[Congressional Record (Bound Edition), Volume 155 (2009), Part 19]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page 25623]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office, www.gpo.gov]




COLUMN: NET NEUTRALITY ISN'T A NEUTRAL TERM, AND IT ISN'T GOOD FOR THE 
                                  NET

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                           HON. JOHN SHIMKUS

                              of illinois

                    in the house of representatives

                        Friday, October 23, 2009

  Mr. SHIMKUS. Madam Speaker, I submit the following column, written by 
David Nicklaus of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.

   Net neutrality isn't a neutral term, and it isn't good for the Net

                David Nicklaus, St. Louis Post-Dispatch

       Some beats, like banking, need tougher cops, but others, 
     like the Internet, are doing fine with no cop at all.
       So when the chairman of the Federal Communications 
     Commission weighs in on an important Internet issue by vowing 
     to become ``a smart cop on the beat,'' we should worry that 
     the Web's best years, characterized by rapid growth with 
     little regulation, may be behind it.
       Of course, FCC Chairman Julius Genachowski doesn't 
     characterize his stance that way. His idea of a ``smart cop'' 
     is one who enforces the principle that all Internet traffic 
     should be treated equally. And he argues that his brand of 
     policing will encourage innovation, not stifle it.
       The principle Genachowski endorsed this week--and one he 
     intends to codify into FCC regulations--is referred to as net 
     neutrality. Despite the lofty-sounding name, however, a net 
     neutrality rule wouldn't be neutral. It would amount to 
     favoring one group of Internet companies, the content 
     creators, in an ongoing turf battle with broadband providers.
       Broadband firms, like AT&T, Verizon and the cable TV 
     industry, own the Internet's infrastructure. Companies like 
     Google and eBay own the content that travels over those 
     broadband networks.
       These two groups obviously need each other, but that 
     doesn't mean they have to like each other.
       A net neutrality rule would require broadband providers to 
     treat all content alike in terms of pricing and access. 
     Without it, content companies worry they might face an extra 
     fee for speedy delivery of bandwidth-gobbling applications, 
     like video downloading sites or Internet telephone services.
       Say Microsoft, for example, paid the fee, but Google 
     didn't. Microsoft's site would get an unfair advantage, the 
     net neutrality advocates argue, allowing the Verizons of the 
     world to pick winners and losers--and perhaps to snuff out 
     competitors of their own video and phone businesses.
       The broadband companies counter that they have invested 
     huge sums in Internet infrastructure, including $70 billion 
     last year alone. They generally don't use discriminatory 
     pricing now, but some people in the industry think it would 
     be one way to pay for a next-generation network that could 
     carry far more data at faster speeds.
       If those investments aren't made, the information 
     superhighway will eventually look like I-70 at rush hour, 
     with video file-sharers slowing things down for the folks who 
     just want to read e-mail or check an airline schedule.
       Scott Cleland, a consultant who runs the broadband-
     industry-backed site NetCompetition.org, says a strict net 
     neutrality regime would discourage infrastructure investment 
     and make the Internet less secure. If the network owners 
     can't discriminate among forms of content, he argues, they 
     would lose their ability to root out viruses and other 
     malware.
       Cleland may be overstating the security argument. Any 
     reasonable FCC regulation would surely allow the broadband 
     companies to police their networks for harmful files. His 
     larger point, though, is a good one: Why risk messing up 
     something that isn't broken?
       Existing antitrust law should prevent, say, AT&T from 
     discriminating against an Internet-phone competitor like 
     Skype. Beyond such an obvious abuse, it's hard to see what 
     harm can come from letting the broadband firms price their 
     network however they want.
       It's often said that on the Internet, information wants to 
     be free. That four-letter word has two meanings--free as in 
     zero cost, and free as in unregulated and unrestricted--and 
     they are at odds in this debate.
       If we impose regulations just to keep down the cost of 
     certain services, we may find that we've lost the very 
     freedom that makes the Internet so successful and so 
     valuable.

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