Having my family over the holidays, I struggled to explain net neutrality to them when they asked. They always come to me for these topics since I am experienced in the internets and puters.....
When explaining the topic to anyone older than 10; and/or having more intelligence than a potato, be prepared for dozens of follow up questions should you offer up the standard "It's good, so that internet providers can't filter content." bit. It gets worse if the person asking is looking to get into a political debate. Mainly because the topic is a lot deeper than the statement above expresses.
My family and I have very different political opinions, so when things like this come up, it almost always turns in to a political debate, which I've finally become old and wise enough to shut down immediately. If you're in the same boat; I would suggest approaching the topic by presenting the facts, rather then some politicized notion of net neutrality.
A deeper look
Let's break down the standard "It's good, so that internet providers can't filter content" statement to understand why this is both wrong and way over simplified.
It's good ...
Is it? Maybe, but' lets come back to this later after we understand what it is.
so that internet providers can't filter content.
Nope, not true. Filtering content would be at best a side effect of a provider not abiding by neutrality rules. This political tagline is designed to plant FUD that your internet provider may get fed up with allowing Netflix to stream on their network, particularly when the network owner sells products directly in competition with Netflix. This isn't to say that the scenario isn't possible, or even probable, but it's not what net neutrality is about.
Defining the problem that net neutrality is supposed to address
Net neutrality defined:
the principle that Internet service providers should enable access to all content and applications regardless of the source, and without favoring or blocking particular products or websites.
Put simply net neutrality is the responsibility of a network to allow all traffic to flow freely on the network regardless of its contents or source.
But wait, isn't that what the tagline sums up that you just said isn't true No. Well, yes, and no... see this is why it's hard to explain, because it requires some understanding of how the internet works. I don't like that tagline because it only addresses one possible scenario of the overall topic.
I'm not going to go deep in depth into network routing or internet infrastructure, that's another topic for someone else to deal with. However there is a fundamental technical topic one has to understand at least at a high level to begin to debate the merits of net neutrality.
:warning: Political traps ahead :warning:
Strawman arguments about the need for network prioritization always seem to come up, of which there is probably some merit, on both sides. However, If we're going to debate the topic at hand, we have to ignore why packet prioritization is needed, and accept it as a fact that it is a requirement for networks to function.
Some technical mumbo jumbo
Quality of Service (QoS)
At the internet provider level, packets are routed or prioritized by the type of packet. They do this because, in order for you to stream your latest episode of stranger things from Netflix, the data packets have to make it to your device at a fairly constant rate without interruption, otherwise you get that annoying buffering ring of "fuck!". Voice over IP packets are also prioritized, so that phone calls are clean and there aren't breaks in the conversation. This prioritization has to happen, or the service doesn't work acceptably during any network congestion at all. There are some advanced techniques to mitigate the effects on video which do not rely on QoS. However for VOIP, I am not aware of any such techniques that can possibly work due to the real time nature of a telephone call.
With this in mind, there are some obvious questions that come up about net neutrality and how to regulate it.
** Hmmm, so you're telling me that networks already prioritize traffic based on type and source? ** Yup.
** Without this prioritization, some of my apps could not work?** Yup.
** So, if one were to make rules against prioritizing traffic based on the definition of net neutrality some apps and content would not work or be delivered in a usable way? ** By definition yes, so somehow QoS would have to be excluded from the rules, thus seemingly creating an instant loophole to make it unenforceable. But I am not a lawyer or lawmaker so maybe there is a way around this.
** So net neutrality is stupid.... ** Maybe, but maybe not.
Hopefully, we can agree that traffic has to be prioritized in order for some special cases to work properly. It's silly to argue otherwise, unless there is some technology that I have failed to acknowledge in this explanation, and if I have, I'm sure it will come up in the comments.
ISP tiers
Your ISP is not really your ISP..... In most cases, the people you pay for internet access, are providing you an entrypoint to a higher tier network, with services they have tacked on to service your area. They in turn, pay (or trade services) for access to the internet as you probably think of it.
To learn more about how this works, check out : ISP Tiers
This is important because if we were to talk about regulating how traffic is prioritized, it would be particularly relevant to discuss at what level it should be regulated. There are many technical and cost considerations regarding application of packet prioritization at various levels. However, just looking at the list of providers it seems pretty clear which tier would have the most temptation to behave unethically, and where legislation should focus first.
So then, what if anything really requires regulation? Well, that's the debate but let me see if I can offer some ideas that make a little sense.
Addressing the problem
There are two main concerns that we need to address...
- Network prioritization motivated by profit and commerce.
- Prioritization motivated by politics.
Content throttling for profit
Remember our Netflix scenario where a provider who offers high priced cable packages may decide to start slowing down access to Netflix in order to effectively force you in to paying extra to access a faster pipe, or abandon Netflix for the providers high priced content packages (which would likely conveniently come out to be just a slight bit cheaper than faster access for Netflix). Let's explore that scenario to see what would really happen if a provider pulled a stunt like that.
As a consumer paying for an internet package from this provider, I would first evaluate my options of using another provider. Even in the U.S. where there are legalized monopolies, I have several options for my internet provider. One if a cable company, who would have incentive to throttle netflix, the other is a phone company who has no incentive to throttle the video content, but may throttle third party VOIP in order to sell their own packages. Since I am not a VOIP user, I would deem that as the lesser impact and switch companies. If I did not have that option, and I were really hooked on a show and had to have it, the next logical step would be piracy. If you're keeping score, the attempts to stop pirated content has not been overly successful.
If I'm Netflix, and a provider is throttling my content, I run commercials in that market and make sure everyone knows they are doing it, and partner with a competitor and do my best to drive that provider out of the business of providing internet services. I also develop technologies to rely less on prioritization of traffic, and ways of cloaking my packets on the network so that they can't be identified and throttled. Both of which have existing technology to accomplish.
"Sure, Netflix has unlimited resources to fight this but what about the little guy?!?!"
- The little guy would have been facing impossible odds to begin with if they choose to compete directly in the same market as Netflix. So probably they won't.
- As for the little guy creating new apps and services, providers probably won't take notice of the traffic they are generating until they are no longer the little guy.
- As for content creators contributing to a platform large enough to be impacted by content throttling (e.g "Youtubers"). Unfortunately, knowingly or not, you made yourself an employee/dependent of what I will call the YouTube network, which is in direct competition with Time Warner/ Comcast, Disney, Netflix et. al. As such, the actions taken by network providers to regain the share of the market you've taken over the last decade is perfectly legal and warranted as a sound business move.
Content throttling/filtering motivated by politics
This is a red herring to throw people off the real purpose of net neutrality (as it's currently being debated). Tools already exist to circumvent even the tightest of internet regulation. See China for examples. Use Tor VPN I2P or any combination to circumvent censorship.
Social media sites censoring "fake news"
If the U.S had decent any censorship laws, this would be moot. Call me old fashioned, but I really do believe that the individual has the responsibility to determine for his or her self what is and isn't fact. Further it is the responsibility for the party damaged by so called "fake news" to file suit to censor individuals who knowingly slander/ commit libel against another individual.
Facebook and Google are clearly overstepping in attempting to devalue or downrank this information. The better solution would be to categorize the content and allow the user to determine which categories to censor is any.
The point here is that this is not a net neutrality issue, it is a censorship problem for which the U.S requires better laws. Corporate actors like Facebook and Google who have become de facto sources of information should act more ethically in their roles by not censoring or applying special rules to hide or suppress information that doesn't fall in line with their corporate image.
The real problem
The real fight for net neutrality is between two factions of corporations attempting to use the government to protect their own interests. They are playing it out in the public as though it is some last bastion of hope for the internet. But that's bullshit.
In reality, net neutrality is Netflix and YouTube trying to start a circle jerk about free and open internet in order to protect their own products from their competitors getting wise to the fact that they own the infrastructure their competitors are using to beat them with.
No one at any of the tier 3 internet providers woke up and suddenly had an epiphany that they could eliminate their competition by throttling their competitors data feed. That has always been the case and they all knew it. It wasn't until internet content creators started to threaten the business model of content providers who also own Tier 3 ISPs that this was even an issue.
Frankly, is there a rational argument to prevent an ISP, who is also a content creator, from protecting it's business model by at minimum making it expensive for competitors to use it's network? There's not, but there are plenty of rational arguments for not allowing a content creator to also own the only gateway to common infrastructure like the internet. The law to prevent this should look more like an antitrust law than it should a law that dictates how a network operates.
Conslusion
With the current structure, net neutrality is impossible technically. If a content producer also owns a content delivery network (such as an ISP), then said content producer should by all rights be allowed to deliver prioritize the content however it want's to. Even if someone were to make it illegal to prioritize traffic based on source, as we saw, they will still have to be able to prioritize it based on type for the network to function properly. That fact creates a scenario for the noncompliant ISP to blame poor application of QoS to avoid any legal ramifications.
The real solution is to eliminate the conflict of interest, or to ensure that some non-conflicted competition exists.