of the neutral-substrate internet (like the social benefits of the public domain) seem to be ignored by the people claiming the need for protection of their property rights.
It's finally becoming clear to me that the social argument is the only real argument.
Yes, the “incentives” argument made by the network providers is strange, in ways that are similar to the strangenesses of the IP incentives arguments. (People build things without knowing they'll be paid back. Some of these broadband access points have already been built. Etc.) And the market power of the current network providers is important and seems to trigger a need for government involvement. The economic arguments are powerful as well — there are substantial positive externalities created by access to the internet that shouldn't be captured just by the access providers.
The key, though, is that neutrality (or unbundling, my preferred way of doing this) will be better for society as a whole. Awarding very strong property rights to the network providers, like awarding very strong property rights to content companies, won't be as beneficial to society as tempering those rights somewhat. We've done this in the IP context with things like fair use and “limited times” for copyright and patent protection. Indeed, the whole point of IP law is to encourage the creation of useful things for society; benefiting IP owners is a means towards that end.
Now we need to do this more directly with communications law. Tempering the property rights of the powerful broadband access providers will result in — overall — better results for society. The short history of the youthful internet has shown us what can happen when a substrate is essentially neutral.
Okay — fire away.
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3 Responses to “Explaining net neutrality”
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I don't know that property rights is all that important to the current debate over network regulations. One can easily believe that unbundling is a social good without insisting on flattening the service space inside the network.
Of course, “neutrality” has as many meanings are there are forms of influence, so I don't expect you people to be consistent in the way you define it, but the one I find most objectionable is this one. Have your fun with public financing, open access, unbundling and applying common carrier law in new ways and in novel venues, but when you dictate how network access providers have to manage flows that have different needs from the network, you've gone too far.
The issue is more critical because it impacts most harshly on the seed bed of economic growth; startups, company creation and entrepreneurs.
Small company creation is the biggest contributor of economic growth. Additional telecom fees impact small startups most, and will be a real growth killer for media and technology startups. Net neutrality has a direct impact on this most delicate and important part of society.
I was at a NORTEL roadshow last week on IMS. It looks like all carriers are going to adopt IMS into their core network, where the main feature is indeed the ability to have the network reach right into the application layer, and police the packets. More details: http://jules.squarespace.com/tech-whisperer/2006/5/9/ims-the-fruits-of-the-devil.html
cheers,
jules