September 10th, 2007
Phony choices in the net neutrality debate
George Ou’s long post on net neutrality — he uses the Bell spin “net stupidity” — is a great example of FUD.
This is not a complex debate. It’s not about government vs. “the market.” The idea that monopolists represent “the market” is one of the biggest lies ever told.
The debate is over control. The question is where will the Internet be controlled — at the center or at the edge?
Phone companies want central control, and they have lots of apologists. If the phone companies, who control the U.S. Internet today with an iron hand, can have centralized control, they can bill us all out the wazoo while not really improving anything. It’s like Microsoft taking control of computing via the operating system.
Here’s a clue for you. The Bush Administration supports the Bells in this. The Bush Justice Department supports the Bells in this, and wrote an unusual, marketing-like brief in support of it to the FCC.
Do you trust the Bush Justice Department? Do you trust AT&T? Or do you trust yourself?
On the other hand today’s stupid network – and that’s not really a pejorative — is controlled at the edge. Google is an edge, and your PC is an edge. Google defines what Google does, you define what you do. This leaves the network free to do what it does best — ship bits.
Yes, you become responsible for your own protection in a stupid network. Bad people at the edge can do bad things. But cops are also at the edge. Put cops at the center and you have tyranny.
Trouble is this network design is bad for the monopolists’ bottom lines. They don’t make much money from bits. They make more money off “services.” So they don’t want to sell you more bits. They want bits defined as services so they can get a rake-off on each one.
This is a debate more basic than even that over open source, because all the ideas behind open source arise from the way the Internet is designed.
The Internet works. Open source works. The monopolists want to control it instead, and run it the way they run cable and cellular, as proprietary systems where everything you do runs through their servers, where you must ask permission before you do anything, and where you are constantly being shaken-down.
Why can’t you get more bits? Because the phone companies don’t make money from just “bits.” They make money from “services” — phone services, cable services, wireless services. That’s how they want the Internet to work. They will hoard the bits until they get control of them.
Do you like that? Then you’re in George’s camp.
My camp says something different. My camp says break up the Bells, free the bits, open the spectrum to competition, and give the people control of the resource.
Don’t let the FUD-meisters convince you otherwise. Not in 1,000 words or 1 million. The question is whether you will run the Internet, or whether AT&T will.
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for 30 years, a tech freelancer since 1983. You can follow Dana on Twitter. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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| 09/14/07
