Mar
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Lemme make it loud and clear even before I start writing this article. I do not support Network Neutrality legislations. That’s right, Network Neutrality is a legislation which asks Governments to step in and make it a law that all the ISPs must treat all bits equal.
The worst part of this whole campaign is they have disguised this “Fairness Doctrine for the Internet” as “Save the Internet Freedom campaign”. One after the other my Libertarian friends are falling into the delusion of being pro-Internet Liberty.
One of the co-author on our site wrote an elaborate article on how though network neutrality is desirable but it should be implemented through free market(I disagree that Net neutrality is desirable, I will elaborate that later). She clearly does not support the idea of govt stepping in and doing anything, but she is clearly impressed by the “Save the Internet Freedom” slogan.
One of the most intriguing example of this thing was seen in an article written by a fellow blogger where he makes a case against government regulation but ends up endorsing Net Neutrality campaigns:
The reason for me to share this incident is, due to unnecessary regulations, government policies, people are deprived of quality porn. The porn movies that are shown in theaters are nothing compared to what we get now in this Internet age. Though I am no good at economics, I can see the difference between porn available on the “unregulated, free” Internet and those in the “regulated, government authorized” theaters (I no longer visit them). So in an unregulated market, it is likely that we get access to quality things (not just porn). So at least, lets save (Link to a Network Neutrality site) Internet from being regulated, now and in future, thought the threat is not imminent in India.
Its kind of funny, asking to regulate the Internet to prevent it from being regulated.
What is Network Neutrality?
Network Neutrality is the government legislation under which an ISP will be forced to treat every bit equal that means they won’t be able to prioritized or deprioritize data depending upon the source or destination of the data.
Take for example if a doctor in India is performing surgery in Africa’s remote hospital with a robotic arm, the ISPs will be prohibited by law to prioritize that data over lets say my iTunes songs download, or youtube viewers. If you do not understand the gravity of the situation, understand this simple thing, right now Internet surgeries are not feasible because of the unreliability of the network lag. If a doctor uses right arm to lift umbilical cord of a baby and uses the left arm to cut it(for an illustrative example) and the packets for cutting operation receive before the packets of right arm operation then the arm would end up damaging the baby or the mother.
If Internet was a private road system, then Network Neutrality would be like expecting the private road owners to give same speed lanes to everyone. IF an ambulance or businessmen wanna travel even by paying more, they must not allowed to do so. How is that a Libertarian point of view? Isn’t discrimination of anything a core of private property. When I bring my 10 KG of apples to a market, I discriminate against all those people who are unable to pay high price and I sell them to the highest bidder. How about “save the freedom of the apple market” and bring a legislation called “Apple Price Neutrality”, where the apple seller will be forced to treat every apple buyer equally and he must sell it to them at whatever price he sells it to anyone else. In simple words its nothing but price control in disguise.
Is Network Neutrality desirable?
No! Network Neutrality is not desirable just like a road neutrality is not desirable, we want different lanes for different speeds. We want the data which makes more money, and does more business to be prioritize over the data which does pleasure. It will be different than what Internet is right now, but it will be much more efficient.
For example, the Stock Market quotes and transaction should be prioritize over all the other data, right after the other real time critical data. Ebay bidding process should be prioritized over free blogs. Real Time web business meetings should be prioritized over youtube videos. There is no desirability in having all the data delivered equally to everyone.
People just don’t get it because Google, Microsoft and Yahoo supports it and people like those companies and the free services they provide.
If all these things confuse you just remember whose property rights are we talking about here? Definitely the ISP and Telecom company’s property rights in a violation here.
Can ISPs and Telecom companies block websites?
Yes they can, they can block access or slow down access to say GMail to promote a local email provider who pays them more than GMail. If you understand Free Market you will understand that a “level playing field” is a myth perpetrated by Neoclassical economists. Nobody needs to level the playing field for all the players, the people with more investment and a better business model must be able to get better services to reach more people in a better more efficient manner for the maximum efficiency of the market.
When an apple seller sells his apples to the highest bidder, he achieves maximum money to grow more apples and serve the next highest bidder. Similarly when ISPs will be able to charge more money to the people who need faster and more critical Internet they will be having more money to serve the other people who cannot pay that much.
The only people who would be in a disadvantage are companies like Google, Microsoft and Yahoo. The youtube vidoes come to you at the same speed as your email, your stock quotes, your Internet video and voice chat, your blogs, your P2P music and movies.
The most realistic scenario is that no ISP can make money or stay in market by arbitrarily blocking websites they don’t deem fit. Sure a Church Affiliated ISP will be blocking all the immoral websites but then you are free not to take their services.
The only reason why an ISP would block or slow down a service intentionally if they get PAID to do so. Who would pay an ISP to slow down GMail? A competitive mail provider. The competition would be in the service providers, not in unique content. For example, Cato.org is not going to have Mises.org blocked. Even New York Times cannot pay to have New York Post blocked(even if they do it would be more like competition among the two on who outbids whom, so it would be a totally futile and unproductive exercise).
Why is everyone supporting Network Neutrality (Legislation)?
Mosts people who are supporting Network Neutrality don’t realize the truth, congrats to the brilliant work team google is doing to run this campaign. The usage of the words such as “Freedom”, “Save the Internet, Save the World”, and other stuff which stirs emotion among people, turns almost all the bloggers into pro-Net Neutrality supporters. They wanna keep Internet free from Telecom companies but in fine print its the government who has to take control of the Internet in order to keep Internet free from Telecom companies. Its kind of ironic.
If someone asks me the question “Do you wanna keep the Internet free from any kind of Censorship?” My answer would be yes, and then they say “Well then support net neutrality, the telecom companies are going to censor us”.
The non-Libertarians who think that they are doing the pro-Liberty thing get confused when their life long Libertarian friends don’t support them at this issue. Seriously what Libertarian wants to support Government intervention for anything. Its the same thing as, Equality before Liberty, or Liberty before Equality.
The problem is nobody will tell me that to keep the Internet free from Censorship we will have to invite the Government to do the job. Its the irony of most democracies. To save the society from violence, thugs and robbers we have to give all the power to commit violence, theft and robbery to one organization.
I call you to raise the awareness about the truth of Network Neutrality, I don’t mind people chose to support it even after that, but at least don’t allow people to support it without even knowing what the real issue is. Please feel free to drop the link of his article on the blogs who get the issue of net neutrality wrong.
20 Responses to “Say no to Net Neutrality”
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Pangala Nagendra Rao Says:
March 14th, 2009 at 11:51 pmI think large people of India doesn’t aware of this. And those who are aware are kep quite because of <i> Chalta hai</i> nature. I found a samething here
http://ofsongsforthesoul.blogspot.com/2009/03/net-neutrality-and-indians.html
renegade_division Says:
March 15th, 2009 at 12:56 amI am not sure if you realize what the article is about. The link you posted is of pro-net neutrality article, there are huge comments posted in the comments section by me and Unpretentious Diva.
Most of the people in India don’t know what Net Neutrality is, those who do know support it. Airtel must have full rights on enforcing any policy on their private property that is their internet connections, and their optical fiber lines.
Pangala Nagendra Rao Says:
March 15th, 2009 at 1:05 amSorry!! In a hurry I posted the link right but not the comment.
renegade_division Says:
March 15th, 2009 at 1:16 amIts alright, just post your views and I will edit it all to show only that comment.
Pangala Nagendra Rao Says:
March 15th, 2009 at 1:46 amI think you are right in saying big and commercial net users like google, yahoo etc are to be charged more than us. It is similar kind like in BSNL land line phone. Urban users are charged more than rural users. That is justified also to the extent that rural usage is less and also services and support to rural areas are limited compared to urban areas.
But my doubt here is whether the ISP providers will be fare enough to fix the range for the charges based on bandwidth or net usage as a whole?
renegade_division Says:
March 15th, 2009 at 5:19 am@Pangala Narendra Rao said:
See the debate is not whether we can trust ISPs to provide us the most fair service model for the price we pay, because that question is as irrelevant as “Can we trust the Apple sellers to be fair enough to charge us the correct amount for the apple?”. The truth is apple sellers sell the apples to the highest price payer, if there is no body to pay the high price they sell it to the next highest price payer.
But that doesn’t mean anybody is not given fair amount of apples or anything like that. The poor people also get apples because of the fact that an apple seller is able to charge any price he wants he charges high prices to the highest payer of the apple, and uses that money(or the handsome profit invites other people into the apple farming business) to grow more apples.
When a lot more apples are grown even the poor person can afford them.
On the other hand if the apple seller is forced to sell it on a govt setup price, the apple seller either follows it honestly and now has no incentive to produce more apples, OR he starts to produce and sell apples in the black market.
In India things go for black market, in America people honestly follow it.
So a net neutrality law will prohibit our Internet into becoming a backbone of our economy, in India internet will turn towards black market. That is ISPs will prioritize and deprioritize the internet and you can’t do anything about it. IF something happens Airtel will simply bribe the politicians and police.
Tell me if anything I said sounds unrealistic to you?
Pangala Nagendra Rao Says:
March 15th, 2009 at 11:16 pmWhat have you said is completely realistic. I can not say about USA, but surely in India ISP providers if given chance will do all the black marketing stuff without being noticed by mass and loot as many money as possible. That is worrying part for us. In USA Net Neatrality may result in unfair charging depending the usage. But in India private ISP providers will definately in no mood to give the benefit of charging more to large net users to the low net users. Such ethical mentality is still a far dream to become true in our nation. But we have to aim for it also. However that is not the topic, will discuss on it in relevent post.
GP Says:
March 16th, 2009 at 9:58 amHmmm..interesting topic.
I don’t care and neither its possible for me to judge / check whether ISP’s following net-neutrality laws (if such legislation turn into law) as long as I am getting what I want from internet (read – Music/.pdf/movies/info. etc)
and Just for the sake of discussion – Whoever brought this legislation into picture forgot the fact that - Its not possible to successfully implement it .Soooooooooo… why bother?
renegade_division Says:
March 16th, 2009 at 11:38 pm@Pangala Narendra Rao said:
Dude you are not getting the point(maybe it has to do with the fact that its a quite technological aspect of Net Neutrality). Lemme explain it to you in terms of talking points. 1) Currently on Internet most of the traffic is treated equally, mostly(but not all) traffic travels with same priority.
In India there is no issue of discussion, all the above things are for America, because in India first of all the Net Neutrality law will be openly flaunted on your face by the ISPs, and secondly it will also not result in the above said benefits on the level I suggested.
2) Because of the above policy Internet right now cannot be used for time critical purposes, there is no real Quality of Service(QoS). You cannot perform an surgery on Internet because Internet connections are not reliable.
3) This policy only makes Internet good for watching low quality videos, transferring non-critical files(which might take a day or two to download and its no worry) and reading text based stuff.
4) IF ISPs start to prioritize real critical data(like stock market quotes, internet surgeries, video feed of a bank) over non-critical data(youtube videos, p2p, free music downloads), it will help in creating a new Internet, which will form the backbone of the economy.
5) Take for example currently credit card transactions take place on the dialup internet and they take 20-30 seconds for the machine to authorize the transaction, this traffic should clearly be prioritized over the non-critical google videos traffic.
6) This unfair charging you are talking about is stupid, the only thing which might be affecting you is the cost of free stuff, like youtube videos might become slower than usual(but if google makes good money from the ad revenue they might speed up too). Your internet will become cheaper in fact.
7) THERE IS NO UNFAIR CHARGING.
NET NEUTRALITY LAWS ARE HIGHLY UNETHICAL. This is the whole point of my post. I am sorry but this is not just another Internet blog about “pathetic immorality in Indian society”. We talk stuff which makes us stand in contradiction with 9 out of 10 mainstream blogs. But we do the right thing.
Anyways, Net Neutrality laws are unethical because they ask you to do things on YOUR PROPERTY something over which you have a full right to do whatever you want. Net Neutrality laws are as unethical as laws about Prostitution,
Drugs,
Copyright,
Pornography and
Blackmailing.
Click on each issue to read my article on those laws. Black Market is a perfectly legitimate moral institution. You force people to sell their product at a specific price YOU WISH, and they will move to the black market to sell it.
Most of the Indian Mafia smuggled Gold, because it was unethical to bring Gold in India so only unethical people did those jobs. When you legalized gold import to India the gold smugglers got eliminated with gold smuggling, Underworld in India is in its all time weak.
@GP Said:
This movement is an American issue, in America if a law is made it will be followed, but don’t forget that Google powers Blogspot and there are numerous Indian blogs hosted on Google and millions of Indians use Google’s services, so when google promotes a campaign people are bound to get wrapped up into it.
Anyways we are discussing the right stance on this issue, our usage of Internet will be solely affected by what happens to the Net Neutrality legislation in America, if they pass it Internet will be screwed forever, and if it is not passed we can see a new era of Infrastructure’s backbone on Internet. Whether the similar law is brought in India and its passed or not its irrelevant.
Dating Says:
March 17th, 2009 at 1:57 amI believe that network neutrality would be a big mistake. The government already has enough control over everything else. Do they need to put their hands in one more pot. I am tired of this government wanting their hands in everything. Is that not why we left England!
Adieu 2009 « Ruminations of a Sourashtrian Says:
December 31st, 2009 at 7:31 am[...] friend, I find it somewhat thought provoking. 3. An Anecdote – Initially I misunderstood that Net Neutrality will help protect smaller websites and blogs but it turns out to be other way. Government [...]
Net Neutrality - The Great Debate Continues | LegalFish: The Daily Tackle Says:
April 30th, 2010 at 11:41 am[...] For more information about the fight against net neutrality and how to get involved, visit stopthecap.com. To say no to net neutrality, visit reasonforliberty.com. [...]
Anton Says:
June 18th, 2010 at 1:34 pmHi,
This abt it from a mfg perspective. Is it is okay if an industrial customer pays more to his supplier of spare parts to supply low quality materials to his competitor.
Let us dumb it down even further. If I see you in a restaurent, would it be Okay if I pay more to the chef, to give you crappy food. True, I can do it if Chef is my friend. But can I make a legal transaction to this effect?
Anton
Renegade Division Says:
June 21st, 2010 at 9:35 pm@Anton
Its perfectly ok to do that and there are no laws against it. Surprisingly nobody does that(except in the minds of people who want to support net neutrality), because its called competition and market, because no rational individual would go to another enterprise or an individual to pay for some stuff, and receive inferior quality of stuff(assuming its not a contractual violation, as in if you promise me 2kg of rice, then you give me 2 kg of rice, if not, then its a contractual violation, there is no special law needed to deal with fraud), because someone else paid this guy to hand me inferior quality stuff.
I don’t know Anton which f*cked up reality you live in, but in the reality I live in I can’t think of any sane individual who continues to do business with such an organization despite wishing things otherwise. So cut these stupid examples out.
Tea Party & Canada Differ on who controls Internet Says:
August 27th, 2010 at 2:33 am[...] the tent, the government can and will regulate/censor those they disagree with. Stop them NOW! Say no to Net*Neutrality | Reason for Liberty Nobody needs to level the playing field for all the players, the people with more investment and a [...]
Jaxx89 Says:
September 30th, 2010 at 2:52 pmJust came across this.
from what I read you say
“”Take for example if a doctor in India is performing surgery in Africa’s remote hospital with a robotic arm, the ISPs will be prohibited by law to prioritize that data over lets say my iTunes songs download, or youtube viewers. If you do not understand the gravity of the situation, understand this simple thing, right now Internet surgeries are not feasible because of the unreliability of the network lag. If a doctor uses right arm to lift umbilical cord of a baby and uses the left arm to cut it(for an illustrative example) and the packets for cutting operation receive before the packets of right arm operation then the arm would end up damaging the baby or the mother.”"”
From what I understand. Net neutrality is meant for public networks and a hospital would go in for a private network so the question of the doctor hurting the baby or the mother would not arise.
Net neutrality doesn’t suggest every network has to be neutral to be useful. Discriminatory, private networks can be extremely useful for other purposes. What the principle suggests that there is such a thing as a neutral public network, which has a particular value that depends on its neutral nature
Renegade Division Says:
October 4th, 2010 at 1:06 amDo you realize the cost of putting down a private network from India to Africa? Or forget that just figure out the cost to lay down a private network between two parts of the city. How are you going to do it? You may spend thousands of dollars on it but you will never be able to recover the cost of it without reselling the bandwidth to others. The moment you do that your network becomes private and gets under the network neutrality laws.
On the other hand I think you don’t understand the difference between public and private networks. All Internets other than owned by the NASA or a directly by the govt are privately owned by the ISPs and Telecom companies. But I believed when you said private and public you meant networks sold to public vs networks only used by the owner of the bandwidth. Am I correct or am I missing something here?
Jaxx89 Says:
October 5th, 2010 at 8:32 pmYes you are right. I do not understand the concept of Public or Private networks. What I do understand is that no hospital would go in for an operation with robotic arms. Getting the doctor in person would be better. However a research facility might use such technology. Now what I do know that that there are many companies, studios and banks in India that use dedicated Internet services, ISDN lines or whatever. Are you trying to say that their services will be given the same importance as yours. And also dedicated services are usually not provided by ISP’s and Telecom companies like Airtel. But even if they are, I’m sure those are on different servers than the regular public servers. If not then what would be the point in getting dedicated services. You won’t see web hosts getting services from Airtel or Reliance. If it were that way then websites wouldn’t be able to handle thousands of users at the same time.
Earl Says:
October 10th, 2010 at 5:12 pmAbout the porn quote, whoever said that must have a bad taste in porn, because when you pay money for porn, you usually get a retarded plot, cheesy acting, fake tits and dicks, fancy camera angles, bad music, and long-winded foreplay scenes. And what choices do you have in it? Teacher-seduces-student, mom-seduces-son’s-friend, boss-seduces-secretary, etc… BORING!
In free porn you can find just about anything, from kinky to flat-out revolting. And usually they cut out all the junk you don’t want in pay-porn and get straight to what you came there for. Seriously, anyone who still tries to work a cliche, unconvincing plot into porn is out of touch with their own audience.
As for the apples analogy, I think I might just be getting hay fever from your strawman. No, net neutrality is not like the government telling you how much you have to sell your apples for, and to who. It’s more like this: You’ve been selling apples for years but recently you decided you could make a lot more money if you made your customers pay extra to pick from the better apples, and for those who didn’t want to pay extra, well, they have to pick from the pile of rotten apples. All the apples, the good ones and the rotten ones, all came from the same trees and you didn’t have to put any more effort or resources into picking the good ones, therefore the extra fee is completely arbitrary and pointless, and a testament to your endless greed and total lack of respect for the consumer. And net neutrality would be the guy to stop you from sodomizing the customers who work just as hard as you do for their pay.
Last of all, you say that some data is more important than other data, like that’s just fact. Sorry but by implying stock tickers should take priority over videos on Youtube is telling me that you think investors and day-traders are more important PEOPLE than those watching Youtube. I’m sure human beings love being categorized into tiers of importance. Equality, how un-American…
Saikiran Says:
November 11th, 2011 at 7:33 am2 things to consider before buying ny argument,
1. I pay X$ to transfer Y gigs of data at Z KBPS using a providers line, now what content i transfer over the line should be left my discretion, not by the ISP’s discretion, ISP’s right should ends at defining value of variable X.
2. IP on which internet runs does not guarantee data transfer in any way, so the case of operation over internet is not technically correct, those kinds of mission critical transfers happen over leased lines using different protocols.