Open Access to the Internet is a Right

I apologize that my posts have already started to come few and far between. The truth of the matter is, I do not intend to write a new article every day or even every other day. Because I want to get these posts well researched and written, and I have VERY little time to work on this of late, I cannot promise a regular schedule at this time. I just hope that you will enjoy my posts when I do get them up.

I want to talk today about an issue that affects a very large group of people, and has a very strong potential to determine what the future will look like. I want to be very clear here: I am not being sarcastic here.

The issue is Internet Neutrality, more commonly known as Net Neutrality. Net Neutrality is the concept that all types of data over the Internet should be allowed to flow freely, that every bit of data is treated equally by my Internet Service Provider (ISP). What this means is that, if I go to a popular site, like say the New York Times, and a more obscure site, like my blog (does not get much more obscure than that), the pages should load with the same speed, all other things being equal. This also applies to things like video sites such as Hulu or Youtube, or download protocols like FTP or Bittorrent.

This issue spiked a bit in recent weeks because of two separate issues. Not as directly related, but still important, is the Digital Economy Bill that was recently passed in England. Not being British, I don't feel I have a good grasp of the intricacies of this bill, but I will point to an article and an opinion piece over at the Guardian newspaper that talks about it (that I found via RockPaperShotgun). If anyone from England is reading this, I hope that your Liberal Democrats party can grab some seats and hopefully do something to fix that abhorrent bill. Please vote!

The second issue that I will comment on is a recent decision in the D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals. To summarize the issue, the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) had fined Comcast for slowing down, or "throttling," the Bittorrent protocol that passed over their service. Comcast took the FCC to court, saying that it did not have the authority to impose this fine. The court agreed with Comcast, and said that the FCC did not have the right to regulate the Internet in this way.

What this means is that Comcast now has the right within the law to slow down connections to various websites or other services if they want to, with no legal recourse available. Now, some of you may say that Comcast will not do that, because it runs the risk of them losing customers. The problem with that idea is that, in many places, there is only one provider for high-speed broadband Internet.

There are basically four tiers of Internet connections for residential use. Dial-up is the lowest, which is transmitted over an open phone line. Next would be DSL, which also travels over a phone line, but at a faster speed than dial-up. DSL is measurably slower than the third tier, cable Internet. The fourth tier would be a fiber optic, or fios, connection.

Comcast is a provider in the third tier, a cable Internet connection. Should Comcast decide to slow down connections, my choices are to stay with them, or to move down to another, slower tier of service. Fios is not an option for many, as they do not offer service in many parts of the country, my town included. It gets even more complicated for some who live in a housing development or apartment complex, as these areas often have a mandated ISP. If that ISP chooses to throttle their connections, the customers have zero recourse.

Those that do not use something like Bittorrent would be far from immune from these changes. To keep using Comcast as an example, Comcast is currently trying to purchase NBC. Should this deal go through, Comcast would have the power to slow down connections to competing network's websites (like ABC or CBS), in order to drive more traffic to the network they own.

As things stand right now, the only way the FCC could gain the authority (without Congress passing a new law) is to reclassify Internet access as a telecommunications service. The FCC has the authority to regulate telecoms, due in large part because of the regional monopoly levels that telecoms enjoy, the same way that ISPs have regional monopolies.

I hear a lot of people talk about how Capitalism works based on choice. If you do something your customer does not like, they will go to your competitor. This is broken when it comes to ISPs. I have not even discussed things like pricing where there is no competition. As our society becomes even more dependent on the Internet to function, it should not be within the power of one company to control the access of such a large percent of the population to information.

Congress should either give the power to the FCC to ensure that Net Neutrality is a legally protected reality, or the FCC should take the initiative to reclassify the ISPs as telecoms, so that they have the ability to regulate these companies.