Friday, January 17, 2014

On Net Neutrality

I have received a ton of emails asking me to comment on the recent court ruling regarding net neutrality. Here goes.

The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia struck down a Federal Communications Commission order from 2010 that forced internet service providers like Verizon, AT&T, Comcast and Time Warner Cable to abide by network neutrality regulations.

Net neutrality is the idea that internet service providers should be forced by government to treat all data on the internet equally, that is, the government plays the role of enforcer by not allowing  ISPs to discriminate or charge differentially by user, content, site, platform, application, type of attached equipment, and modes of communication.

The libertarian position is pretty clear cut here. Government should keep its hands off ISPs and allow them to operate any way they want. The ISPs, using their own equipment, are providing a service and should be allowed to use their equipment and provide their service in any fashion they choose without interference from the government. Thus, the court ruling is consistent with a libertarian view.

Bottom line: Net neutrality is evil government meddling. Let the markets rule!

UPDATE:

Judging from the comments, I need to expand my thoughts here. As  commenter Jack Weil correctly observes, I thought it would be clear to all that when I wrote, "Government should keep its hands off ISPs and allow them to operate any way they want." This implies that, well, "government should keep its hands off," which would mean that there would be no government protected cartel.

Eliminating government involvement is the solution, not expending government reach by way of net neutrality regulations to regulate the first government interventionist steps. I repeat,  "Government should keep its hands off ISPs and allow them to operate any way they want." This means allowing anyone to enter the ISP business who so desires.


18 comments:

  1. What markets? The bandwidth providers are a fucking cartel.

    Free markets only work when there's enough participants to preclude collusion. Break them up so there's tens of thousands of them, then we might get somewhere.

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    1. As we all know cartels don't work without government keeping the participants all in line because they start undercutting each other.
      so you are seriously suggesting that bandwidth providers be one man bands (you know the better to compete, apparently) how well would that work.? let the market figure it out using the price mechanisism.

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    2. First off collusion is already illegal. Not that that means it doesn't happen, but, if what you say is true, then what would change by having the government enforce net neutrality, if it already can't prevent collusion? Wouldn't the carriers simply continue to collude and agree to raise rates enough to offset what ever economic impact net neutrality had on their earnings?

      Even if collusion is taking place, there is no way enforce a cartel without at least one party having coercive powers over the others. In the mid 1800s businesses did all they could to form cartels and punish those that failed to abide by them through economic and physical harm, but it never worked and the cartels always failed. When one cheats, they are all forced to cheat. Think of OPEC.

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  2. "Well yeah, but what web site is going to use the service of an ISP that blocks content that user wants?"

    The problem here is that unless you want dialup, you don't have any choice. ISPs with any speed are all major telcos, not counting Google fiber, which is not available in 99% of the country.

    It is extremely important to mention, every time this comes up, that the whole problem is caused because of the monopolistic carriers that are in play right now.

    "The libertarian position is pretty clear cut here. Government should keep its hands off ISPs and allow them to operate any way they want. "

    The problem is that ISPs that would double-charge are all are neck-deep in with the government. So unless you follow that statement up with something along the lines of, "And they need to dissolve any govt granted monopolies that are already in place" you are only telling half the story.

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    1. It seems to me that when Wenzel says "Government should keep its hands off ISPs and allow them to operate any way they want," he is pretty much ruling out government protection of selected ISPs.

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  3. "Well yeah, but what web site is going to use the service of an ISP that blocks content that user wants?"

    As a follow up - this statement is fairly short sighted. There are lots of intermediaries between a user and the website - not only the ISP for each end, which can be different, but there is likely a transfer between a couple of the major backbone providers of the internet. Any of these can decide to filter traffic however they want.

    I'm not saying govt sponsored net neutrality is the answer. But that statement doesn't really do much for the argument against.

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    1. Do you have any idea how many transfers and hand offs occur in the mobile phone sector? Yet, mobile prices for basic service keep falling. Transfers have nothing to do with keeping prices high.

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    2. Agreed. But that wasn't my point. My point was simply the idea that a consumer does not have any real control over how his internet traffic is handled.

      The idea that you could just "not use an ISP" that you don't like is irrelevant; your communications hit a ton of networks whether you like them or not.

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  4. You point is correct in a free society but we are not in a free society. The internet providers are the result of government intervention in the first place. They are some the biggest crony capitalist corporations in the world and have lobbied for and gotten unfair advantages in law. The result of this will be a crippling of freedom and not more. As a libertarian I would like to support this but am mostly just disgusted at the prospects of what the unintended consequences of this will be.

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    1. then how does society take its first steps towards liberty then if there is is handwringing over the unintended consequence? and those corporation who have relied on their friends in government will have to figure out what the customer wants or be doomed.
      Imho, this bandwidth argument is similar to the lock in the price of gas in the time of an emergency It creates its own disincentives to do anything more than supply a regular amount at given price.

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    2. Correct. Absolutely zero government regulations towards ISPs, but all Comcast et al. who only have control over their copper and fiber due to crony deals that guaranteed them profits at gunpoint should be divested of all said property, at gunpoint, as the government's last dealing into the field.

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  5. Note: See my update in the original post.

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  6. ISPs are neck deep in government, true.
    But if network neutrality was really against government clients like ISPs and in favor of the simple civilian, do you people HONESTLY think the FCC would want it? When has the FCC *ever* been about liberty, or righting a wrong?

    Net neutrality is simply another tool for the government to have more control, otherwise they wouldn't have been seeking it.

    If there is anything a government department wants, it's a safe bet it would be something to the benefit of the crony system.

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  7. The main issue here is the unholy relationship between ISP's and the FCC (and CRTC in Canada). I wrote about this here: http://terryneudorf.com/true-net-neutrality/

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  8. Net neutrality is a patch on the underlying crony capitalist system.

    Take out net neutrality without fixing the underlying crony capitalism and we get an even stronger cartel of crony capitalists. This site, LRC, and a bunch others would have to start running on a land line BBS system or FIDONET or something else like chained private wi-fi. Basically we could easily be banished from the internet and there would be no recourse what so ever. We couldn't just take our business elsewhere, there is no elsewhere. Small private ISPs use the bigs sooner or later in the chain of hops. And there is no creating an elsewhere with a government that can block it.

    Ever argue with a statist who will be critical of libertarianism by isolating one thing and then pointing out the disaster that would likely happen if just the one thing were to go libertarian but everything else would stay statist? This is much the same. The internet will become a disaster if we make one aspect libertarian but leave the rest statist.

    The difficult thing about libertarianism is that so much of it goes together and making things more libertarian has to be done in order. The first step is to get rid of the telcom crony capitalism system. Return that business to the free market. Then remove net neutrality. Net neutrality would be irrelevant at that point.

    Part of working towards a voluntary liberty based system is respecting an order of operations. Doing things in the wrong order will result in failures which won't be blamed on an error transition but on liberty itself to end that transition.

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  9. Net Neutrality is just like Obamacare. Instead of giving people choices as to how much health insurance coverage is right for them, Obamacare mandates that insurance companies only sell premium packages. Therefore, everyone must pay premium prices. As far as the whole discrimination/censorship thing goes, do you think it's ok that you are forced to support the spying on everyone by the NSA with our hard earned income (taxes)? That's exactly what forcing ISPs to provide services to sites that they don't agree with does.

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  10. Net neutrality is an issue that hasn't been squashed yet. It's more important than ever to learn the issues, so here's a great short mockumentary if anyone wants a refresher: www.theinternetmustgo.com/‎

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  11. This is kind of the most technically challenged post I've ever read. You seem to confuse HOSTING with common carriers. What if Verizon, Comcast and Atnt would block all libertarian sites? Oh, wait, they do not block they just charge a tonload on both ends.
    Fox News wins.
    Nein Danke.

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