SoylentNews

dmc writes:

Over at Wired.com Berin Szoka and Brent Skorup argue the opinion [wired.com] that the demise [businessweek.com] of Network Neutrality [fcc.gov]. is actually a good thing for underdog competitors on the internet. I couldn't disagree with them more and see some noteworthy parallels to the issues that gave birth to our fine underdog of a website SoylentNews. The problem I have with Wired's argument is its continued focus on ordinary individual ISP customers as merely 'consumers' of content, rather than what I think the original promise of the internet [theguardian.com] was- that everyone could be *both producers and consumers* of content. This parallels the contention many in our community shared against Dice for primarily viewing us as an audience, instead of as contributors [slashdot.org].

Read More Below.

The consumer-centric argument put forth goes like this-

"
ISPs and carriers like AT&T, Comcast, and Verizon face what economists call a "two-sided market." In this case, they — and other tech firms — can receive revenue from two major sources: content providers (through sponsorship or ads), and consumers (through subscription fees). While TV broadcasters traditionally relied almost entirely on the former, cable programmers like HBO and Showtime rely almost entirely on the latter.

But most technology firms use a combination of both ad support and subscription fees. So it makes sense for AT&T, Comcast, Verizon, and others to do what most media firms (and that includes app creators) do: develop a balanced revenue stream from both the content side and the customer side to ensure profitability while making the service affordable.

These kinds of two-sided models are a pro-consumer way to encourage people to use online services.

...

Sometimes the carrier pays the content provider, sometimes the content provider pays the carrier, and sometimes there's no money exchanged at all since the partnership improves the attractiveness of both companies. Such agreements are a delicate balancing act dependent on changing consumer preferences.

Unfortunately, this kind of market innovation is viewed as controversial or even harmful to consumers by some policy and internet advocates. But these concerns are premature, unfounded, and arise mostly from status quo bias: Carriers and providers haven’t priced like this before, so of course change will create some kind of harm!

...

[I]t's important to remember that subsidy programs are a conventional business practice that brings down the cost of services for consumers. Nobody's access is degraded.
"

The problem I see with this argument is that access most certainly is being degraded due to ISP's financial conflicts of interest. If for instance an ISP accepts money to fatten its pipe to Netflix, the result could be that the last mile in your neighborhood network becomes more congested with Netflix traffic. Then all other competing traffic ends up being slower than it otherwise would have been. This has the effect of making the ISP the shaper of the winning and losing destinations on the internet. Precisely what the proponents of network neutrality originally suggested was fundamentally detrimental to the health of the internet ecosystem. In fact, without Network Neutrality by law, ISPs seem to be free to block or throttle any traffic they consider undesirable. Thus political conflicts of interest could also come into play. While in many regions of the U.S. capricious discrimination for political or religious reasons would be frowned upon, there are states, and I happen to live in one, where discrimination of service due to 'sincerely held religious beliefs' [kansas.com] is considered socially acceptable. If you think that no set of local ISPs would ever want to and try to get away with blocking controversial websites such as PlannedParenthood, you likely have never lived in a small town in the Bible Belt. Or alternately, imagine the scenario of a future Comcast CEO sympathetic to an NSA that wishes for people's access to certain urls at TheGuardian.com be blocked. Unless I've missed something, the FCC's Network Neutrality rules were the closest thing we ever had to a *right* to free speech on the internet. Without them, ISP owners seem to have a legal free hand to block destinations on the internet as they see fit. I hope some commenters can point me at a law I've missed that would preclude such censorship by private businesses like ISPs. Without some enforceable law like Network Neutrality, I for one fear for the underdogs of the internet. Killing Network Neutrality may help a few underdogs out there succeed, but a great many more may be starved out of the competition before you ever hear their innovative or dissenting barks.

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Original Submission