As the fight over net neutrality heats up, we can probably expect to see more things like this.

James Pethokouikis penned a column against NN that takes a few specious logical and factual leaps. This being a critique of something people on the internet enjoy, you can imagine the comments.

Let’s take a second to explain net neutrality. Here’s a quote from Columbia Law School professor Tim Wu:

“Network neutrality is best defined as a network design principle. The idea is that a maximally useful public information network aspires to treat all content, sites, and platforms equally.”

Google benefits from a neutral network, here is their public policy blog on the topic.

Basically, NN is what most of us have now with our internet service. All data is treated equally and sent to you at the highest rate you can access for your service. YouTube may load faster if you have a super-fast connection, but your ISP can’t make it load slower if you don’t have the “gold package.”

So it doesn’t matter where your data comes from or goes to, it goes as fast as you can send and receive it. Comcast as already taken some heat for slowing down peer-to-peer (p2p) traffic on their networks, making internet service kind of like phone service. You pay overages and fees to call certain numbers on your land land line, and you could pay more to access certain sites and data. Or, an ISP could block certain data (gambling sites, p2p, etc) for all but the highest-tier customers.

There are many more complex parts to net neutrality, but this is a piece of the core of the argument in the Reuters article linked above.

The FCC is moving to ensure NN, and the issue has largely become a party/ideology-line issue. Conservatives say the government shouldn’t meddle in service providers’ business. They say (despite whatever Comcast does) that ISPs have no plans to filter traffic and that sites like YouTube, Google and Yahoo are hogging the bandwith and stifling innovation. They also say that some web traffic (p2p mostly) is used to trade illegal content and should be controlled. They say NN is too much government regulation. (I think Glenn Beck called it socialism). Basically, they say companies that provide service to the internet aren’t controlling the internet, they’re just controlling their service, which happens to be access to the internet.

The biggest argument in favor of NN is that we already have it, basically. Innovative enterprises like Google (and everything else on the internet) thrived under a neutral system. Furthermore, proponents say corporations should not have a say in what we access online.

But is it corporate censorship? Verizon and Comcast pay to upgrade and maintain their infrastructure and it takes a lot of infrastructure to bring people the rich, high-file-sized content that makes the internet so great. If these companies want to limit bandwith to customers, should they be allowed to do so?

Should they be allowed to do so even if they have ulterior motives? If internet video is hurting cable subscriptions, Comcast or Insight could limit video speeds over its network to encourage more cable subscribers. It’s expensive to transfer data, and perhaps the companies want to save money. Is this a predatory practice?

To continue this debate, we also have to think about how we view the internet. Here in Louisville, we have two options for high speed internet–DSL or cable. (You could say we have three if you count cellular broadband.) Opponents of NN say that if one company does something unscrupulous with their network, customers can switch providers. But that argument doesn’t hold up everywhere. What if both companies throttle the network dishonestly? What if you live in rural America and only have one option for broadband? How do you access the internet without limits or restrictions on your browsing?

The options don’t really exist in enough places to say there’s reasonable competition for broadband in America. Because it costs so much to lay cable, it doesn’t behoove an upstart to lay its own cable where someone else’s cable has already been laid. Companies could use wireless transmitters, but filling up public airwaves requires more regulatory finagling.

So if companies pay to lay and maintain infrastructure, should they decide how that infrastructure is used? An electric company can’t block you from using power to run your toaster, but they also charge you more if you run your toaster all day. A water company couldn’t give you unfiltered water if you’re not a gold-level customer, but there are penalties for leaving the tub running. (Of course, there are government rules for how the water is filtered)

All this assumes the internet is a utility. Is it? Has the access to information and communication become so essential in modern life that it’s on par with power, water and roads? The answer to this is maybe, but it will be yes in the future. There are a few anti web holdouts now (how many people still say, “I don’t have e-mail” proudly?), but in 20 years there will be dramatically fewer. You can barely apply for a part-time job without internet access, and not everyone can get to a library to use a computer for free.

But broadband data isn’t paid for like water or power. You pay for the speed, not the data. Instead of buying 500 gigs of data transfer a month, you buy the ability to download those 500 gigs at 10 megabytes per second…for example.

So should we maybe look at the internet the way we look at roads? You have toll roads in some places and you pay taxes for maintenance and you can’t drive too fast, but no one is charging you more to drive to one grocery store than another. You might have to pay for parking, but your town probably has more than two grocery stores. But the vast majority of roads are run by the government.

So what’s the solution? Should we keep the internet the way it is or give more control to providers? There are consequences either way, for consumers or providers.

Maybe the answer is a public internet utility. I know that some folks will cry “Socialism” at this concept, and I’m not endorsing any concepts or ideas, but  some ISPs right here in Kentucky are thinking of doing just this on a municipal level. Those providers say the government (city, county, federal, etc) could provide a basic level of access and speed for a basic price. The feds come in at a disadvantage because they lack infrastructure. This gives private companies time to compete. They can step up their service and offer faster speeds. They can offer better package deals for phone and TV with your internet.

With a public web utility, the problems of price-gouging and poor access in rural areas are solved, according to public web proponents. And once folks get online, they’re going to want to get online faster, so ideally the public utility would create a market for higher-level private service. Also, neutrality wouldn’t have to be enforced on private networks. If customers don’t like what they’re getting with Comcast or Verizon, they have a neutral option to try out. Maybe it won’t be better.

Those are just a few arguments. I’m trying to present them fairly here and I have no idea what I personally believe. There are a million metaphors to make for net neutrality and broadband deployment, and none of them are good, not even the ones I’ve posted here. The fact is that this is a big 21st Century issue that needs a big 21st Century resolution.

What are your thoughts?