The time period between 1996 and 2008 has shown that the U.S. system of government is so riddled with institutional corruption that a net neutrality law will only be co-opted by the telcos it is meant to govern.

by Alex Goldman ISP-Planet Managing Editor [April 15, 2008]

Brad Templeton spoke at the Freedom to Connect conference in his role as chair of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (he also works with Bit Torrent). He said that regulation has not protected the internet, so we need to decide what's precious about the internet and concentrate on protecting that.

Of course, the legal system does have a role in protecting internet end users from monopoly behavior. The EFF is suing AT&T for warrantless wiretaps. The failure of regulation, Brad Templeton argues, has left him, "neutral on net neutrality."

In theory it's a good idea, but in practice regulation has unanticipated side effects.

The theory of net neturality says that its architecture, a stupid network that does not privilege any one service or application, is exactly what has allowed the internet to deliver every service and application.

What makes the internet the internet
Templeton argued that's not true. He said, "the real invention of the internet was not technology. It was not protocols or packet switching. I think that the thing that made the internet great was its pricing model. It enabled user financed networking."

That pricing model is threatened by a new oligopoly. "The large ISPs peered with each other and then started a big of a racket overcharging small ISPs."

The backbones pretend to own the internet; the customers believe they're paying for it. "When Whitacre said he didn't want Google to use his pipes for free, he exposed a dissonance between what customers think they're buying and what telcos think they're saying."

If the backbones own the internet, they will fight every innovation. "P2P technology is used to infringe not because it is inherently illegal but because people who want to infringe are using the best technology to do it. Something new will always be a bandwidth hog. Will they pursue a philosophy of beating down the winner?"

We pointed fellow attendees to our own blog post, Video Clogs the Data Pipe.

Templeton said that not only does regulation do more harm than good, but even the paperwork that the government creates when it gathers information on the internet creates barriers to innovation.

List of government shame
He listed several examples of laws that were intended to aid competition but which were coopted by the telcos for their own monopoly purposes.

"The USF sounds great, but a tax impedes a service. It would be better to just subsidize it."

"E911 sounds great, but PSAPs charge per user, and the $1 per user per month fee effects new VoIP services."

"What have we got for CALEA? There were 13 digital wiretaps in 2006. We spent $500 million. For what?"

"In spectrum allocation, nobody in government has learned the lesson of the greatest revolution in the history of radio. For 802.11, they took a few MHz of junk spectrum that nobody wanted and built an industry."

Conclusion
In conclusion, Templeton believes that every internet regulation should sunset. Every five years, those who like any particular regulation should have to persuade the government to renew it. Most importantly, this would eliminate known failures like the USF.

— End