• Blocking: In 2005, an Internet Service Provider (ISP, a company that provides internet service to the end consumers) that also provides phone services blocked rival internet-based phone services (such as Vonage) in order to increase its business in the telephone sector. Another ISP secretly blocked access to a popular but particularly network-draining application. Blocking might also be used to collect fees from the websites themselves for every time their users access them.

• Acceptable network management: An example of nonabusive discrimination (for the purposes of a counterexample) is when ISPs give special priority to traffic related to streaming video/audio over standard web browsing. This will enhance the users' experience, since a text website that loads slightly slower is not nearly as much of a nuisance as a movie that is starting and stopping constantly. This can also often be relatively nonabusive, since (a) its sole purpose is network design and management rather than profit, and (b) the balance of the internet has not shifted in any meaningful way.

The Value of a "Neutral" Internet

• Thanks for the prompt comment, professor. Just a quick question--is the problem here just about the way I describe the "current" state of affairs? I stated that "certain types of discriminatory network management may in fact be beneficial, but focus my essay on the potential harms." I use "neutrality" and "net neutrality" loosely in my essay to encompass beneficial and neutral discrimination. Yes, this is a distinction that I admit is misleading and erroneously so, and I'm happy to clarify that in another rewrite. However, I'm confused as to whether there is a deeper flaw going on here. I don't think my paper hinges on neutrality at all; its main point is that there is the potential for social harm in abusive discrimination by ISPs. Please let me know so that I can rewrite appropriately.

• But Steven, you can't misinform the reader, or your piece has no credibility. This "must treat every packet and person equally" position is technical nonsense. Not only doesn't the network operate this way, it can't operate this way. The problem with the "network neutrality" concept is that no sensible person who understands how networks are managed could possibly agree with a description based on it, so it's not a basis for the formulation of policy, just a slogan. To take this supposed principle of non-discrimination and stack it up with a rhetorically similar process of "social equalization" produced by the Net is to join a valuable social objective to a technologically illiterate premise. This is not improvement.

• As I said, the real problem for real-world policymakers is that packet and endpoint discrimination is a required element of network operation. Even within my own home network I need to use traffic shaping, for example, so that a VoIP phone call's packets always have priority over HTTP traffic instigated by a browser. My personal browser should also get better service than one running on my neighbor's computer, if my neighbor is borrowing my bandwidth through my open wireless node. Even more complex is the fact that my VoIP call may be encrypted inside an OpenVPN packet stream using UDP rather than TCP. And that's just my little home network: what Verizon or Sprint is doing to run their networks is many orders of magnitude more complex.

• So regulators of the current, badly-designed capitalist network infrastructure confront the need to distinguish between reasonable and unreasonable discrimination in network operation, which is not well-modeled by foolish talk about neutrality.

Net Neutrality and Social Equality

Net Neutrality

• Blocking: In 2005, an Internet Service Provider (ISP) that also provides phone services blocked rival internet-based phone services (such as Vonage) in order to increase its business in the telephone sector. Another ISP secretly blocked access to a popular but particularly network-draining application. Blocking might also be used to collect fees from the websites themselves for every time their users access them.
• Slow lanes: Another oft-discussed method of discrimination is fast lanes, which involves giving users faster access to certain content (e.g. those that pay an extra fee or those that are owned by the ISP) and thus slower access to the rest.

The Value of a Neutral Internet

Consumer Power

Lower Prices

Social Equalization

On a social level, the playing field has arguably been leveled quite a bit by the internet. A clear example is the ease of well-coordinated internet-based grassroots campaigns, such as that during Obama's 2008 campaign for presidency. Even news is no longer completely controlled by the main outlet, as the influence of bloggers has risen over the years. Previously impeded by a lack of coordination and information, the public can now be more politically and socially active than ever before.

The Threat

People are no longer as isolated and thus vulnerable to the power of larger bodies such as government and large incumbent corporations due to the internet.

However, from the viewpoint of the ISPs, network discrimination would be most profitable if it favored those larger bodies--they are more organized, wealthy, and powerful than the individual consumers. This is shown by the above examples of discrimination in recent memory, where the discriminatory methods were used to make the internet look and feel less like the internet and more like traditional incumbent-controlled industries. In fact, this is the very reason that those traditional industries look the way they do.

Technology's effect on society can vary vastly based on its particular uses--the same technology that might aid and support the lower classes might also be employed to keep them down. The internet and its uses today are far from perfect in this regard, but its overall effect is still positive. Currently, private interests only have undue influence due to their familiarity and popularity, as any third party can still compete at least in terms of access and network infrastructure. However, this may change even without our knowing, with private interests actually using their control over network infrastructure to disrupt the social effects of the internet.

-- StevenHwang - 17 Feb 2009

Thanks for the comment--I did not realize we were supposed to be checking the wiki still, so I didn't get it till today.

My paper (r2) was meant to be half-commercial and half-philosophical argument, based largely on Gerald Cohen's "Rescuing Justice and Equality" (2008) (i.e. social justice requires the consideration of a hypothetical first-person discussion between the oppressed and the oppressors--otherwise defensible positions based on arguments in the abstract may not hold water in such conversations, and thus fail to be considered truly just). It's a tough point to make in a single parenthetical, but my essay was an attempt to take it to an extreme and somewhat absurd level (said anthropomorphism and pseudo-autobiography) while retaining the general point--that there really isn't a just way to defend a system of competitive network management, as you put it. I had also hoped to add a touch of personality and humor (via the tone and the links). I had this all laid out in an introduction in the original 5k-word draft.

The illustration was a forced after-thought and clearly it came off as such.

Anyways clearly it failed in its delivery, so I'll rewrite based on your comment. I'm not 100% sure about how to hash out an oversimplification (net neutrality) while making it less complex and easier to digest, but I will do my best. The former part of your comment (simplifying the problem, making it easier to digest) might be more the focus of my revision than the later (inability of the concept to grasp even a significant part of the real problem). In my opinion, oversimplified and intellectually irresponsible is better than not understood and obscure--at least for my purposes. I'll give it a shot sometime today.

-- StevenHwang - 08 Feb 2009

• Here's an example of a genre in which 1,000 words is much too long. You can't make a commercial for something as complex as "net neutrality" (itself a completely intellectually irresponsible oversimplification of the concept of cooperative rather than competitive network infrastructure management) in 1,000 words, because readers need you to give them the whole message in a unit they can remember and reuse. The illustrations only make things worse, by adding various emotional responses to the understanding you hoped to create (although the cartoon on its own does a better job than your essay with the cartoon as illustration). If you want to make this work, you have to remove all thr anthropomorphism and pseudo-autobiography, and find a brief, punchy, absolutely clear way to convey the idea. Then you have to confront the analytical fact your advertisement necessarily glosses over: that the "network neutrality" way of conceiving the problem is a total load of horseshit deliberately invented by its enemies and taken up by advocates of freedom too stupid to know better.

To the finder of this note:

I desperately need your help.

Sending out an SOS…

To the finder of this note:

I desperately need your help.

First, let me tell you a little bit about myself. I’m only 25, but I’ve already done a lot. I’ve helped businesses grow out of nothing and politicians run grassroots campaigns. I tutor kids in all subjects and help students with their research. I can even teach people new skills and languages to help better themselves. I try to give everyone--from lonely people with too much time to budding artists--a voice so that they can speak out to the world. I often give a hand to the little people, whether it’s protecting consumers or helping struggling families or finding ways to help save money during hard times. And beyond that, I help people help each other, even if they’re complete strangers. Speaking of strangers, I’ve been known to play matchmaker as well. Maybe I’ve even helped you out every now and then with something you’ve needed.

Not to say that I’m always doing good things—truth is, I don’t really have a moral compass. I have taken pornography and gambling to a new level, and have helped disgruntled individuals make bombs. I’ve even created new genres of crime and copyright infringement, and have turned procrastination into a hobby for millions of workers and students. Perhaps you could call me an equal-opportunity kind of guy.

But that’s what people seem to like about me. While my peers discriminate and make decisions on who and what they’ll serve, I’ll happily whore myself out to just about anyone that has a computer. Without any decisions, there’s no one controlling anyone, which means everyone with an idea has an opportunity with me. Some say it’s something about democratic ideals or something like that, others call it free speech, and I’ve even been called an equalizer of sorts. And while I love the compliments, the truth is that I can’t help myself—it’s just how I am.

I realize that I might sound pretty damn cocky right about now, but I’m just trying to get you to see that maybe I’m worth helping out. And I know I don’t sound like I’m in all too desperate a situation, and the truth is that up to this point, I’ve been pretty unstoppable because I’m mostly just out there on my own. Nothing controls me. Well, almost nothing.

You see, I actually depend on a lot of people. As much as I like thinking of myself as somewhat omniscient and omnipotent, I’m not actually omnipresent—all those people that I’ve interacted with needed a way to get to me, and I’ve needed a way to get to them. Perhaps you could say that my bat-phone needs to be run by somebody that can connect it to my callers. But how can I help everyone if someone else is screening my calls?

And that’s what I’m afraid might happen to me, and that’s why I’m begging you for your help. Now this might get a little complicated, but I promise that there really is a serious issue here that is worth your time to read. My connections to the world control my direct line to each of the billions of people that I talk to every day. And every day I hear them talking about different ways to take away everything that I think is interesting and useful about me. It starts out with perhaps legitimate concerns—maybe there are certain applications or users that are disproportionately using the connections so much that it starts to hurt others. Now don’t get me wrong, I think that is a tough situation, as we want everyone to have as fair access to me as possible. But the solutions they’re talking about—blocking, fast lanes, and other controls—amount to a move toward making decisions about who should get fast access or access at all.

Like I said, this is complicated and I’ve probably already lost you. Let me give you an old-fashioned hypothetical of the danger of their solutions. Take for example my older brother, the power grid. He’s not picky, he’ll give electricity to anything with two prongs that fits in a socket. And over the past century, people have come up with a lot of cool devices to plug into him—heck, I probably wouldn’t even exist if that wasn’t the case. But now imagine if they did the same thing with him that they want to do to me. Then you’ve got someone deciding what kinds of things we can plug in, and what kind of things we can’t. And they’re saying they’re going to choose based on who can pay up. So now the big incumbent manufacturers would be the only ones that could make anything electrical, since they’re the only ones that could really pay up. Maybe the others—the new guys, the little guys—might be allowed to make low-power devices or something like that, if they haven’t been blocked completely or if their business models and funding haven’t failed yet.

And if that’s not enough, just listen to the justification for such control. They’re already charging the user for the amount of power they’re using for those appliances. However, they’re saying that since the makers of those appliances are also “using” the connections, they should pay as well.

It’s important that I be fast, but even more important that I be free. The problem is that most people don’t understand the kind of danger I’m in. And they have their people in power arguing to put me in chains and take away my entrepreneurial spirit. I've got people on my side too--others like you--who maybe know somewhere deep down that I’m worth protecting. And maybe you could convince other people as well and together we can make some change. Our future really depends on it.

Signed, Your friendly neighborhood series of tubes

-- StevenHwang - 08 Dec 2008

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