Harmonies on Net Neutrality
Friday, November 13th, 2009 by Patrick Ross
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I had the pleasure of attending an interesting conference yesterday hosted by the Institute for Policy Innovation on broadband policy, a timely topic here in D.C. You can watch most of it on this C-SPAN recording; in an obvious conspiracy, the one panel C-SPAN chose not to videotape was the first one, in which I was a speaker. (Maybe the cameraman didn’t want to get up that early; I can’t blame him.)
I’d direct your attention in particular to the keynote by Paul Misener, vice president for global public policy at Amazon.com. Some of us in D.C. first came to know him due to his being a top aide for an FCC Commissioner named Harold Furchtgott-Roth, perhaps the most anti-regulatory regulator I have ever seen. It appears a bit of that has rubbed off on Mr. Misener; even though he was asking for regulation (Amazon.com supports net neutrality regulations) he did admit in Q&A that a case could be made for eliminating the FCC entirely and handling net neutrality concerns through antitrust law. Since the FCC does exist, however, and has skilled and experienced staff, he felt that is the best agency to ensure the open Internet Amazon.com desires.
I liked a lot about Mr. Misener’s presentation; he’s a thoughtful fellow (we need more of those in Washington) and he had some nuanced perspectives on net neutrality and the proposed Notice of Proposed Rulemaking that I’d rather not try to summarize here; best to watch the video. One thing I have no hesitation of summarizing, though, is his point that legal and illegal traffic online must be treated separately; net neutrality should not empower copyright infringement.
Mr. Misener pointed out the obvious, namely that Amazon.com’s business model involves connecting consumers to creative works. I give my kidsAmazon.com MP3 gift certificates, I buy them DVDs and video games, and I buy myself books, lots and lots of books (increasingly for my Kindle, but when I buy books about cartography I still want the physical one, the maps look a lot better in color on paper). I joked during my presentation that I was singlehandedly paying Mr. Misener’s salary with my purchases there.
Folks here in D.C. have something in common with many bloggers; a view of the world as black and white. That isn’t the case with the net neutrality debate, and it isn’t the case in finding the “right” way to ensure an open Internet while encouraging legal over illegal traffic. As I’ve written before, the signals from policymakers on legal vs. illegal has been very good. We will stay vigilant to ensure their words become reality.
December 4th, 2009 at 11:14 pm
Kind of a scary phrase ” legal and illegal traffic online must be treated separately”. While I’m not against the idea of somehow reducing illegal traffic on-line, I’d be very concerned about how traffic would be determined to be legal or illegal. To frame my concern let me make a comparison to other forms of crime where the planning of illegal and execution of illegal acts take place on a daily basis, over the phone. Is it your contention that on-line traffic be monitored so as to determine legal and illegal? And would a warrant be required for said monitoring? If this kind of monitoring is ok would the same kind of monitoring be ok for phone lines? Also how do we deal with encryption, the only way I see monitoring traffic is to outlaw encryption otherwise it would be impossible to determine whether traffic was legal or illegal.
Since the Internet is often referred to as the information superhighway I’d like to ensure that there was just cause before any vehicle was pulled over and searched.
I’m always in favour of supporting artists rights being one myself but not at the sacrifice of someone else’s.