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Lessig on Faith Based Technology Policy, Net Neutrality

By Hanno Kaiser

Here is Larry Lessig’s assessment of McCain’s technology policy, which, by the way, was written and titled before McCain’s VP pick. Lessig chronicles how the U.S. has lost ground in terms of broadband infrastructure in the past eight years. Lessig’s summary of the positions in the net neutrality debate is worth quoting in full.

What is network neutrality? Network neutrality is basically the question whether the network owners get to pick and choose the applications and content that you as a user can have access to or use. If you think about these computer networks in the way that you might think about a cable television network, you probably think, “Sure, why shouldn?t they have that right, just like a cable television network has the right to choose what programs will play across their television network.” But if you think about the Internet in the way we traditionally thought about telephone networks, then you would say, “Of course, no way should the network owner have the right to choose with whom I connect or what I say.” That?s essentially the battle brewing around the question of the future of the Internet. Will the Internet increasingly look like cable television networks, where the owners of the network get to pick and choose the applications and content that run on that network? Or will the future of the Internet stay with the tradition of telephones, where it is the user that gets to pick with whom and what he says on that network?

There is an interesting connection between the significant decline the United States has suffered compared to other nations in terms of broadband penetration and net neutrality. Giving routing preferences to packets is necessary only if there is congestion. Historically, we have always dealt with that issue by throwing bandwidth at the problem, not only because it was the right thing to do from a policy and internet architecture standpoint, but also because it was usually less expensive than implementing and administering routing preferences. Why is that not the solution here?

Full post as published by Antitrust Review on September 16, 2008 (boomark / email).