Former presidential candidate Senator John McCain has issued a press release outlining his new bill to prohibit the FCC from issuing binding rules on how the Internet is operated in the United States.Now, I am a fan of Net Neutrality from a philosophical standpoint. I firmly believe that Internet backbone carriers as well as end user ISPs should not be allowed to implement network practices that limit users based on the amount they pay for service or how much of a service they use.
But, to me, the issue is much broader than basic FCC regulation over the physical network itself. This is a problem for the FTC in how data networks and Internet access is marketed to a strikingly dumb population, and it is an issue for the Justice department to been involved in when companies consort with one another to stifle competition in broadband markets.
Since the early days of 56k V.90 dialup service, ISPs have shouted from the mountain tops that their service offerings were unlimited. Both myself and several of my friends (Bone_Enterprise can attest) took the ISPs to task on this by remaining connected for weeks at a time. Many times, accounts were disabled and we were informed that we were abusing their network. Despondent, we replied that they advertised the service as unlimited. The response was always, "it is unlimited, but you can't use all you want." The incongruity of it all was something that irked us to no end.
As it turns out, what they were advertising is, "unlimited ability to access," and not, "unlimited usage." I believe this is false advertising in sheep's clothing. Regularly the FDA requires pharmaceutical companies to issue new profanely long commercials clarifying their claims about a particular drug and its side effects. Where is this watchdog mentality about the Internet and the trillions of dollars in GDP that it fosters?
The answer is most assuredly money and power. Companies like the toolboxes over at Comcast (which launched this lovely new feature today) throw tens of thousands of dollars at politicians like Senator McCain and his fellow Congressmen (clogged tubes, anyone?) who are uniquely and egregiously unqualified to be making suppositions about global networks, much less binding law.
Were the understanding of how networks function at an organic level and how an Internet free of corporate bullying drives innovation and economic prosperity truly understood by those with the power, I have a feeling that Net Neutrality would've been a reality some time ago. Of course, the blame is not solely on our elected officials; no, the blame is also shared with our fellow citizens. As a nation, and more specifically as a generation, the vast majority of us have become technology gluttons and demand that everything we interact with be simple, perfect, and require little to no effort from us. I believe this attitude is dangerous and stifles the inner need in each of us to grow and better ourselves through learning.
If we can have such stringent oversight of things like pharmaceuticals and stock market actions, things that require significant time and effort to understand and master, why can we not expect the same from the shepherds of our technology? While I generally advocate less government interaction in our daily lives, I do believe that there are some roles in which government must serve, and this is one of them. When companies get so large and their services so vital, they must be cared for to ensure that they do not take advantage of their customers. It is my hope that, in a limited form, Net Neutrality quickly comes to pass and that companies are forced to fairly market their services to an unsuspecting populace.
But something tells me it may be a ways off.