A Series of Tubes: Infrastructure, Broadband, and Baseline Content Control

February 12

The late Senator Ted Stevens famously said in a 2006 committee meeting that the “Internet is not something that you just dump something on; it’s not a big truck. It’s a series of tubes.” While he was ridiculed widely at the time, Senator Stevens’s remarks actually reveal an interesting hortatory description of what the Internet should be (though given the rest of his comments, apparently not one that he intended). What Stevens’s metaphor suggests is that the physical conduits of the Internet should act like nothing more than non-judgmental conduits of the rest of the world’s traffic. We will see this week, however, that this is not a true reflection of how the tubes work, and we have strong debates as to what the government's role should be in ensuring that large enough "tubes" reach all those who would like to be online. The big questions for this week: What are the “tubes” of the Internet? Should the tubes have a role in controlling the throughput content? What is the role of government when it comes to developing and regulating our Internet-tubes?

Our guest speaker this week will be Rob Faris, the Research Director of the Berkman Center, who has been heavily involved in broadband infrastructure policy and research.

Readings

• Yochai Benkler, Next Generation Connectivity (executive summary and introduction)

• Susan Crawford, Wired, We Can’t All Be Google’s Kansas: A Plan for Winning the Bandwidth Race (Wired)

• Adam Thierer, More Confusion about Internet “Freedom” (Tech Liberation)

• Wikipedia, Net Neutrality

Optional Readings

• Sam Biddle, How to Destroy the Internet (Gizmodo)

• Dawn Nunziato, Virtual Freedom (Chs. 1 & 7) (pending)

• Ed Felten, Taking Ted Stevens Seriously

Assignment 1

Assignment 1 is due before class today (i.e., February 12th before 5:30pm ET). You can submit the assignment here.

Class Discussion

Please remember to sign your postings by adding four tildes (~~~~) to the end of your contribution. This will automatically add your username and the date/time of your post, like so: Asellars 15:29, 21 January 2013 (EST)

Weekly Response by TAG

Benkler discussed in his paper, the Next Generation Connectivity, was intriguing to me. To examine how the United States is lagging in the transition from broadband to the next generation technology. He stated, "High capacity networks are seen as strategic infrastructure, intended to contribute to high sustainable economic growth and to the core aspects of human development." I am in agreement with this view. By limiting access by weaker technology it will hurt economic growth and future development of countries.

Competition is paramount in the advancement of technology and the industry as a whole. The open access policies allow for a competitive market to allow for innovation to take hold. The way to maximize access is to allow for a wireless/nomadic platform, which will reach all the corners of the world. Countries which have invested in these areas have seen better results. The lack of competition is what has been a material flaw in the United States armor, causing them to drop back in the pack. These lack of freedoms and choices is what Adam Theirer was speaking about in his article. With new players like Google entering into the equation, it will only be a matter of time before access and affordability will be attainable by all. Interestingcomments 06:19, 6 February 2013 (EST)

Thierer’s naive opposition to the “centralized planning” of Internet policy explicitly surrenders responsibility for the governance of computer networks to the callous ambivalence of the marketplace. The power to restructure and redesign human relations that entities like Google and Facebook so epitomize inheres the danger of an Internet operated on behalf of the profiteers. To the extent that corporate superpowers attain the ability to “oversee” or “govern” the substantive communities of the Internet in the manner that powerful states have come to exert power over physical territories, the revolutionary potentialities of the Internet will be lost to engineers working on behalf of shareholders. This prospect is perhaps more dangerous than the threat of explicit state control of the Internet.

Johnfloyd6675 20:27, 8 February 2013 (EST)

Net neutrality is a concept that gets confusing pretty fast, so I attempted to summarize background on the issue in less than 500 words. While I originally wrote the following for this week's class, I also posted it on a friend's blog about current issues. Anyway here is the piece:

Net Neutrality (NN) is the idea that all information that flows across the Internet – all content, platforms, data, applications, etc – should be treated equally. In the U.S., Internet Service Providers (ISPs) like Comcast and Time Warner only charge you for the speed of data transfer at a monthly rate. They do not themselves charge you for accessing certain types of content over other types of content, which IS what they do for cable television. Proponents for NN want to keep the Internet an open and free communication tool rather than a controlled, walled garden like cable. There are primarily two kinds of debates going on here: 1.) whether NN should be preserved as the core architecture of the Internet and 2.) whether and how NN should be regulated by the government.

Let’s first consider what neutrality means as it relates to a network's design. As Tim Wu points out, the electric grid is an example of a neutral network because people are free to use it as they please. The electric grid does not give special treatment to certain appliances over others – you can plug in your toaster just as easily as your AC. Similarly, the Internet was conceived as a neutral network. Its pioneers envisioned a democratized “network of networks,” one that could not be “owned” by a corporation or government and as a result fostered enormous innovation and economic growth.

Without NN, proponents fear ISPs would become too powerful a centralized force and gain an unfair business advantage. Specifically, ISPs could block sites they deem to violate copyright law, favor traffic to their owned and operated sites, slow down traffic to competitive threats, or adopt “fast lanes” for customers willing to pay more. To take one recent example, Comcast was accused of stifling traffic to Netflix in order to nudge users towards Comcast-owned Xfinity for video streaming.

Opponents to NN claim that offering different “Internet subscriptions” for different kinds of content actually gives consumers more choice. If someone just wants email and google search, they could pick the appropriate plan. And also gain better quality of service for what they want to do. Furthermore, there are indeed some types of information, such as spam, malware, and illegal content, that is presumably worth filtering. Yet proponents of NN worry that drawing lines between “good” and “bad” could encroach freedom of speech, since such categories can be subjectively interpreted on the Internet.

Even if people agree that the Internet should be a neutral network, there is a whole other debate of how to enforce this. Net neutrality laws first attracted attention in the early 2000s and have gone back and forth towards both sides. In the most recent regulations of 2010, the FCC Open Internet Order aimed to prevent ISPs from blocking or discriminating against rival websites. The rules did little to appease either side, however. NN advocates believed telecom companies could still charge some services more for supporting data-heavy content while NN opponents believed that the decisions about the Internet in general should be left up to the free market entirely. To this day, the debate rages on.

Asmith 21:56, 10 February 2013 (EST)