Net neutrality war: Lobbysts have won

The proposed FCC net neutrality regulations may look great under the "Open and Transparent Internet" banner, but in reality, they are just a placebo that gets us nowhere, maybe even giving ISPs more power to regulate the internet.

Anyone who follows American politics knows that lobbyists try, and hardly ever fail, to run Washington with their special interests, motivating politicians with campaign funds, nights out at restaurants to talk policy, and sometimes worse. Although Barack Obama campaigned on a promise to change the way things work, any effort to get rid of corporate interests is futile, especially now that the Supreme Court ruled that companies can run political ads.

The interests at play here are nationwide ISPs like AT&T and Comcast, and the movie industry. The ISPs want the power to block bandwidth-hungry services, slow down competing services (internet phone and TV, respectively), or even sell internet "tiers" like they do cable TV.

Hollywood wants to kill piracy by forcing or bribing ISPs to block P2P protocols and/or websites, saving them the trouble of getting controversial "three strikes" anti-piracy laws passed (Google is your friend here).

So, as soon as the FCC talks about following through on the Democrats' campaign promise of Net Neutrality, the lobbyists kill it in Congress, and pressure the FCC to lighten up on it. And they did.

Here's the problems with it

"Reasonable Network Management"

Here's the definition of "reasonable network management" in the FCC's proposal:

Reasonable network management. Reasonable network management consists of:
(a) reasonable practices employed by a provider of broadband Internet access service to:
(i) reduce or mitigate the effects of congestion on its network or to address quality-of-service
concerns;
(ii) address traffic that is unwanted by users or harmful;
(iii) prevent the transfer of unlawful content; or
(iv) prevent the unlawful transfer of content; and
(b) other reasonable network management practices.

So, in a nutshell, they can try to keep their networks less congested, address traffic that users don't want (explained in a sec), prevent transfer of illegal content, prevent the illegal transfer of legal content, or whatever the hell else they want to do.

Five network management rules, explained

So, here's the loosely worded rules the FCC uses to define network management, on page 65 of the pdf I linked to, better defined and criticized:

(i) Reducing the effects of congestion: This means that if some service is eating their network alive, they can throttle it or block it. This can also be seen as ensuring that they can continue to sell us different speed plans.
(ii) This is actually the only one of these rules that I sort of like. It is also the most abuse-proof, simply because it is all about what the users want to get rid of (ads maybe?!), and what harms them (viruses!). Careful oversight and individual choice will be needed, however.
(iii) This allows ISPs to block blatantly illegal stuff like kiddie porn, instructions on how to murder someone, black market online stores, etc.
(iv) This is the anti-piracy provision, since actually illegal content was covered in number 3. The EFF points to this as one of the major loopholes that would actually make it legal to block BitTorrent like Comcast did. Since this is just "reasonable" efforts, blocking a legal p2p protocol that is used mainly for illegal purposes would probably be legal.
(b) Why (b) instead of (v)? Good question. This is the do whatever the hell you want clause. Well, seriously, it's the do whatever the hell you want within reason clause.

Subject to reasonable network management (some restrictions apply, see store for details)

Head over to page 66 in the PDF to see the promises of the FCC that we can run, use, transfer, and buy anything legal we want without interference from ISPs whatsoever...subject to the above reasonable network management.

That's right, even 8.11, which entitles us to have choice and competition with ISPs, app providers, and media providers, is superseded by "reasonable network management". Even 8.15, "Transparency", which lets us know what our ISPs are throttling, blocking, or "managing", is subject to network management. Can you say, "WEIRD"?!

And remember, none of this would be law. It would be FCC rules that the FCC enforces and decides what it all means.

But wait, there's more.

Why congestion management shouldn't be an issue

Cable industry advocate Michael Willner posted on his blog in response to EFF's criticism of the FCC's plan, saying network management is needed because:

Without it, a small minority of users would dominate the use of shared resources, degrading the Internet experience of nearly all network users.

That seems like an innocent, understandable statement at first glance, but think about it a bit. Hint: Most ISPs are currently net-neutral.

Give up? ISPs already keep a small percentage of users from using all the bandwidth. You're paying for the 1/8/10/20/whatever megabit speed plan. Your ISP promises you lightning fast 6 meg downloads, but it's really a speed limit that keeps you from stealing everyone elses' bandwidth.

It could be argued the Willner thinks that without the network management bit, that would be illegal. The problem is that we're about to give ISPs permission to block a competitor's website if they can reasonably explain it as being network management.

The next argument that will come up is that the cable company can't handle us maxing out our 20 meg connection full-time. I argue that first, it's unrealistic to think that would happen, and second, if they're going to sell us super-fast internet, they should be able to deliver.

What are your conclusions? Do you have a counter-argument? Post in the comments.