“Net Neutrality” Was A Terrible Strategy
tl;dr —The issue and arguments need to be in terms of collective ownership, and freedom of send and receive information over a public utility; for we ourselves comprise the internet, and it is delivered via common routes and pathways.
The political issue of “net neutrality” is a shallow attempt to regulate a massive commercial industry, mainly based on emotional pleas to leave the data alone. Unfortunately, the plumbing is owned or licensed to wealthy corporations. They want their share of the new world order, and a cut of the technology industry’s gains. But Net Neutrality was a poor strategy to begin with, mainly because it sought to use regulations, doesn’t represent the people, and did not use a winning metaphor.
The argument of net neutrality is quite simple: Should carriers — Internet service providers (ISPs) — be able to control what goes up and down their pipes? This squabble is mere bandwidth usage, as it is inevitable that entities in control of resources will leverage that power, and as we live in the land of laws and contracts, courts will eventually uphold the rights of property owners to do as they will. Targeting the FCC was a hopeful tactic, but when has anybody beat a powerful industry at the regulation game? The ISPs will get to control what they bought and paid for, and that includes the cables and wavelengths used to connect us.
It’s like if Comcast and AT&T owned our highways and interstates. And that is how we need to think about the internet. It is not about asking corporations to treat all data the same, it’s about the internet being ours, being us, and a vital resource, a common utility. If no corporation can legally stop you from using public roadways to go about your survival, should they be able to control your access and right to use common utilities in the sending and retrieval of information?
The clear solution is to appropriate the means of distribution, the cables and airwaves, and develop mesh internets. The ISP’s are terrible caretakers of this common wealth; it’s no wonder the internet became an addicted userland — we’ve had no choice but to agree to terms. Their survival cannot be based on controlling access to the water fountain, so we must take away their power, and appoint better stewards.
Perhaps a more decentralized web would rally the hearts and minds, in defense of a more personal space; but we’re stuck in the centralized paradigm, shaving off attention and data to web services. That’s why Tech Industry’s cries for net neutrality don’t ring with the rest of folk. The internet doesn’t seem to belong to everybody, it’s just a bunch more services and memberships and channels.
The net neutrality debate has been argued in terms set by the oppressors — those in total control, and that includes both ISP and “Tech Giants”. The terms are not about equal access, because what they all want is your attention, and to sell subscriptions and services. The big carriers provide most of our internet access, and they are concerned with juicing more profit out of their monopolies. Facebook only cares if you can connect to Facebook, and would encompass the majority of the known internet if it could.
We must set the arguments in terms of equal access, and who owns public utilities, not regulation and information “neutrality”. Only then can we move on to the real issues: connecting everybody and improving a vital common infrastructure, and educating people how to make the most of it. The petty fighting of giants is a loud and obnoxious distraction.
The real argument is for free and equal access (period). Let Access to Markets be the new Net Neutrality. For that idea we have a most complete and obvious analogy already built for us: The Interstate Highway System, and the larger network of roads and highways under the National Highway System (NHS).
The Interstate Highway System is one the largest public works project man ever undertook, according to Wikipedia. Man has known the importance of roads to commerce for a long time. Eventually, we people decided it would be worth a national effort to lay down some highways.
The NHS is the vascular systems of the national body, delivering nourishment and all the vitals fluids to every part. Our roads connect our businesses, our residents, our coasts, our sea- and air-ports, our defense and all civilians.
Imagine if road were controlled by the invisible boards of an unregulated industry, a hodgepodge of oligopolies pushing secret profit agendas and the use of their power, taken for granted (a lot of money to inept and corrupt governments). Well, luckily this is not the case with the our vascular system, but it is for the neural one.
It started with broadcast, the one-to-many paradigm. This system has been in place going back as long as you want to follow it, from writs to newspapers to radio, but television is the best example. Television (both the broadcast and the device) was a major innovation, almost like the Internet and personal computer. It ruled, and was only ruled itself by the moral agenda of those in power, but otherwise was free to leverage that power.
Unfortunately, the oppressive precedent of broadcast, not the liberating highway metaphor, has prevailed on the spectrum of wireless broadband. It is leased to the major carriers, mostly Verizon and AT&T. Is there a public access equivalent? Even television had that. (The answer is no, there is a welfare phone you can get if you qualify for welfare, a stop-gap measure taken by President Obama. But that’s nothing equivalent to free + access.)
Yet, the Internet is not the wires and airwaves, just as roads are not the businesses, the schools, or the neighborhoods. The destination is ourselves and each other, and it always have been. Television has always been remote-controlled access to humanoids, for which advertisers would pay premium. That is what is misleading about the net neutrality debate. The Internet is is not the upload and download. It’s the nodes: the servers and the personal computers. It’s the media on the computers: blogs, gifs, games, audio, and video. It’s the people behind them, and their business, private and public. That’s what the internet is. Connection is just a road.
The Internet is individuals and organisations building a better, more complex network of neurons, so we could know more about ourselves and the world we inhabit. We require to be able to access these neural pathways, just as we must access a clinic for health care, and supermarkets for nutrients. The rub is that those pathways are blocked by giant corporate trolls. There is no alternative road. Access is not in the public trust.
Legal experiment: If you own a piece of property that is surrounded entirely by property owned by somebody else, you have legal justification to access your property via your neighbors. Could this this apply to IP addresses?
This essay was first drafted around when Comcast bought NBC Universal. The demise of net neutrality has been “a given”, simply a matter of time before the politics swung the other way. If you ask most people in the USA, they don’t want government telling them what they can and can’t do with their property, on principle. And the government has, over the decades, licensed and sold the right to control information distribution to powerful groups who operate vans that tie wires and antennae up all around the neighborhood. We collectively lost a big hyper-local opportunity, when the FCC re-licensed a big chunk of UHF airwaves, a spectrum that was previously used for local television broadcast, and was gobbled up by AT&T and Verizon for 4G.
A new prediction then: the costs which the ISPs will leverage from the death of “net neutrality” will largely be paid for by the tech industry. And perhaps the greedy capitalismo-economists will actually get what they pretend to want out of de-regulation: more competition in the market, as clever folk find ways to reroute information across cities and states. It’s only wires and waves…
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