Policy Wonk Castigates Net Neutrality

An anonymous reader writes "Tom Giovanetti, president of the Dallas, Texas based public policy think tank Institute for Policy Innovation envisions a chaotic world as a result of Net Neutrality. He says a flood of undiscriminated traffic to and from Youtube, Coldplay, and Victoria's Secret will bring down the Internet, leading to failures of IPTV, VOIP, and emergency services which depend on VOIP. Is he right or wrong?." From the article: "... government should be about fostering a dynamic and risk-taking economy, not preserving the certainty of anyone's business models. Net neutrality regulations would severely restrict broadband providers' right to enter into contracts and to try new business models while protecting the business models of Google and Ebay." Compare this with George Ou's commentary on this subject from yesterday.

Justifiable Reasoning

[duerra (684053)]

I think Tom Giovanetti's reasoning is very justifiable. Often times as humans we are quick to criticize, and very hypocrytical. We should ask ourselves how often we complain about the government regulating this or that and trying to solve problems that don't exist, while at the same time cheer on legislation that would have demanded things such as net neutrality. Now, I'm not saying that there aren't valid reasons for either or both, but it's a rhetorical question that I think we should all be asking ourselves.

Anyway, this is one of the reasons why I'd love to see the government set up a site for everybody to go to, where they can see each of their legislator's votes on issues, as well as a quick comment on the reasoning for voting that way (or longer per the legislator's desire), and put this out there in a very accessible location, and make this a manditory part of the legislative process. The site could be organized in a way such that citizens could easily see the reasoning behind other legislator's votes as well, so that counterpoints are clear to citizens.

This would all help us be better informed and make good decisions, as well as help the government keep itself in check ("I voted no on this legislation because it contains 'xxxxx' add-on legislation that I don't agree with"). Debates would always be there and available to citizens in a way that they can do it at their convenience, and don't have to try and dig up all this information themselves. Essentially, this idea would function a similar purpose as that of a judicial decision opinion (clarifying the decision). We don't need big media to give us all our info anymore. We can get it right from the source. The internet is a very powerful thing. LEVERAGE IT!

Anyway, I know that rant was slightly off topic, but I felt it to be relevant since originally my opinion was leaning towards enacting net neutrality legislation, but I still had my doubts, and this reasoning has made me think that maybe it's just better to wait and see what happens before we get too hasty to legislate, though I still do think that publically funded infrastructure should still be publically owned and unhindered.

Re:Justifiable Reasoning

[Russ Nelson (33911)]

maybe it's just better to wait and see what happens

No. See my letter to my congresscritter [russnelson.com].

Re:Justifiable Reasoning

[CDarklock (869868)]

Hi Russ... I read you regularly, even though we don't always agree.

On this, we do. Right now, the commercial internet works because I pay someone to connect me to the internet and give me a certain amount of bandwidth. I do this for my connection at home, because I want bandwidth to get what I ask to see. I do this for my server at a data center, because I want bandwidth to get to people that ask to see me.

When I use bandwidth to my own server, like when I get my email, I pay twice for that bandwidth. I pay for sending the email from my server, and I pay for receiving the email at my desktop. And that's fine. It makes perfect sense to me.

What isn't fine is that now someone in the middle is saying that I should have to pay them extra so I can use the bandwidth I'm already paying to have. They seem to be of the opinion that I need to pay THREE people for the bandwidth I use. I understand that there are two ends to the connection, so I need to pay people on both sides. But this third charge is someone in the middle. How many "third" charges *are* there? How many networks does my data traverse on the way from point A to point B? Can they all charge me? When? If I go from network A to network B and then back to network A, do I have to pay network A twice?

This is a big-ass can of worms. We need to keep it well and truly sealed.

Trajedy of the commons

[goombah99 (560566)]

We need to ask ourselves if this is a tragedy of the commons or a case where uniform access decreases costs or provides more public-goods. I don't know which it really is.

The tragedy of the commons is what happens when a resource is provided that lacks a proper mariginal cost for increased use. The classic example is private property versus unrstricted access to public grazing land. By charging a small price for admission per sheep to the land or by making it private, the incentive to overgraze it is removed and the total amount of meat sustainbly raise actually is higher. In this case if it's case where there is simply not enough baqndwith for everyone to do voip, and I don't pay any extra to do VOIP, then it's going to be over grazed and everyone gets a crappy connection. On the otherhand if the connection cost already is sufficient to expand the network to handle all the users that want voip or if we can prevent this from becomeing a power law network with critical links then it may be that the more users the better some sort of p2p works.

Thus another way of looking is this is that the thing we need to fear is too few corporation controlliing the internet and resulting in bottlenecks on backbones. In the long run to get high bandwidth we will need p2p that does not traverse a central backbone.

Assuming that the p2p scaling effect will not be sufficient and the tragedy of the commons wil happen then the way out is to have a pricing schedule. We can put that schedule on the users or on the content providers. the latter is what the backbone owners want since it means no net neutrality and control. The former would be better but I can imagine the cheap ass slashdotters used to paying a tiny sum for all-they-can eat internet won't like it.

Re:Trajedy of the commons

[ShieldW0lf (601553)]

This is all bullshit.

The costs involved in telecommunications are in the laying of infrastructure. The cost to operate it after it is built is insignificant by comparison. Furthermore, the cost to operate it doesn't decrease appreciably with less users. You still need to run the lines regardless. It's not like when half the people turn their connections off they get to turn off half the lines and save electricity.

And this nightmare scenario, where too many people downloading a hot wardrobe malfunction cause the rest of the internet to stop, that has NEVER HAPPENED. The fact of the matter is that all this chaos exists because it has been demonstrated to be the most reliable means of running telecommunications in the public sector ever created. He talks about how all these essential services are moving online. They're not moving online because it's the cool thing to do and all the firefighters and EMS workers want to be hip. They're doing it because it's MORE reliable than the pre-existing ivory tower administered systems that predate it.

The reason why it's more reliable is because it is NOT STRATEGIC. It is TACTICAL. Highly structured systems where you say "we need to do it precisely this way and everything will work" rely on perfect information and perfect judgement, which do not exist. Chaotic systems like the internet work better because they say "we're not capable of making all these determinations and decisions on how the system should work, so we're going to lay down a set of tactics that will allow individual components to react co-operatively and intelligently to problems".

It's like the difference between a good boss, who recognizes the strength your individuality brings to the table and attempts to make it useful, and a bad manager, who tries to micromanage you and just ends up making you (and the entire system) less effective.

The internet, in it's chaotic form, is a SMART internet. Every node has the capacity to make tactical decisions, and thus react to problems that no other node even recognizes exists. Tiering, rather than attempting to progress this powerful idea, is a fundamental rejection and dismissal of that intelligence and the value it brings to the table.

I'll cap my little rant by mentioning that this whole thing about the internet being a resource in short supply is a ridiculous joke. Capacity has been growing faster than usage for a long time now, and we're at the point where free wireless mesh networks can be set up for next to nothing. Small cities with limited budgets and technical resources have demonstrated that they have the capacity to do this with no help all from any existing carrier. We could, with minimal investment in infrastucture, set up wireless networks of sufficient speed that they could assume all the burdens off the wired net for all in-city traffic, and with an intelligent caching system, it could assume a lot of the burden for inter-city traffic too. So for negligible investment (compared to laying fibre) we could practically unburden the entire existing internets physical infrastructure and use it for some new purpose without losing any of the communications we currently enjoy.

In a nutshell, the mans position is either utterly ignorant foolishness or a blatant lie intended to manipulate the people who are exposed to his bullshit, to the detriment of us all. Having seen how very warped the views of people who are isolated from reality with other intellectuals can become, I'm not quite cynical enough to say with any confidence which one it is.

You're Right But You're Still Wrong

[Alaren (682568)]

I think Tom Giovanetti's reasoning is very justifiable. Often times as humans we are quick to criticize, and very hypocrytical. We should ask ourselves how often we complain about the government regulating this or that and trying to solve problems that don't exist, while at the same time cheer on legislation that would have demanded things such as net neutrality.

Actually, his article is very well-reasoned, for someone who clearly doesn't understand the issue. Prioritizing VOIP or TV over torrents and whatnot is a QOS issue. It is important that we keep in mind the "law of unintended consequences" and not make it a crime to do something that actually improves the cultural and technological status quo (OT: like filesharing...)

The thing about government regulation is that the "right way to go" often depends on the current balance of power. This guy is absolutely right to note that Amazon and Google are supporting Net Neutrality for ultimately selfish reasons. But if the enemy of my enemy is my friend, then for the moment at least I'm going to agree with their position if not their motives. What he is proposing is that in a free-market system, regulation would be unnecessary because market forces would naturally correct any problems. Quality of Service could be addressed by the invisible hand and all would be well.

Which is a beautiful analogy, if telecommunications existed in a free market! It doesn't. Depending on where you live, you either have state sponsored or de facto monopolies, you have regulatory influences regarding the usage of your lines, in some cases you are even forbidden by state law to band together as a community and create alternatives to your telecommunications providers.

Net Neutrality needs to be carefully managed to avoid the scenario he describes, but frankly, I think he's worrying about the wrong extreme. It is far more likely that QOS "fees" will turn into extortion rackets than that a network which must remain impartial will fall apart. It's true, if all you think the information age should bring us is more one-way delivery of quality corporat-state-approved entertainment, if you don't mind concentrating power among the wealthy elite and directing the energies of our age to maintaining the status quo, the Net Neutrality is a very bad thing.

But frankly I'd rather have spotty TV and unreliable phone service if it that is what it takes to ensure that I have as much chance as the next person to have my voice heard.

Re:Justifiable Reasoning

[rolfwind (528248)]

I think all the reasoning against net neutrality doesn't recognize the fact that I, joe consumer, paid to surf the internet. The ISPs can say they'll favor certain corporations, but that's not what I paid for. They are trying to sell a resource, already paid for by me, at the other end. That's double dipping and should be illegal.

Besides, the article is illogical. The very entities like Google CAN pay corps the extortion fee to be in favored status. It's the smaller guys that get fucked. Tom Giovanetti can pretend that this will threaten Google's/Microsoft'sMSN/OtherGenericBigBadGuy business model. And then there is the real world.

Re:Justifiable Reasoning

[BasilBrush (643681)]

The free market has been enormously enabled by net neutrality of the past decade. For a relatively small investment, individuals and companies have access to the world as a market, with the winners according to merit. Discrimination by different type and participants in network traffic will only result in more power to the people who already have power, and less power to those that don't, regardless of merit. That may be capitalism, with elements of monopoly in places... but it's certainly further away from the free market than where we are now.

What else is new?

[Guysmiley777 (880063)]

Corporate shill says private companies should be allowed to control the internet. Film at 11.

Re:What else is new?

[Bimo_Dude (178966)]

Shill, indeed.

If you use this [sourcewatch.org] as a starting point, you'll find that one of this institute's corporate contributors is Exxon-Mobile. I wouldn't be surprised if companies auch as AT&T are also paying this guy.

FTS:

He says a flood of undiscriminated traffic to and from Youtube, Coldplay, and Victoria's Secret will bring down the Internet

The fact is, the traffic on the net is already that way, and I don't see the Internet going down. This guy is full of shit.

Multiple observations:

[plasmacutter (901737)]

First off.. they have been saying one thing or another would "overload the internet" for ages and it has yet to happen.

second. i want to know what his stance on music downloading is given this quote:

"government should be about fostering a dynamic and risk-taking economy, not preserving the certainty of anyone's business models."

if he's against "online piracy" than he is a hyppocrite.

hrmm...

[Dance_Dance_Karnov (793804)]

Maybe they should think about taking "Life and Death" stuff off the internet, a back-hoe could take out a large part of the net for a day or two. If emergency reponse people are relying on vonage or skype for critical communications, that is a serrious problem.

MY HEAD ACHES NOW

[unity100 (970058)]

Over a day and a half of fury about how the internet is being sold by the u.s. house to the big bucks, my head now aches.

I f.ckin do not believe how you, u.s. people can ALLOW for such debate to even take place, such s.hit rule the agenda, and do not blow your congressmen's senator's ears off about the matter.

The biggest revolution, since the french revolution, the internet, is being handed over to the minority elite.

This is our 'thing'. This is the 'thing' of our times. This is one of the most important thing in our times.

My head really aches, and im weary.

If...

[Anne Thwacks (531696)]

If an emergency service depends on VoIP, someone needs to be sacked NOW! Dont wait for the service to fail ... failure is certain.

specious argument

[Eric Smith (4379)]

The internet today is mostly neutral, and people accesing Victoria's Secret haven't brought it down.

The telephone system is neutral, but some telephone numbers are clearly more popular than others. Yet this hasn't brought down the phone system.

The reality is that the engineering of the network (including capacity planning and expansion) is done precisely on the basis of traffic flows. There is also congestion control. The internet is not like the public highway system, where capacity problems take years and hundreds of millions of dollars to solve.

Even if a zillion people did all try to get to the Victoria's Secret web site all at once, that would probably not affect my ability to access my email or read CNN's web site.
 

TCP backs off; UDP does not

[Russ Nelson (33911)]

VOIP uses UDP. When you get network congestion, you simply get packets dropped and your -oice get- littl- ch-ppy. TCP stacks will send fewer packets per second when packets get dropped.

Ignoramuses keep bringing this issue up as if it's going to KILL THE INTERNET, so we MUST CHANGE INTERNET POLICY. They tried this back in the early 90's when IBM was running the T-1 Internet backbone through some subsidiary. What didn't work back then still won't work today. For an arbitrary packet on the Internet, you cannot tell in which direction the value is flowing; thus you cannot figure out who to charge.

I agree...

[wfberg (24378)]

Suchs laws would severely impact the contracts broadband companies can enter into.

That's the entire point.

They've been handed full or near monopolies on data communications, and with monopoly comes restriction.

Because they already have, already are, and will continue to screw over the consumer.

Heck, even companies that do not have monopolies have huge restrictions on screwing over their customers when it comes to conflicts of interest. For example; some investment banker isn't allowed to tell you how great company X is, if a different unit of his bank happens to be seriving company X's IPO. That's really just plain common sense.

Net non-neutrality is very simple, basic, econ 101 vertical monopoly. Nothing at all suspect about wanting to curb it. Yes, it happens to benefit other companies. In fact, making sur the vertical playing ground is even benefits the entire economy, and not just broadband companies rights to enter into contracts.

WRONG

[Kagato (116051)]

Basically, the premise of the tiered system is that companies like your tube, google, etc don't pay for all the bandwidth they consume. NPR's Market Place had a horrible story on last night claiming that with out extra cash from these large web sites, they can't expand bandwidth.

It's the dumbest argument ever. 1) Companies that large connect directly to top tier providers. These companies are paying hundreds of thousandsands of dollars to the top 10 internet back bone providers for fat pipes into the internet. 2) We have tons of dark fiber still running across the US. Companies liek Qwest invested millions upon millions of dollars in infrastructure for customers who still don't exist.

We don't have a bandwidth problem. We have a problem with a congress that doesn't understand infrastructure.

BTW: Here's the list of house member who voted NO the ammendment:
http://clerk.house.gov/evs/2006/roll239.xml [house.gov]

Policy wonk?

[i_want_you_to_throw_ (559379)]

This "think tank" was founded by Republican Dick Armey in 1987 [sourcewatch.org].
As usual, you just need to follow the money in these matters and this is very revealing. The last year that records were kept regarding Dick Armey's contributions you'll see that his top contributor was Allegiance Telecom. Other notables in the "Dick Armey" include National Cable & Telecommunications Assn, Verizon, BellSouth and SBC. It's all here at open secrets. [opensecrets.org]

Politicians remain lapdogs to their masters even after leaving the Hill

Monopolies and Regulation

[logicnazi (169418)]

Yes, if we were in a situation where individual customers could vote with their feet on net neutrality this anslysis would have a point. There would be less government regulation and the market could sort out whether people value net neutrality.

However, there is little to no effective competition in the internet access market. Sure there is a bit of competition between the cable and phone companies and electric companies always claim to be just about to deploy broadband over powerlines but these providers control the lines and can make life very difficult for any other DSL providers. Besides even if your broadband provider believes in net neutrality it isn't clear you don't still suffer from privleges granted by an upstream carrier. In short their is no easy way for competition to exercisce its judgement that net neutrality is worth paying for (and with enough money surely people could expand their pipes).

I mean just imagine if the local phone company announced it was going to charge you double if you called any buisness that didn't join its prefered buisness program (i.e. paid it money). This would be extortion and phone regulations rightly prohibit it because otherwise phone companies could use their monopoly position to exact almost arbitrarily high profits.

Disincentive to increase bandwidth

[pyza (877061)]

Let me see if I'm understanding this.

If there is enough bandwidth then everyone's traffic will get through regardless of Net Neutrality. If there is congestion though, without Net Neutrality only traffic from sites that paid the extortion fee will get through.

Does this not lead to a situation where it is ideal for an ISP to maintain a certain level of congestion at all times in order to ensure that there exists a reason to pay the extortion fee?

One the other hand with Net Neutrality in place it's in the ISP's best interest to maintain an adequate level of bandwidth to make sure everyone's traffic gets through.

Hell no he's not right

[TheCabal (215908)]

Why the hell would any mission critical or emergency service be using the Internet as a medium for transport? These services should be on their own redundant private networks.

People have been predicting the death of the Internet for years. First 56k modems were going to do it, then the glut of DSL and cable subscribers. Now it's going to be all the fibre to premises customers and Google. After that it will probably be WiMAX because now we're going to have kilometers of wireless coverage that anyone can jump on. These people seem to forget that bandwidth is a two-way street. You might have 5Mbps down, and all your neighbors, but the hosted server most likely has a bandwidth lock at 1Gbps or so... that's your limiting factor, not how much bandwidth you can pull down.

Smart Filtering vs. Paid Filtering

[gbulmash (688770)]

Trusting the big telcos and cable companies to act in the best interests of their customers is like hiring a python as a babysitter. They're going to act in the best interest of the bottom line. If the market is savvy enough to make acting in the interest of customers a competitive factor, then they'll do it. If it's not, then they'll screw their customers to make more money and their customers will just bitch and moan, but won't leave.

A very real fear is that a telco says "this pipe is reserved for general internet traffic" and never increases the size of that pipe. As time goes on, they continue to expand capacity, but all new capacity is reserved for the pay-for-play lanes. The original pipe stays its original size for years, getting more and more congested until any company that wants to reach this telco's customers with any kind of speed or surety needs to pay the telco for access to the pay-for-play lanes. That's an unregulated net where filtering and prioritizing has gone awry.

On an overregulated network, where absolute neutrality is enforced, you have the doomsday scenario where World Cup streaming takes down the Internet.

A middleground I think works is that you enforce a ratio of neutral pipe width to free prioritized pipe width (for ensuring that certain services can maintain a certain minimum level of quality) to pay-for-play prioritized pipe width (where a QOS is guaranteed to anyone willing to pay the premium). As capacity grows, all of those pipes grow at a proportional rate. So if BellSouth/AT&T lays new fiber that triples bandwidth across their backbone, the neutral pipe width triples, the free prioritized pipe width triples, and the pay-for-play pipe width triples.

It's figuring out what's a fair ratio and a workable way of monitoring it that's the trick.

The Institute for Policy Innovation

[alizard (107678)]

is a bunch of far right [sourcewatch.org] corporate spokesdroids. Below is a partial list of their donors. I suspect that a great many of you will recognize them. A.Lizard

• Armstrong Foundation
• Lynde and Harry Bradley Foundation
• Gordon and Mary Cain Foundation
• Carthage Foundation
• Jaquelin Hume Foundation
• Earhart Foundation
• JM Foundation
• F.M. Kirby Foundation
• Claude R. Lambe Charitable Foundation
• Sarah Scaife Foundation
• John M. Olin Foundation
• Roe Foundation

IPI's president Tom Giovanetti wrote in an email exchange with Australian blogger Tim Lambert that "IPI has an absolute policy of protecting our donors' privacy". [12]

"If you are correct that organizations like IPI are being funded by companies who have an interest in these areas, the more you rail against us and "expose" us, the more heroic you make us appear to our assumed benefactors, and the checks just keep coming," he wrote. [13]

Unfortunately for their donor "privacy", 503(c) organizations have to file lists of their donors every year. Assume that the telcos will show up in the next filing statement... and that the "policy wonk" is a corporate shill who'd be bloviating in favor of Net Neutrality if Google had paid IPI first. Or NAMBLA if that pedophile organization had paid IPI off to generate "neutral" opinions.

Here's another IPI opinion [ipi.org]:

The reality is that open source can trap a customer into an outsourcer relationship more readily than commercial software. This is because commercial platforms expose standard APIs for third party applications and any consultant can develop for them. open source will go the way of other IT industry fads that were once trumpeted as the way of the future, like Macintosh computers, business AI, 4GL programming languages and Y2K.

Re:Makes Sense

[wyldeone (785673)]

I wouldn't want the government to control the internet. I would rather see the consumer make a choice and go with whichever Broadband provider suits their own personal beliefs and politics. I would rather see a more unreliable internet than see the US gov't decide what is considered "Neutral" or not. This guy seems to be more libertarian than most of the senate. I like him.

Yeah, while that's a great ideal, it's not the reality right now. Personally, I have two choices for broadband interent: Comcast cable, or SBC DSL. A duopoly hardly is a good environment for fostering consumer choices. While capitalism is great and all, it breaks down when there are monopolies (or duopolies; they don't really allows for much more competition than monopolies). As it does not make sense for multiple companies to hang wires all around the country, a monopoly is assured. In order to protect other services which might use the wires of that monopoly (wires which were, by the way, laid partially with public money) from the monopolies' own interests (i.e., other VoIP providers from the monopolies' own VoIP service), regulation is neccessary.

Put more simply, this has nothing to do with reliability. This is about a few companies controlling the internet.