The Man Who Invented the Web on Net Neutrality

**Lemur** · 06-25-2006, 19:07

Tim Berners-Lee, the man who invented the World Wide Web, has finally spoken out about net neutrality. The lemur agrees rather completely with what the man has to say. I'll repost his text here, since it's pretty short. Linky.

Net Neutrality: This is serious

When I invented the Web, I didn't have to ask anyone's permission. Now, hundreds of millions of people are using it freely. I am worried that that is going end in the USA.

I blogged on net neutrality before, and so did a lot of other people. (see e.g. Danny Weitzner, SaveTheInternet.com, etc.) Since then, some telecommunications companies spent a lot of money on public relations and TV ads, and the US House seems to have wavered from the path of preserving net neutrality. There has been some misinformation spread about. So here are some clarifications. ( real video Mpegs to come)

Net neutrality is this:

If I pay to connect to the Net with a certain quality of service, and you pay to connect with that or greater quality of service, then we can communicate at that level.

That's all. Its up to the ISPs to make sure they interoperate so that that happens.

Net Neutrality is NOT asking for the internet for free.

Net Neutrality is NOT saying that one shouldn't pay more money for high quality of service. We always have, and we always will.

There have been suggestions that we don't need legislation because we haven't had it. These are nonsense, because in fact we have had net neutrality in the past -- it is only recently that real explicit threats have occurred.

Control of information is hugely powerful. In the US, the threat is that companies control what I can access for commercial reasons. (In China, control is by the government for political reasons.) There is a very strong short-term incentive for a company to grab control of TV distribution over the Internet even though it is against the long-term interests of the industry.

Yes, regulation to keep the Internet open is regulation. And mostly, the Internet thrives on lack of regulation. But some basic values have to be preserved. For example, the market system depends on the rule that you can't photocopy money. Democracy depends on freedom of speech. Freedom of connection, with any application, to any party, is the fundamental social basis of the Internet, and, now, the society based on it.

Let's see whether the United States is capable as acting according to its important values, or whether it is, as so many people are saying, run by the misguided short-term interested of large corporations.

I hope that Congress can protect net neutrality, so I can continue to innovate in the internet space. I want to see the explosion of innovations happening out there on the Web, so diverse and so exciting, continue unabated.

**Aenlic** · 06-25-2006, 20:31

The end of net neutrality is pretty much a done deal already in the US. Don't hold your breath, the public outcry, even from the leading internet mavens, will have any effect. The leading proponents of putting up a tiered system also happen to be some of the leading corporate contributors to both political parties; but with most of their contributions going to the party which currently controls all three branches of the US government. A way will be found to make the contributors happy; no matter what effect it has on anything else. They don't take the long view or the logical view. They take the "I wanna be richer now" view; and they've already purchased their desired outcome.

**Alexander the Pretty Good** · 06-26-2006, 03:22

Wait, how is the tier system different from the definition in the first post?

I'm all confused again!

EDIT: I thought Al Gore invented the internet!

**Aenlic** · 06-26-2006, 03:53

I'm not talking about a tiered system for end-users, like the public. I'm talking about a tiered system for internet suppliers and those on the server side of things.

The way the communications giants want to set things up is to have different levels of charges and fees for the businesses they provide lines. If they don't pay the fees then they lose good connectivity with their customers. The communications giants will be able to steer end users, like us, to those web sites which pay the higher fees. Would you visit a forum site like this, which can't afford to pay the kinds of fees they're discussing, if the pages loaded even slower than they do now? Multiply that across the internet. Better connectivity will be available to those who pay the fees, and the business partners of the communications giants. So you'll be able to get to Time-Warner affiliated web sites much easier than some web site hosted by a smaller ISP.

Remember a few months back when one of the major ISP's had a little tiff with Level 3 communications? Anyone trying to access web sites which resided on servers hosted by that ISP and it's affiliates were unable to access them at all if their internet routing went through Level 3 backbone. It went on for a few days. Affected sites, which people who had to go through Level 3 connections were unable to access, included Wikipedia, the entire University of California system - including Los Alamos of all places, and more. Those web sites were entirely unavailable to anyone whose packets were routed through Level 3. Level 3 routers simply stopped recognizing those blocks of ISPs as valid.

That's the kind of thing I'm talking about. But it would be daily and far more widespread. If an internet backbone provider didn't want to allow access to a particular site, then they could simply block access - much like the Chinese do already to their users.

**Xiahou** · 06-27-2006, 08:36

I wonder if Tim's actually read what's being proposed? Notice how he also cites exactly 0 examples of unfair practices by ISPs that would be covered by this.

Originally Posted by Tim Berners-Lee

It is of the utmost importance that, if I connect to the Internet, and you connect to the Internet, that we can then run any Internet application we want, without discrimination as to who we are or what we are doing. We pay for connection to the Net as though it were a cloud which magically delivers our packets. We may pay for a higher or a lower quality of service. We may pay for a service which has the characteristics of being good for video, or quality audio. But we each pay to connect to the Net, but no one can pay for exclusive access to me.

It seems that here he's supporting tiered pricing for things such a streaming video, audio, ect. Again, it makes me wonder if he knows what the proponents of net neutrality are after....

Originally Posted by Aenlic

The way the communications giants want to set things up is to have different levels of charges and fees for the businesses they provide lines. If they don't pay the fees then they lose good connectivity with their customers. The communications giants will be able to steer end users, like us, to those web sites which pay the higher fees. Would you visit a forum site like this, which can't afford to pay the kinds of fees they're discussing, if the pages loaded even slower than they do now? Multiply that across the internet. Better connectivity will be available to those who pay the fees, and the business partners of the communications giants. So you'll be able to get to Time-Warner affiliated web sites much easier than some web site hosted by a smaller ISP.

How is that any different than it is now? Or even any different than it has pretty much always been?

Remember a few months back when one of the major ISP's had a little tiff with Level 3 communications? Anyone trying to access web sites which resided on servers hosted by that ISP and it's affiliates were unable to access them at all if their internet routing went through Level 3 backbone. It went on for a few days. Affected sites, which people who had to go through Level 3 connections were unable to access, included Wikipedia, the entire University of California system - including Los Alamos of all places, and more. Those web sites were entirely unavailable to anyone whose packets were routed through Level 3. Level 3 routers simply stopped recognizing those blocks of ISPs as valid.

That was all about peering. Big Internet backbone companies allow each other access to their backbones free of charge. In this case (I believe) Level3 decided Cogent wasn't a big enough fish to give free access to anymore- they sorted it out and everything is peachy now. Regardless, I dont see what this has to do with net neutrality.

Finally, let me quote everyone's favorite libertarians- the Cato Institute:

Such rhetoric and calls for preemptive regulation are unjustified. There is no evidence that broadband operators are unfairly blocking access to websites or online services today, and there is no reason to expect them to do so in the future. No firm or industry has any sort of "bottleneck control" over or market power in the broadband marketplace; it is very much a competitive free-for-all, and no one has any idea what the future market will look like with so many new technologies and operators entering the picture. In the absence of clear harm, government typically doesn't regulate in a preemptive, prophylactic fashion as CBUI members are requesting.

Moreover, far from being something regulators should forbid, vertical integration of new features and services by broadband network operators is an essential part of the innovation strategy companies will need to use to compete and offer customers the services they demand. Network operators also have property rights in their systems that need to be acknowledged and honored. Net neutrality mandates would flout those property rights and reject freedom of contract in this marketplace.

The regulatory regime envisioned by Net neutrality mandates would also open the door to a great deal of potential "gaming" of the regulatory system and allow firms to use the regulatory system to hobble competitors. Worse yet, it would encourage more FCC regulation of the Internet and broadband markets in general.

**Aenlic** · 06-27-2006, 10:50

How can you say that, knowing about the Cogent/Level3 tiff? That is exactly what it is all about.

Originally Posted by The Cato Institute

There is no evidence that broadband operators are unfairly blocking access to websites or online services today, and there is no reason to expect them to do so in the future. No firm or industry has any sort of "bottleneck control" over or market power in the broadband marketplace;

No evidence? That's a crock! Level3 communications exercised exactly that kind of bottleneck control when they denied access to any IP's within Cogent's block, and access out by any IP's in that block. That' exactly the kind of bottleneck control we're talking about. Cogent wasn't paying what Level3 wanted for peering and so Level3 shut down a large portion of the internet, not just for Cogent users but for anyone else who was attempting to access Cogent site. It wasn't just some small thing. The reason it got resolved so quickly was it created a firestorm of protests. Uiniv of California web sites down. Seti@Home down. Wikipedia down. And many more. Any of you ever played WWII online? It was down as well. I'm not a customer of Level3 or Cogent, but because my ISP - Time-Warner - uses Level3 for backbone access, I was unable to acces sites which I use every day. all because Level3 was trying to hold Cogent hostage.

There isn't a free market at the backbone level. That's why regulation is required. When companies like Level3 pull stunts like that, the average user doesn't have the choice of switching who their backbone provider is. That's done at a higher level, sometimes 2 or 3 businesses up the chain. The average user doesn't have the freedom of choice; and that's the antithesis of a free market, isn't it?

If there were a free market at the backbone level, then it would be different. But there isn't. And there won't ever be. I guarantee you that if the large telecoms and backbone providers who are behind some of the bills working their way through Congress get their way, then you'll see many more incidents like the Level3 problem. Web sites will be unavailable because their ISP's or the ISP's parent providers or someone higher up the line isn't in the "preferred" network. And it won't just be the users of the blacklisted IP's that suffer; it'll be anyone else who tried to access those sites. Exactly like what happened with Level3.

It'll be the business equivalent of the Chinese restricting access to various sites for political reasons. But the access will be restricted because some idiot executives are having a hissy, or because one network provides services to the competitor of a customer of another provider. It'll be a mess. Don't kid yourselves otherwise. Frankly, I'm surprised such free market fans as yourselves would fall for this kind of bad reasoning. I thought you were all about free markets, not monopolistic practices and corporate blackmail of the average customer.