Network Neutrality

The blogosphere has been buzzing since last night, with all manner of “experts” offering opinions about the dispute between Comcast and Level 3 over their commercial arrangement for the exchange of Internet traffic.  While I am a bit hesitant to add to the ruckus, I think it is important to refute the misguided notion that this business dispute is really a “net neutrality” problem that can and should be solved by federal regulation.

Yesterday, the FCC voted 3-2 to approve a Notice of Inquiry to change the legal framework of Internet access by reclassifying it under Title II of the Communications Act.

The column below appeared today in The USA Today, as an opposing view to a USA Today editorial. Opposing view on ‘Net neutrality’: Providers back Web freedom By Kyle McSlarrow On Tuesday, a federal court struck down a Federal Communications Commission order enforcing a rule that the agency hadn’t ever actually adopted.

The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit today issued its opinion in Comcast v. FCC.  Below is the statement from NCTA President & CEO Kyle McSlarrow on the opinion: “The Court correctly ruled that a specific order by the previous FCC was wrong.  We cannot state strongly enough that this decision will change nothing about the cable industry’s longstanding commitment to provide consumers the best possible broadband experience.  Nor does the ruling alter the government’s current ability to protect consumers.  We continue to embrace a free and open Internet as the right policy and will continue to work with the Commission and other policymakers and stakeholders to find a sound way of preserving that goal.”

Today, NCTA President & CEO Kyle McSlarrow gave a speech at the Media Institute, the nonprofit research foundation specializing in communications policy issues. Fittingly, since the Institute is very focused on issues of freedom of speech, the address focused on “net neutrality” and the First Amendment.

NCTA’s Executive Vice President, James Assey, will be participating tonight in an Oxford-style debate on net neutrality, presented by Tech Debate as part of Web 2.0 Expo New York.

More than a year ago, I put up a post expressing my pleasure about how the “net neutrality” discussion had evolved over time. Specifically, I focused on the comments of Vint Cerf between 2006 and 2008, when he seemed to move from arguing that the Internet must be “open and neutral,” to saying that “the real question… is not whether [broadband networks] need to be managed, but rather how.” My thoughts on the argument were confirmed for me by a panel at CES this past January, entitled “The Internet – How Do We Keep The Road Open.” If you read this account, you’ll note agreement among the panelists that managing networks is important, but so is transparency.

Yesterday, during a speech at the Brookings Institute, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski proposed new rules that would affect Internet access providers. Saying the FCC must be a "smart cop on the beat preserving a free and open Internet," FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski Monday proposed adding two new Internet access principles to the existing four, and will begin the process of codifying all of them with a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking at the FCC’s October meeting.

Earlier this week, Google’s Chief Internet Evangelist Vint Cerf said something that brightened my day. …the real question for today’s broadband networks is not whether they need to be managed, but rather how.

Coverage of today’s meeting and some reaction to the decision… Richard Bennet of Broadband Politics: A sad day for the Internet Randolph J. May of the Free State Foundation: Hard Cases Make Bad Law: On Regulatory Bits and Torrents–Part II Barbara Esbin of The Progress & Freedom Foundation: Legally and Procedurally Suspect and Misguided as a Matter of Policy Scott Cleland of The Precursor Blog: Takeaways from FCC Decision on Reasonable Network Management Cynthia Brumfield at IP Democracy: FCC’s Copps: Apply Net Neutrality Principles to Wireless Carriers Stacey Higginbotham at GigaOM: FCC Punts on Network Neutrality Matthew Lasar at Ars Technica: Reactions to FCC’s Comcast decision come fast and furious Drew Clark at Broadband Census: FCC Hammers Comcast For Deception and Unreasonable Internet Practices UPDATE: Will Richmond at VideoNuze: The FCC’s Comcast Sanction: More Problems, Fewer Solutions Ahead

During an Opening Meeting this morning, the FCC issued an adjudication in the matter of “Formal Complaint of Free Press and Public Knowledge Against Comcast Corporation for Secretly Degrading Peer-to-Peer Applications.” The FCC said that Comcast’s “degrading” of certain Internet content was in violation of “federal policies” and were against the policy of reasonable network management.

This Friday, the FCC will hold an Open Meeting and the first agenda item is the complaint by Free Press and Public Knowledge against Comcast. According to an article in the Wall Street Journal today, the agency “will rule that the cable giant violated federal policy by deliberately preventing some customers from sharing videos online via file-sharing services like BitTorrent…” As I wrote just last week, it’s critical that we can all agree with the principle that “some kind of network management is necessary to ensure a quality experience for our customers.” Once we get past that concept, we can discuss and debate what’s the best way to achieve the goal of a quality Internet experience, but we can hopefully also agree that the government is not the best body to make these decisions.

You may recall last week’s discussion of network management, provoked by our FCC filing. Michael Willner also posted about this issue, which then garnered some interesting comments from the likes of George Ou and Robb Topolski.

There’s a very amusing picture painted of NCTA on Ars Technica, literally Shakespearean in nature. “Once more unto the breach, dear friends, once more,” cried William Shakespeare’s Henry V in the play so titled.

The handwringing about broadband adoption in the US continues unabated with yet another group calling for either some sort of government intervention or some form of nationalization (though Vint Cerf now claims he was joking – mostly).