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Net Neutrality vs. The Tamed Internet

I have been interested in writing about this topic for several years, because this is something that I am torn over.  I have vested interests on both sides of the fence and thus, putting my thoughts onto paper holds a lot of value for me.  What the garbage am I talking about, some of you may ask?  Let me explain.

There are two arguments that have been going around for the last 10 years or so.  The issue is represented by two sides (obviously) with the one side arguing that the internet is too crazy and it can’t be used until there is an internet ‘FCC’ to regulate it and make it safe.  The other argument is that the internet is only the tool that it is because there is no governing body, and it is splendid putty that can be manipulated to fit anyone’s need or desire.  Obviously there will need to be one winner in the end, but there are more nuances to be examined on both sides.  So please bear with me as I delve a bit deeper into either side’s argument, then leave me some feedback / predictions.

First, the argument for leaving the internet as is.

The internet is great.  The thing that makes it great is that it is a proverbial wild west, a final frontier that is more accessible than space.  Why should we need a wild west in the tech realm?  Well it fosters free thinking, it breeds innovation and it is the ultimate sandbox wherein one can play, create, and live.  It is inherently global by nature and as such has stayed mostly ungoverned by necessity up to this point.  Certainly there are generally accepted practices that are adhered to by most and enforced in a vigilante fashion by a few, but even that is part of the allure; that you can be a good guy in a realm of little or no expectations.  So the good side of this is that it is a siren call to people who want to create, who want to innovate in an absolutely open space and run no risk of someone telling them that something can’t be a certain way, or that they need to change in order to fit in with a subset of social stigmas.  It is whatever we want it to be.

When I was a kid and the thought of an internet was brand new [BBS boards and shotgun modems] me and my best friend went exploring.  The concept that people would share ideas for the greater good was made real to me.  Opensource software and projects whose lifeblood required community contribution became the mainstay.  Newsnet groups and forums began popping up of people who were self interested but still there for the community knowing that there was a greater good at stake (perhaps sentiments of Tocqueville’s “self interested rightly understood” were evident here).  These were people who knew that building a community would service them better down the road.  Thus the internet was born.  I was right there through it all, and as a geek, I loved every minute of it.  This isn’t to say everything was and is cheery, with the development of the infrastructure, it would be naïve to think that it would only be used for noble purposes.  But overall, the internet as is has become a great resource that works well for most.

The second argument is one that is absolutely valid despite some saying it is almost solution less.

The argument is that the internet is a crucial part of society today and much of who we are and the business we interact HAS to move through the channels of the internet, and that being the case requires that the wild west of the internet not stay wild forever, but be tamed for the greater good of the people.  I can encapsulate the idea with the analogy of the Pony Express.  Business had to be conducted between frontier towns so a service was established, but this threatened those who already possessed the land and they would not let the service be conducted unimpeded.   The argument is made that akin to the Pony Express, there are business channels, scholastic channels, government channels, and family channels that are being trail blazed through the established internet.  They see it as taming a wild horse so it can actually work and be worth something.  The problem is that much like the wild west, there is no governing body with which to negotiate, so progress is a muddy conversation.

So that’s the problem.  You have the ‘keep the country country’ folks who realize the value that is had in having a sphere of ungoverned opportunity, and use it to their advantage.  It is anonymous, it is full of potential, it is whatever you want it to be.  This is contrasted by the ‘prune the tree, you’ll get more fruit’ folks who are pushing to a governing body to say what should go where.  Is one way the right way, or is there a compromise that can be reached?

Typical of good political fear monging, the arguments for a ‘safer’ net use great emotional tag lines like “protect your kids from porn” or “stop the illegal activity that is rampant”  of course no one wants their kids looking at a bunch of porn nor do they want illegal  slums in their backyard, but that’s not the best summary.  There is more being sacrificed than some 10 year olds ability to pull up a porn site (though honestly, this thought is what motivates me), this would potentially alter the development of a culture and generation that was born into the internet, so don’t make this decision lightly.

On the other side though, internet filters are hardly effective in keeping ‘bad’ stuff out.  If I am running a business, and give employees my equipment to use, and it is in turn spent viewing horseporn, there is something at stake.  I am largely responsible for what my equipment does, and if it’s serving offensive material or stolen goods to others, I am not able to escape all responsibility.  Not to mention that if my bandwidth and server cycles are spent serving someone’s non work related desires and interests, that is money I am losing as a company.  Then take the family lens out and realize that you can’t shield your kids from everything in life, but by the same token, you don’t bring drugs into the home and set it on top of the fridge and expect the kids not get into trouble.  Don’t open a tunnel wide to the seedy underbelly of society and expect them to only search for daisies and new coloring books.  This is a genuine dilemma.

So if we did want a governing body, who governs it?  Our attempts at truly international committees have been far from stellar thus far, so representation will almost certainly be sacrificed in such a pursuit.  Should we then trust a certain government with the discretion, perhaps the US, and what is to stop them from censoring mindlessly and killing the nature of the internet?  Once a regulating body is established, we’re kissing the internet as we know it goodbye.  Even if they’re good for the first several years, some congressman will get incited at the idea that you could talk treasonous things on such a public forum and regulation will be passed and things will curb downhill (see public television or radio and the FCC)

One idea is an organization called CP80 (cp80.org) that wants the internet to function in a channel type fashion over several ports.  For kids content, connect to port 55, for business stuffs connect to port 91, etc.  With the idea that there could be an adult channel and a ‘everything else channel’ where things could go on as is, but just like a channel, the user could block them entirely at the ISP level (translation, it could potentially be stopped before it even got to the home or business).  The downside here is that a governing body would have to be introduced.  Honestly, the only way I could see this working would be to give up on changing what we’ve got, and open up a distinct channel that is regulated and begin porting stuff over to it.  It would be decades of work to get something comparable to the internet replicated, but let’s be honest, it’s not a perfect solution.
Other ideas include similar approaches tied up into filters, but the problem here is filters are defensive tools, they react to what happened, so you’re always a few weeks behind the curve, which means you’re never entirely in the clear, and thus never more than about 75% effective.

So the thought is what is more valuable.  A regulated internet that has developers and architects who oversee its growth, thinking that in some strategic pruning, more fruit will be produced, or is it that a river will choose its own course, and by taking advantage of what it has become, we will get more production out of it.

I don’t have an answer for you, partly because I am not unbiased, I find myself choosing according to my own self interests.  I have predictions, but no answers.  My prediction is I see the internet being tamed by governing body, and in all honesty and it saddens me a little bit.  I see it as inevitable, someone will be put in charge, and it is the nature of the ungoverned to find some form of government to rule them eventually.  Is this the right solution, perhaps, but I don’t know and I find myself being put in increasingly influential conversations, and would like to give better answers than what I have.  So I’m asking, what do you see as the solution, or even what do you predict will happen?

Posted in commentary and tech 2 years, 10 months ago at 2:56 pm.

5 comments

  • Jenny

    I enjoyed your thoughts, There is the thought that if you outlaw guns, only the outlaws will have guns. Growing up in the 60′s & 70′s I am for freedom. One point is that a lay person such as I would not feel comfortable contributing to a governed site for fear of “looking” stupid. For lack of a better term. I am comfortable contributing in my forum as it is a take it or leave it forum. The other problem I see is greed. Greed takes over even the good guys and they would put a price tag on everything and it would just get higher and higher. On the thought of protecting children…of course you want to but for everything in their lives it is better to teach correct principles and let a person govern them selves. I do think we are living on borrowed time with the freedom of the internet and it won’t be long until it is harnessed in some form, but I don’t think I am looking forward to that day.

  • Meghan

    Wow. You explained that very well. That’s a really interesting dilemma. I am kinda siding with the don’t regulate end of things, simply because I’m not sure how they even would regulate it. The only thing I can think of would be some sort of standardized rating system like they have for movies and video games and music. But that seems like what those filters you can buy are doing, the only difference is this government regulation would have to rate every site which means they’d have to look at and approve every site and then people could choose for themselves still what they ‘watched.’ I hope that all makes sense. Point is, you got me thinking. This is interesting to think about . . . .

  • Geoffrey Is the MAN

    Certainly one of your best-written posts. And this is a dilemma that really has no great answer. FCC control over the internet would be a disaster, but letting things run amok and freewheeling is also dangerous.

    Another one of the biggest problems with filters is that it kills bandwidth and drastically increases page loading time. I want to pull my hair out when I try to access a web page on a computer with a filter. However, I think it is a parent’s job to figure out how they want to regulate their own home network, not the government’s. There are some decent filters and monitors that, rather than block sites, link to a master user account and send a notification email when a site of dubious quality is accessed.

    I often question which sort of political group will be more prone to regulating the internet. Moral conservatives, of course, want to keep stuff away from kids, but Democrats are the ones more interested in taxing the internet and having more oversight.

    While I am generally against censorship, I do recognise that it has its merits. My jaw drops at the amoral society of Europe, and how just about anything is available on network television. When I lived in Spain, porn mags were openly on display along with the day’s newspaper. So yes, surely some form of censorship is good.

    Perhaps it is typical of my liberal-libertarian bent, but I think it needs to be left alone. I’m glad that in the West the internet is largely unregulated. Regimes don’t block sites or filter content. Yes, there is a degree of danger in allowing anyone to access anything, but that is the essence of freedom. It shouldn’t be up to the government to regulate content. When dealing with the public sphere, yes, regulation is fine, but what people want to control in their own home is their business.

  • Luke

    Doan,
    This is an excellent post on an issue I confess I know very little about. I too am typically on the side of less government, since I love studying history and it’s pretty clear from history that big government=power=corruption and tyranny. However, I see your points on the other side of the argument as well. One item that I may be able to contribute is that for people like me who are not too good with computers, the current filters work really well. I would assume that that holds true for most kids too (as long as they aren’t child geniuses like you :) Therefore the ability to regulate the internet lies mostly with parents and not the government, which is a good thing.
    Also, my anti-liberal media side says that the internet is currently one of the only forms of media that gives an opposing view point to the mainstream newspaper/TV forms that seem to be more interested in pushing an agenda than reporting the news. For example, I wonder how many people would know the truth about the global warming hoax without people finding opposing viewpoints on the internet. If the government controlled the internet, a single political party might be able to pass a “fairness doctrine” type legislation and destroy open discussion of viewpoints while further pushing their own agenda. I know that sounds extreme, but internet censorship is alive and well in China. Anyway, thanks for the insightful post.

  • Jen

    I enjoyed reading this post and the comments. I can’t make a solid prediction. Regulating from this point forward seems a daunting task. Sheer volume alone. And, when I stumble on things I wish I hadn’t, I think about the kids who find this stuff and I’m quick to say, “why doesn’t someone monitor this? Look at TV and radio – it’s not freewheeling…” but that’s not necessarily a good argument since I’m often offended by things heard or seen on such media. Indeed, I’d rather have families shape children’s behavior on accessing what’s available out there (in here) than the government. In a perfect world (?) there wouldn’t be nasty things for our children to encounter, in our communities or on-line, but it is what it is. I’ve been blown away by the wonders on the web since I was first introduced to a simple black screen with only green text to read. It would be sad to lose the spirit of the world-wide-web. OK, rambling, signing off!