iTECH: No Middle Ground on Net Neutrality

Webology 101, By Joe Dysart

This article appears in the December 2010/January 2011 issue of iTECH, published in the Dec. 13 print edition of Transport Topics. Click here to subscribe today.

Google’s recent move to forsake Net Neutrality — the premise that all content on the Web should be distributed evenhandedly — threatens to have serious consequences for trucking companies’ websites, especially if other Internet titans follow suit.

Slower-loading websites and bidding wars for preferential treatment from Internet Service Providers could all become a sobering, new reality for businesses and consumers, as the Internet’s current democratization gives way to enhanced service for those with the deepest pockets.

“This is going to cause an uproar,” says Gary Arndt, owner of Fox Valley Web Design, which does work for the trucking industry.

“This is completely unfair and would hurt smaller content providers who didn’t have the resources to pay the fees,” says John Simpson, from Consumer Watchdog, a consumer advocacy group that has been critical of Google’s stance on Net Neutrality. “Content would be dominated by large megacorporations, much like cable television is today.”

Jonathan Zittrain, a law professor at Harvard University and co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School, sees the threat similarly: “Verizon could say to Google: Regardless of what you pay your own ISP to get your bits launched on the Internet, pay us more, and we’ll make sure your YouTube videos get to our subscribers all the more quickly as they come in for a landing.

“Google might well be able to pay,” Zittrain says, “and then leave poorer content providers behind” — including the legions of trucking websites that play many leagues below Google in terms of working capital.

Michael Schlotfeldt, vice president at Plaudit Design, which also does Web design work for the trucking industry, agrees. “The success and reason such innovation has happened online is because all content is treated equally,” Schlotfeldt says. “But most importantly, it’s because it is a playing field where ideas matter more than how much money you have. Right now, there are very small companies successfully competing against global corporate giants. We should do what we can to protect that kind of market. It sparks innovation that benefits all and is good for our economy.”

Google has countered that its move to abandon Net Neutrality is a necessary “compromise” it needed to make with its ISP partner Verizon, which has long loathed Net Neutrality and which also promotes the Google Android operating system on its Verizon phones.

Essentially, ISPs such as Verizon have long complained that a concept such as Net Neutrality makes it impossible for them to charge higher rates for people and companies that consume more bandwidth than others.

Someone’s grandmother, for example, who sends just a few e-mails to her grandkids every week, shouldn’t have to pay the same rate as a movie fanatic next door, who is downloading bandwidth-hogging films to a hard drive the size of a treasure chest.

Web designer Michael Hays, owner of TruckingWebDesign.com, believes the big players have a point. “Google and Verizon are both for-profit companies and have invested in research and development in order to have a competitive edge,” Hays says. “If this results in a tiered payment structure for how fast the information is being downloaded, at least the end-user is left with a choice.”

But critics of the new Google/Verizon Alliance say the companies’ joint proposal goes well beyond evening the score in terms of charging for bandwidth use. Instead, over time, the move essentially will transform a few, giant companies into landlords of the Internet.

“The Google-Verizon deal contains no protections for wireless access, which accounts for nearly one-third of all Internet connections, giving Verizon and other ISPs the green light to block or degrade content on their wireless networks,” says S. Derek Turner, a research director at Free Press. “In addition, it would allow Internet service providers to discriminate online by offering ‘private’ Internet services alongside those on the ‘public’ Internet.”

The threat is especially urgent, Google critics add, because no governmental body currently has the authority to prevent what Google/Verizon have called a “proposal” for a new Web from morphing into an “everyday business practice.”

The reason? While the Federal Communications Commission seems to be the logical choice to regulate the Web and Net Neutrality, a U.S. appeals court ruled in April that the FCC has no legal authority to impose Net Neutrality regulations.

So, while all sorts of people have opinions about Net Neutrality, in terms of regulatory authority, no one’s really driving the car.

In the near term, fierce public backlash against a Web devoid of Net Neutrality appears to be keeping the wolf at bay, Google critics say. But long term, critics fear that without government intervention, Web users — especially businesses — could be negatively affected in the following ways:

• Slower Video Downloads: Some content-providers, such as video-sharing sites, would be able to pay an added fee to ensure their videos are downloaded faster on the wireless Internet than other videos. In practice, this could mean that videos from YouTube (a Google-owned company), for example, would download quicker than promotional videos on your website.

“This would clearly be possible on the wireless Internet under the Google-Verizon proposal,” says Consumer Watchdog’s Simpson. “I think, indeed, that the deal would allow for some paid premium services on the wired Internet, as well.”

• Higher Internet Fees: Some businesses might have the opportunity to pay a premium fee on the wireless Internet to ensure their websites download faster than the websites of other,  businesses not paying a fee.

“We must avoid the situation where providers have the power to determine the ‘winners’ for any specific type of content or industry,” Plaudit’s Schlotfeldt says. “The Internet was designed to be a point-to-point communication tool without discrimination over content.”

• Bidding Wars for Download Speed: Competitors vying for business, such as for-hire and less-than-truckload carriers,  ultimately could be forced into a bidding war for the fastest website download times on the wireless Internet. This bidding war would mirror the war that currently rages every day among businesses that bid on Google keywords that lead searchers to their sponsored links.

“This is unfair, in that it would give preference to a few of the wealthiest, largest companies,” Simpson says. “The Internet was supposed to provide open access to all comers, treating all data the same.”

• Businesses Relegated to the Sidelines: Some websites simply could be closed out of the fast lane on the wireless Internet because of private deals struck between mega-ISPs and their preferred customers. “Verizon could offer only Google’s search,” Simpson says, meaning only those companies paying Google’s search fees would come up first for Verizon Internet subscribers. “The Internet was meant to be open to all equally. This violates that basic principle.”

• New Fees for New Services: Businesses could be forced to pay an added fee if they wanted to add yet-to-be-innovated new services. Fifteen years ago, for example, adding easily downloadable video on a website was virtually unimaginable. Now, a 10-year-old kid with a cell phone can do it in between lollipop licks. If the Google/Verizon proposal was in effect 15 years ago, we all could be paying extra for the privilege of offering video on our websites today.

“This is one of the most damaging aspects of the Google-Verizon deal,” Simpson says. “New charges could be added for heretofore unimagined services. Clearly, this unfairly thwarts innovation, or at the least limits ‘innovation’ only to those who can afford to pay. This is tremendously damaging to new start-up enterprises, the real incubators of true innovation.”

• Fewer Hits on Websites: If Internet connection fees escalate to soaring heights as some critics warn, the number of people surfing the ‘Net could decline.

“This is exactly the danger,” Simpson says.

Despite these doomsday warnings, TruckingWebDesign’s Hays is unmoved. “The instant gratification/instant information age is here, and the bottom line is: Which camel is going to come into my tent — big government, or big business?” he says. “With big business come choices. With regulation, I may get choices, but the choices will probably read like Medicare Parts A, B, C and D, and some pages will be blacked out altogether.”

Joe Dysart is an Internet speaker and business consultant based in Manhattan.