As reported on Wired, “The House of Representatives voted Friday to overturn net neutrality rules created by the FCC in December.” Obama said he will veto it.
Net Neutrality is complicated. It’s hard for some libertarians to figure out where to stand on it.
Here’s how I view it:
- It’s bad that the state helps cartelize industry.
- It’s bad that ISPs etc. probably have more market power than they otherwise would, and that there is less competition than there would be.
- But this is the state’s fault.
- Given it’s the state’s fault, should the state use its antitrust power/FTC power to block mergers or to break companies apart? I say no. You can’t trust the state that caused the problem in the first place to solve it by exercising unlibertarian and unconstitutional power and law.
- Given the current regime of state-intervention-caused limited competition, should the FCC impose Net Neutrality rules? I say no. ((Here’s why: Against Net Neutrality; Net Neutrality Developments; Libertarian Take on Net Neutrality; see also Harvard’s Yochai Benkler on Net Neutrality and Innovation.))
- Given that the FCC did impose Net Neutrality rules, should Congress override them? I say a tepid yes.
- Given that Congress did the right thing, should Obama veto it? No.
- Will he anyway? Yes.
- Are we doomed? Yes. (Kidding. I hope.)
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It’s telling when talking to AT&T about Uverse internet. They mentioned they don’t have boxes cheap enough for apartment complexes and the large ones are cost prohibitive. I wondered aloud if I could ask Verizon instead and use their FiOS service instead and got the smug response that thy weren’t legally allowed to compete in my market because AT&T got there first.
And people wonder why ISPs can talk openly about such things. No competition to keep them competitive.
I didn’t know Net Neutrality was controversial to libertarians. The bottom line is it means more government regulation of an industry, which we’re fundamentally against. And more regulation means more power in the hands of government. Which also means more bureacracy, costing taxpayers even more.
The fact that the internet would arguably be more ‘free’ is beside the point and based out of fallacious reasoning that could be used to justify a whole host of bad policies (some of which are already in effect).
It might result in more ‘free’ access to sites and services, but only by not allowing ISPs to regulate their own networks how they see fit. There is no free lunch – ISP’s regulate data streams for a reason – so the costs will manifest themselves in other ways, such as increased monthly charges. Better to let the market decide. Don’t like your ISP regulating your internet? Go somewhere else, or start your own unregulated ISP and advertise it as such.
If an outcome is reliant on State action, it’s easy to say it is to be something libertarians oppose.
I don’t think that’s the principle you want to adhere to fundamentally. By this logic, you would never advocate the State reducing its own apparatus or policy scope, because that would require State action. Therefore you are faced with only two options under the current system – either all the State is removed at once, or none at all. If you accept this, then you are simply an idealist who will not accept anything short of complete revolution, which is your choice. To me, that’s supremely impractical and so the argument falls prey to Reducio ad absurdum.
I believe a superior principle would be that, given the State exists, any reduction thereof is preferable. This allows you to accept the State reducing itself through legislation, and a complete dismantling thereof is even more ideal.
For a State reducing its apparatus, I don’t see action, but the refusal to continue action. Therefore, I don’t see the statement all that contradictory.
So are you saying that reducing the apparatus through legislation is acceptable, or that the reduction is only acceptable if it comes from the refusal to adhere to already-established/legislated policy (complete inaction)?
It’s not like they follow their own rules anyhow.
How can the “market decide” when all of their decisions are being made for them by big corporations, and they are uneducated because education has been completely defunded?
To be able to decide, there has to be a choice.
By the way, the fallacious reasoning I was referring to is the idea that a policy should be pursued simply because it appears to benefit everyone. Nevermind that not everyone wants the benefit they’re paying for through taxes (or other resultant market costs), and that in most cases there is no opting out.
This is the same reasoning used to justify Social Security, Medicare, Welfare, Unemployment, etc etc.
Even if net neutrality seemed to be a net benefit on paper, it would inevitably end up being a net loss, due to twisting of the laws by interested parties, or unintended side-effects. My objection is simpler, though: it would concentrate more power, and concentrated power is always misused.
You are absolutely correct sir. I have multiple independent objections, of which yours is one.
The reality behind Net Neutrality is to lay the groundwork for censorship.
Due to the nature and design of the internet the individuals who control the nodes on the internet control the power. It’s a decentralized system with no central control or central authority. This is why it’s so successful. The first TCP/IP stack was released as open source, all the protocols are documented.
Each player in the internet is free to implement these protocols and behave in any manner they see fit. No regulations, no controls. People cooperating freely and the system is designed realistically with the assumption that failure is constant.. that there are bad players that will do bad things. Bad software, bad hardware. Constant failure.
This ‘peer to peer’ nature were each node is a potential equal player is core to the functionality and it’s success. The difference between your PC at home and a server on the internet is more of a issue of available bandwidth rather then any sort of bias built into the system. That is as long as you have a public ip address.
The core protocol to the internet, TCP/IP, is just a transport protocol. It has been build with no sort of application-level biases designed in. As a user you send out what traffic you want, how you want, using whatever protocols you want. All of it’s routed to the destination.
This makes true censorship on the internet incredibly difficult. As soon as the user’s computer has access to the internet it can twist any protocols and break any assimption that you have and as long as the party on the other end of the connection agrees to your rules then communication can happen.I can tunnel traffic over HTTP, HTTPS and even DNS. Each user has ultimate control of any traffic exiting out of their computer and none of the traffic hitting their network.
So it’s virtually impossible to stop and control information on the internet. There are no safe assumptions you can build into your filtering and censorship software to monitor traffic. Since there is no central authority and no central management of what goes were… the users are in control.
There is only ONE practical way monitor traffic of citizens:
The last hop. If you control the last hop from the ISP to a persons house then you can effectively censor and monitor them. Anything short of that is going to be stop-gap. You must put controls on individual’s access to the internet. If you do that then you can block them, monitor them, control their access, and censor them.
You can’t do it at the city level or the regional level. It’s already too late. The user has far too much control over their network and how information is presented. It must be at the ISP last-hop to be truly effective.
This is what network neutrality is about. It’s establishing the first set of rules that the government is going to use to regulate your access to the internet.
This post is already very long, but if anybody cares I can probably very accurately lay out step by step how the government is planing on establishing regulations that will effectively control individual’s access to the internet.
Oh and the problem with FCC’s rules probably had more to do with the fact that they did not implement all the provisions that congress wanted in a manner that was not what consistent with the image congress wanted to maintain.
That is Congress wants credit. They want to figure out a way they can implement these rules so that they will receive positive feedback. It’s not enough that they want to censor the internet, it’s that they want you to be happy about it.
Your prognostication is dead-on.
I’d like to hear the entire story =D
Ok. This is how it works.
In order to figure their approach we need to discern their goals and motivations. Obviously it’s appealing to go and just say ‘oppression’ or ‘control’, but we can do better then that. The first thing to keep in mind is that the internet is one of those revolutionary human technologies. It’s like the invention of gunpowder or the printing press. This revolutionary technologies provides us with nearly-free communication. For the first time in human history human beings now have cheap and unfettered way to communicate with any other human being on the planet without being subject to governments. Throughout the 20th Century governments have discovered the power of censorship and propaganda for the sake of subverting democratic societies… the internet is breaking these important statist tools. So there are quite a few reasons why the USA government wants to be able to censor and monitor individual network activity. Chief among these things are going to be:
* Control the political dialog. Before the internet only a handful of large corporations had the ability to share information and distribute news across the entire population. Mass media is heavily regulated and thus at the mercy of the ‘powers that be’. These large media corporations were not subject to a tremendous amount of direct censorship, but changes to how regulations are interpreted and enforced as well as drafting new regulations have a huge effect on the profitability of various media companies. This allows a great deal of ‘indirect’ control through application of the ‘carrot and the stick’ via regulatory bureaucratic bodies.
Also the 2 major political parties not only have the elections rigged in their favor, but also have campaign finance laws. These laws are limits on political speech that effectively mean that during the election cycle the only people allowed to comment on the elections nation-wide are handful of companies that own the majority of mass media and political parties with billions of dollars in funding. The internet and ‘blogosphere’ effectively destroys much of the effect of campaign finance law.
* They wish to expand the power of the state to the internet. That is law enforcement, control and monitoring of potential enemies of the state and so on and so forth. They want to establish the sort of government-self-protection mechanisms that are pervasive in society. Governments look on what happened in Egypt in horror. It’s going to be obvious to the powers-that-be that control and censorship of internet access needs to be established in order to control human interactions during a time of civil unrest.
They will seek out controls that will limit groups of individual’s ability to communicate while avoiding the economic damage that shutting down networks causes. That is modern business and government is now HEAVILY dependent on a correctly functioning internet. If they shut it down directly during times of war or civil unrest then that would cause untold economic damage and massively limit the ability of the government to operate. So they will desire to have fine-grain-enough controls that they can shutdown and monitor access for groups of people while letting commerce and government institutions continue to have inexpensive digital communications.
* They last big motivator that I can see is for seeking profits through political rent seeking. Just like how politicians are able to use the stick-n-carrot approach to manipulating media through the FCC and other regulation they want to establish controls over ISPs. This will expand opportunities to profit from graft and corruption. This will force ISPs and other companies with heavy interests in the internet to step up their political contributions and lobbying efforts. Internet companies who are able to gain political favors (get a “Guy in Washington”) will have a competitive advantage against those that do not.
Of course there is probably not any real formal ’9 step plan for taking over the internet’ that the political parties have dreamed up. No grand scheme, no formal conspiracy. The general goals listed above above just describes the sort of semi-conscious aims that govern the average statist-in-power’s thought process.
It really manifests itself as spoken notions like ‘Hey we really need to do something about this whole internet thing’, with nods all around.
I will continue…
This is how it’s going to work:
The successful commercial exploitation and growth on the internet depends on a ever widening of peering relationships. Originally the structure of the internet, as we use it today, was originally designed with a variety of “tiers”.
You had the national sized corporations that handled the ‘internet backbones’. These Tier 1 networks spanned nation-wide and then connected to other backbone providers in other nations. You then had Tier 2 networks that would lease time off of the backbone providers and then expand those networks down to the county levels. Then you had Tier 3 networks, the ISPs, would would then lease time from Tier 2 corporations and provide the service directly to end users. The more you use it, the more capacity you consume, the more it costs to maintain and expand the network to meet the demands of all customers. When Tier 2 and Tier 3 networks were in regional proximity to one another the original layout would mean that they would have to pay for bandwidth all the way up to the Tier 1 and then back down. It is far more efficient to establish your own physical network directly one another, establish a peering agreement, and then just cut out the Tier 1 network altogether.
As time progresses now we have peering relationships that are as important for nation-wide and international network traffic as the backbones are. The price of network bandwidth depends on which peering relationship you choose to use. Some paths may be more expensive, but offer better latency and less packet loss. Other paths will be cheaper, but require more hops and thus latency is poor. Depending on what type of traffic your using then sometimes latency is far more important then bandwidth and visa versa.
Network Neutrality will cause forced inefficiency on network providers. This will retard progress and cause bandwidth to cost more and quality of network connections will suffer. Instead of letting improvements in technology, engineering talent, and market relationships determine the optimal design for the internet it will be designed by government committee. Network design will be sent in stone and it will become increasingly difficult for network providers to continue to improve and evolve while working around governmental punitive punishment for inappropriate innovation.
This will cause prices to rise as consumer demand increases. Creating crises that only governments will be able to ‘solve’.
They will say that ‘Internet access is a human right’ and will implement requirements for availability and implement new requirements that will be roundabout pseudo price controls. This will reduce the ability for corporations to expand to meet new demand even more.
Then they will try to create a backlash against people that ‘steal’ more then their ‘fair share’ of bandwidth. People who, previously were profitable under a open design, are now causing other people’s price to increase. Since now networks cannot adjust to consumer demand then consumers that ‘are bandwidth hogs’ need to be controlled directly.
By and large these ‘bandwidth hogs’ are people that are engaging in bulk downloads and uploads via bittorrent and other P2P networking. In addition they are mostly going to be copyright criminals and be engaging in hacking activities which are extremely illegal.
ISPs and governments now will be require to implement network monitoring and controls to seek out bandwidth hogs and stop their criminal activities. This way they can keep the internet safe and bandwidth reserved for people who are upright citizens.
The lies we will be told is that these controls and network monitoring is just for our own benefit. Evil people that engage in morally reprehensible network activity are causing harm to society as well as breaking laws. No piracy, no hackers, no spammers, no child pornographers, no subversive political activists will be tolerated. No hate crimes, no cyber bulling, no encrypted communication not subjected to wiretapping technology can be allowed to go on undocumented and unrestricted.
We could have terrorists, RIGHT NOW, using our own network infrastructure and open source encryption technology to coordinate attacks against airports, football games, and nuclear power stations. THIS MUST BE STOPPED!!!! We must take drastic actions to counter a (potentially) drastic threat!
On top of that they will continue to push wiretapping laws and continue to expand political censorship (oops I mean campaign finance) to cover people in the blogs and websites.
After all we cannot allow people to be sensationalist?! Right!? We cannot allow people to lie on the internet, to smear and libel, Freedom of speech is not their to protect hate crimes and damaging lies, especially against politicians and public figures. There is no reason why these people cannot be held to the same level of accountability as news paper editors and talking heads on television! Think of the children! We cannot continue to tolerate corporations dumping money into internet campaigns simply because it’s not regulated. This subverts democracy itself!
I pay for these things because I realize that I live in a country with other people, a town with other people, a world with other people. The fact is that objectionable people exist, EVERYWHERE, and you’ve given some of them your money at one time or another without even knowing it–yet, what you guys seem to expect is to live in a world where you know exactly where each and every cent of your money is going.
We buy things not knowing where they are truly coming from, and the truth is that there is no “small industry” or level playing field like there was at the inception of libertarian thought, save for the Amish. Of course, as bio-engineered seeds and spores flood their property, they are passive participants, so even they aren’t free to be apart if they wish.
So we have de facto law passed by some group other than the Legislature (see AIS1C1 exclusivity on legislative powers) that the Legislature is attempting to negate that the Executive is promising to Veto and will thus stand as law?
Aren’t there some mixed up carts and horses someplace (not to mention a lack of constitutional basis in the first place)?
There were some really great Mises Daily articles on this authored by Fernando Herrera-Gonzalez. His Ph.D. focus was in Austrian Economics applied to telecommunication regulation. Here’s his article archive, but below are the best and most relevant ones (plus one by Tim Swanson).
-Who Owns the Internet?
-How Not to Bring Broadband to All
-Opening the Internet — with an Axe
-Net Neutrality: Unwarranted Intervention
The net neutrality debate has not been clearly articulated. Those who oppose attempt to project it as an engineering issue. Doesn’t the private sector have a right to manage its networks? On the surface, that may seem reasonable. But there is the unintended consequence. Nate-m observed that: “The reality behind Net Neutrality is to lay the groundwork for censorship.” Yes, but censorship by the corporations, not the government. (Yes, the government is proposing internet censorship, but not as part of the net-neutrality debate.) Do we really want the corporate world having the freedom to manage the flow of information as they whimsically see fit? I say not.
By example, when you go to the Post Office, UPS, or FedEx you pay them to deliver your package. The same service should be provided by the ISPs. But we have already had a smattering of instances were ISPs have “filtered” or “managed” the flow of information for corporate purposes, not engineering purposes. Can A Phone Service Provider Block Calls To Numbers It Doesn’t Like? I do not think that corporations should have this implicit freedom. The financial crises was an example of how corporations have misused “freedom” as a license to steal.
Yes, government regulations can be oppressive; but there is a case for government regulations that establish a level playing field for the consumer.
Spoken like a true conservative, but not a libertarian. My original comment stands – I don’t see how this issue could be cloudy at all for a libertarian.
Do you own the infrastructure ISPs have paid for*? If you don’t, you cannot dictate how they use it. To say otherwise would to say you have the right to infringe on their private property.
*SLD: I realize the use of government-bestowed monopolies complicates this issue.
Huh????? I assure that I am not a traditional “conservative”. I have a strong regulatory bent that most conservatives would consider anathema. While I have many sympathies with Libertarian thought, it would be best for a professed Libertarian to explain how this issue could be considered “cloudy”.
Steve R.
For libertarians the issue is very simple, in principal at least.
Corporations (that is, those who own corporations) should have the right to administer their property as they see fit. If I own an ISP that will only allow you to access Mises.org then you have the option of either paying to use my service or not… nobody has any right to make me use my wires to let you access anything I don’t want you to see.
On the other hand, ideally the laws preventing rival carriers from entering a given area and competing would be gone as well, so you would be free to contract with whichever carrier has the policies you most agree with and are willing to pay for. There would be no conflicts in a situation like this, and whichever service best reflects the ACTUAL desires of people willing to pay for what the want will succeed.
The cloudiness comes from the fact that the government prevents the competition that would prevent the corporate tyranny you seem worried about… the government acts either directly by stopping competitors from offering a service or indirectly through subsidies and regulations that make it too expensive for newcomers to enter the market.
In the current situation it is debatable whether it would be preferable to have the the status quo of government-enforced monopoly providers with traffic shaping abilities or the adopt a government “net neutrality” law which would prevent those government monopolies from shaping traffic.
The best solution would of course be removing the artificial barriers to entry and scrapping the net neutrality law, but given the choice between both options and only one of them I agree with Kinsella that the fewer interventions the better.
@Anthony: Technically your reply goes to Jimmy. I didn’t want delve into interpreting Libertarian thought on this topic. My concern relates to the very simplistic concept that: “Corporations (that is, those who own corporations) should have the right to administer their property as they see fit.” . And – if the consumer does not like it, the consumer can take a hike and/or move to another ISP. Simple if the consumer had real choice. Of course, real choice, is the objective of Libertarians. I don’t have an issue with creating real choice.
My concern, I guess results from a “dark side” in Libertarian thought. Based on the posts of some people, who profess to be Libertarians (but may not be), the statement that because a corporation owns something that they somehow have total control, this amounts to Corporatism. Or to phrase it a little bit differently, Corporations are assuming the power of the State.
Getting back to my UPS/FedEx example, you pay the package delivery company to have your package delivered to a destination. Based on the concept of ownership, ISP would have a unilateral and capricious right to 1) inspect your package, 2) take a year or two to deliver it, and/or 3) even toss it in the trash-bin if it is inconvenient for them to deliver it or they don’t want to deliver it to a competitor. I think that regulations that mandate that your packets be delivered in a neutral manner are appropriate.
Please note, that I am opposed to government regulations that allow/mandate “filtering”, “packet inspection”, and even that ISPs act as “police”.
“I think that regulations that mandate that your packets be delivered in a neutral manner are appropriate.”
That’s next to impossible to agree with. Your FedEx example has one gigantic flaw that you can, well, drive a FedEx truck through. How long do you think FedEx will stay in business if they take a year to deliver a package or throw it away if it’s inconvenient? Sure, you could come up with a goofy anecdotal excuse about doing it randomly and rarely, but what’s the value? Why would an ISP set up a system like that if they know someone else can just take away their customers?
They are extreme examples for purposes of illustration. Companies do many underhanded activities and customer mobility (in many respects) is just a fiction. We will just have to respectively disagree.
FedEx has a contract with you to deliver the package in a reasonable amount of time without damaging it unreasonably(as for ownership, that stays with either the sender or receiver – the shipping company merely takes custody of it); your ISP very likely doesn’t have a provision in your contract for network neutrality(which means that, ultimately, you need to read before you sign).
Steve R.
Your statement “consumer mobility (in many respects) is just a fiction” is true only where the government regulations you profess to like so much make it so. Government regulations tend to represent the interests of the dominant players in the industry, and in fact are usually written by the big companies (through “industry consultations”). These regulations keep small/new players out of the market and rob the consumer of choices.
The government can’t successfully mandate competition (look up the FTC here…), but it certainly can go a long way towards eliminating it.
We are ideologically separated. Please realize that I DO NOT profess to like Government regulation so much. I favor regulation that gives the consumer a level playing field. I do NOT profess liking government regulations that strip citizens of their rights.
For people whose economic policies are based on the theory that people have sufficient information to make their own economic decisions and sufficient smarts to make decisions that are in their own best interest, seems strange that you want the international corporations to control the availability of information. Will you think the same way when the limit mises.org to third tier service and porn ads get faster service than this blog?
You people aren’t libertarians, you’re anarchists.
TRUE Libertarianism wants liberty for “We the People” from BOTH government and large corporations.
Sometimes govt. needs to protect We the People from Monopolistic large corporations.
Jimmy’s advice to “Don’t like your ISP regulating your internet? Go somewhere else, or start your own unregulated ISP and advertise it as such.” is ludicrous and unrealistic.
Poor people can’t do either – but they are just as deserving of Liberty as anyone.
Yeah! I wanna flap my arms and fly, but this damned gravity thing is preventing me from doing so! Down with the laws of physics!
And whenever someone suggests something that will benefit “We the People” I will accuse them of being a liar. Then what? No, wait, let me guess what then: tyranny of the majority. Is that about right?
The net should be like the electricity is distributed in TX. You have a choice of a dozen or so providers and all use the same wires. Also as a DSL customer at one time the phonelines were AT&T and AT&T provided the phone service but others could provide the DSL service. It should be the same on cable, fiber, wire or cell service. That would provide more competition and better service.
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