Distantly Yours: Web Design and Photos in Bloomington, IN, by Dan Hiester

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I’ve been hearing a lot lately about how “Network Neutrality”—the idea that the Internet is a truly free and unrestricted marketplace of ideas—is imminently under assault by a bill in Congress that practically hands the Internet over to big cable and telephone companies like AT&T and Verizon Wireless. Supposedly, the new bill allows for broadband providers to establish a system of “tiered access,” meaning content providers who want their message to be available to a broader audience would have to pay extra fees to the big cable and telephone companies.

The Alleged Threat

Supposdely, this legislation could completely destroy the Internet as a marketplace of ideas. Non-profit organizations—ranging from liberal political action committees to faith-based organizations and even not-for-profit open-source software projects will be stuck on “the slow lane of the information superhighway.”

It’s such a big deal, the Christian Coalition agreeswith Moveon.org that network neutrality must be preserved. They’re even trying to raise money to print a full page ad in the New York Times.

Here’s What Cracks Me Up About This Idea…

Content providers (like me, for example) already have tiered access to the public audience. It’s called buying a bigger pipe. I pay roughly five dollars a month, and for that, a few hundred people can read my blog. My guess is, less than ten actually do it. But hey, I share an OC-3 pipe with a handful of other clients. If I suddenly become popular with a few thousand readers, I can upgrade to buy my own OC-3 pipe. That’s the beauty of the free market.

If the hype I’m hearing from liberal political advocates is true, then big cable and telephone companies are trying to cash in on artbitrary fees on Internet connectivity. The size of my webhost’s pipe won’t matter any more. Instead, I’d have to pay fees to each major Internet Service Provider if I wanted to be accessible to a broader audience. These fees have nothing to do with resources that are actually available, making them a blatant violation of free market economics.

Which rocks, seeing as free market economics are often touted by Republicans, who are this bill’s biggest supporters.

Here’s What’s Just Plain Wrong About It….

In the past, if someone wanted to distribute a big file on the Internet, they’d pay a company with a big server farm like Akamai to host it for them. Today, we have Bittorrent, which is a fundamentally democratic way of distributing files online.

For example, when I downloaded the CD image of the new version of Ubuntu Linux today via bittorrent, I received the file from a few sources, while sending the same file to a few other computers. When I download from a number of computers connected to a smaller pipe—like a cable modem at home, for example—I can often download the file a lot faster than I could from one server connected to a very big pipe. The more people download a file via bittorrent, the more people are uploading that same file to someone else’s computer—meaning, as a big file becomes more popular, a user can download it faster.

As far as I can figure, “Tiered Internet access” seems to be an attempt to thwart the fundamentally democratic nature of things like bittorrent. I admit that I could be wrong—I might be overreacting to the liberal rhetoric I hear from political action committees like Moveon.org. But, basically, my understanding of the issue is that “tiered Internet accessibility” would increase the disparity of network access between wealthy corporations and the not-so-wealthy common man, only for some extra profit.

Even More Frustrating Findings

I’ve tried to disclaim much of what I’ve said so far by attributing it to other sources. I admit they have a political bias. But there was one statistic I found in my research that was stunning: “On a per megabit basis, U.S. consumers pay 10 to 25 times more than broadband users in Japan” (according to this page).

Now, that’s pretty considerable. It makes me wonder how one of America’s biggest cable Internet providers, Adelphia, could afford to exist after its CEO was indicted for a multi-billion dollar fraud.

I’m Open for Discussion

There is a comments box beneath this article. This is much more political than I usually write about here, but I felt it was relevent to this site, and important enough to write about. However, I’d be a hypocrite if I did not welcome some open conversation on the issue. What to you think?