One of the fights that will have a significant long-term effect on the freedom of the press is over net neutrality. Oddly enough, conservatives, even though, at one point, the political blogosphere was predominantly conservative (no, really, it was), have been shrieking about the Fairness Doctrine.
Why?
Because, I think, this is a deep play to link TEH EVUL FAIRNESS DOKTRINE to net neutrality--because if there's one thing corporate America does not want (and that's who ultimately pulls the conservatives' strings), it's cheap and equal access to content*. Adam Reilly in the Boston Phoenix (italics mine):
The most important reason for caution, though, is the nascent effort to link the Fairness Doctrine with Net Neutrality. Without Net Neutrality, the telecom industry will almost certainly create a two-tiered system that privileges some content, while consigning the rest -- created, presumably, by those who lack big bucks -- to a sort of virtual ghetto.
Thus far, Net Neutrality hasn't been a partisan issue. Obama supports it; so does NARAL Pro-Choice America; so does the Christian Coalition and the National Rifle Association.
Then, this past August, Republican FCC commissioner Robert McDowell made a similar argument at the conservative Heritage Foundation. Regarding Net Neutrality, McDowell asked, "Will Web sites -- will bloggers have to give equal time or equal space on their Web site to opposing views, rather than letting the marketplace of ideas determine that?"
This is a stupid question. The Fairness Doctrine involved government mandating, in certain cases, that specific content be added to a particular media entity. In contrast, Net Neutrality doesn't involve intrusion into content; it only dictates absolute freedom of (virtual) movement. It's the opposite of what McDowell seems to think.
But as Joe Campbell, author of the blog 2parse.com, recently noted in a post linking Thierer's paper and McDowell's remarks, this is about tactics, not logic. If conservative Net Neutrality supporters come to see it as the Fairness Doctrine 2.0 -- something that's more easily done if the Fairness Doctrine is already on everyone's brain, as it is today -- they might rethink their support. Given Democratic gains in Congress and Obama's support for Net Neutrality, Campbell argues, "This is the big corporations' only chance to squash Net Neutrality."
Now that's a scary prospect. The Web is the future of news media. (It's also a battleground where, at the moment, Democrats are totally dominating Republicans.)
While I think healthcare and card check are more important, a neutral net is vital for expression in a democracy, whether you're a conservative or a liberal, or anything else.
*If net neutrality is squashed, how do you think they'll treat porn? It earns a lot of money for the intertubes....
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But Mike, don't you know that net neutrality will mean that all the kids will have access to child porn in the schools? /sarcasm mode off
Seriously, we do need something like net neutrality to protect freedom of speech. I was reading recently that some local news web sites have popped up that are investigating stories that traditional news media don't investigate for lack of staff. These sites differ from blogs in that they have editorial staff, etc. Such web sites hold the promise of becoming the local newspapers of the digital era.
There's a lot of tripe on the Internet but there's also a lot of interesting information that's not covered by the mainstream media.
Even blogs can be useful, saving their readers the trouble of seeking out interesting stuff themselves.
There's a downside too, though. A lot of "proper" newspapers have taken to trawling the Internet for their stories. Nothing wrong with that per se but all too often they don't do even the most basic research, and don't clearly identify them as the unsubstantiated rumours that they usually are.
This is empty rhetoric. Internet access speed (and access speed is all we are talking about here) is already tiered based on what connection service you buy and no free speech apocalypse has ensued. What's really at stake in net neutrality is whether the infrastructure owners can charge content providers as well as their end-users.
Infrastructure providers are against it and content providers are for it for obvious reasons of self interest - all the free speech rhetoric on both sides of this relies on a misunderstanding of the technology. End users are affected based on what type of content they access. If they access lots of less bandwidth intensive content from a large number of sources (such as web browsing), then they benefit since the additional revenue stream will result in end-user price drops for service. If they use lots of bandwidth-intensive, real-time services from a small number of content providers (such as watching streaming videos or playing online games with centralized servers), then they'll lose since while they'll save on their internet access, their savings as well as those of others, will come from the costs of the content providers, which will be passed on the users.
Former Senator Barack H. Obama Jr. (D-IL) posted on the change.gov site, an explicit and unequivocal commitment to supporting Net Neutrality. I don't know if it's still there, because they've messed with the site since I noticed it. But he should be held to this position as firmly as humanly possible, and reminded of it daily.
Matt, that may be the question that you're concerned with, but it's not the question this post is concerned with.
The question here is whether private (and perhaps government) actions can limit access speed for porn let's say. After all why should those poor honest email and websurfing only guys you're apparently defending be paying for the bandwidth of the evil bastards looking at porn all day?
The fact that our telecom industry is such crap that this is even an argument is the real problem.
Reining in bandwidth hogs does not involve looking at the content. In fact, as an ISP I can tell you that I do not WANT to look at the content of my users' communications. However, I do need to monitor BEHAVIOR to ensure that users are not violating the network's terms of service -- especially in a way that would impact other users' quality of service. While it's true that P2P is primarily used for trafficking in illegal copies of music and movies (and is also a primary vector for child pornography), I as an ISP cannot tell, a priori, what traffic is legal and what is illegal and do not want to be put in the position of having to do so. I don't want to be a "content cop" (and neither do the big guys like Comcast)! However, if a user runs P2P 24x7 and degrades the network, it hurts everyone on that network and it's reasonable for me to throttle or block that behavior. That's what Comcast was doing and was right to do -- in fact, P2P mitigation is a "best practice" within the industry. Managing traffic is, in fact, good for free speech, because it prevents anyone from denying free speech to others by clogging the "pipes" of the Internet. So, why are activists who favor "network neutrality" regulation claiming that it is necessary for free speech? Look at who's funding them: corporations like Vuze (a maker of P2P software and a major promoter of piracy) and Google (which recently acquired Doubleclick, the highly intrusive online advertiser that leaves spyware cookies on users' computers and tries to track them throughout the Internet). These corporations of questionable ethics want the Internet regulated for THEIR benefit, not for users' benefit.
Coriolis,
It's practically impossible to implement a content-driven filter for IP packets - it would massively increase latency in the network and can easily be defeated by encryption. Source-based filtering is very expensive, particuarly as the list of sources to check grows. Filtering raises costs for ISPs and degrades service - companies that charge more to deliver less don't tend to stay around very long. It can also be defeated relatively easily by a commercial implementation of technologies like Tor.
The net effect of this is that it's easy to elevate the priority of data above a baseline based on info in the IP datagram header since prioritized packets would have every reason to be up-front about their contents and origins, but it's not practical to block things or slow them down below the baseline because contents and origins are easy to conceal if so desired.
Filtering raises costs for ISPs and degrades service - companies that charge more to deliver less don't tend to stay around very long. It can also be defeated relatively easily by a commercial implementation of technologies like Tor.