It was only a matter of time. The net neutrality folks now are taking their one size fits all philosophy into new realms and are objecting to the proposal of the United States Postal Service to charge less per item for larger mailers of print media. Here is one blogger’s account :

I knew the price of stamps was going up again. What I didn’t know was that this time, the proposed rate hike was a comprehensive change to periodical rate structure that benefits high-volume periodicals and penalizes small presses. I think it’s fair to describe this as a postal equivalent of “net neutrality”: high volume customers seem to have negotiated preferential rates.

So now, according to the “neutrality” folks, getting a discount per item because you’re buying in bulk is inherently “non-neutral” and hurts the market. Gee, do you think these people will ever shop at Costco again? What’s next on the agenda, a campaign against group sales of show tickets? Outlawing baker’s dozens? Protesting kids stay free?

When you step back and look at it, it’s pretty clear that “net neutrality” is no life and death issue. Otherwise, why confuse it with “postal neutrality,” whatever that’s supposed to be? Because “net neutrality” is just another pet issue – one more generic cause with a one-size-fits-all rallying cry. The only real surprise is that they let the cat out of the bag.

The SaveTheInternet coalition today held a press briefing on the status of neutrality regulation legislation in the Congress. In response, the following comment may be attributed to Mike McCurry and Christopher Wolf, co-chairs of the Hands Off the Internet coalition (www.HandsOff.org):

“During the past year, public debate about the Internet has shifted noticeably away from regulation and toward the urgent need to improve consumers’ high-speed choices. America has already fallen far behind much of Europe and Asia in broadband deployment and regulating high-speed access for a nonexistent problem does nothing at all to increase high-speed choices. The key is to continue the current massive effort to deploy new high-speed systems. That promotes jobs and competitive pricing while eliminating the whole rationale for expensive federal regulations that shift costs onto ordinary Net users.”

Today’s lobbying call came just days after The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Committee for Information, Computer and Communications Policy issued a white paper on broadband development entitled, “Internet Traffic Prioritisation: An Overview.” The report took direct aim at neutrality regulations, noting that “From the current state of the discussions it seems premature for governments to become involved at the level of network-to-network traffic exchange and demand neutral packet treatment for content providers.”

The report is available at:

www.oecd.org/dataoecd/43/63/38405781.pdf

The Hands Off the Internet coalition is a Washington, DC-based coalition of companies and nonprofit organizations that believes the Internet has flourished because government has not tried to regulate it. Members include Alcatel, AT&T, 3M, the National Association of Manufacturers, FiberControl, and Cinergy Communications. Nonprofit members include Citizens Against Government Waste, the American Conservative Union and the National Black Chamber of Commerce.

The Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development’s Committee for Information, Computer and Communications Policy recently issued a white paper on broadband development entitled, “Internet Traffic Prioritisation: An Overview.”

In response, the following comment may be attributed to Mike McCurry and Christopher Wolf, co-chairs of the Hands Off the Internet coalition (www.HandsOff.org):

“At a time when there is a great deal of attention to broadband access, this report by the OECD has made a noteworthy contribution to the debate over Internet regulation and broadband policy. This international inter-governmental body has now joined the chorus of independent experts pointing out the problems of trying to regulate online ‘neutrality.’ Their conclusion is especially noteworthy since other countries, like the U.S., are actively exploring how to best stimulate more broadband deployment. For Congress, that’s a key issue since neutrality regulations will clearly interfere with deployment of better, faster networks to handle the demands of tomorrow’s Internet.”

Many findings are consistent with the “Hands Off” view that neutrality regulation will interfere with deployment of affordable broadband access and the development of new Internet services. In particular:

“There is little evidence of anti-competitive conduct to date and problems have typically been resolved quickly via market forces or through quick regulatory intervention in markets where they have appeared.”

- Page 5

“From the current state of the discussions it seems premature for governments to become involved at the level of network-to-network traffic exchange and demand neutral packet treatment for content providers.”

- Page 5

The Hands Off the Internet coalition is a Washington, DC-based coalition of companies and nonprofit organizations that believes the Internet has flourished because government has not tried to regulate it. Members include Alcatel, AT&T, 3M, the National Association of Manufacturers, FiberControl, and Cinergy Communications. Nonprofit members include Citizens Against Government Waste, the American Conservative Union and the National Black Chamber of Commerce.

Remember a long, long time ago when no major network streamed programs over the net? That was last year.

Now they all do, which is why the Wall Street Journal story that CBS is about to announce a flurry of deals to put shows online seems almost anticlimactic. If you can’t get enough of CSI or Katie, then rejoice. But the fact that once-blockbuster deals like this are now commonplace shows how dramatically networks have migrated to the web since only last year.

But it’s also a timely reminder of how these deals are placing unprecedented strain on the web’s capacity. Internet traffic growth surged past capacity growth last year. Average traffic was up 75 percent while capacity grew only 47 percent, according to the folks at TeleGeography.

Any way you look at it, the web’s capacity has to ramp up and that’s expensive. Now you know why Google and eBay are trying to so hard to avoid paying their share of these costs by lobbying for neutrality regulations. And it’s worth repeating: If they don’t, guess who will?

“Saving” the Internet requires placing restrictions on what the ISPs can and can’t do, right? Wrong. There’s an interesting op-ed in the University of Texas Daily Texan explaining that imposing new laws is not how to save the Internet:

Proponents of net neutrality would like you to think that large service providers had nothing to do with inventing our modern Internet, but this notion isn’t true. Even though explorations into the Internet began at major academic universities for the purpose of research, it is highly unlikely that private companies would never have entered into the market of Internet services. Companies eventually moved into the Internet communications market, albeit backed by government protectionism through such policies as the Communications Act of 1934.

Sure, the government invented the Internet, nobody can dispute that. But it’s equally indisputable that private enterprise and the free market made the Internet great. As we look toward the future, it’s still business and the market that will build the next generation Internet. The only question is who pays for it, and the proponents of “net neutrality” want to shift that burden from big companies, including the ISPs and content providers, to you the consumer:

The net neutrality argument isn’t really a “little guy” movement, but a corporate protectionist measure on behalf of those like Google and Amazon. If economic prosperity in the Internet service industry is our goal, then we should not hinder Internet service providers from demanding varying prices from different content providers to finance important and necessary upgrades to the Internet infrastructure.

If you really want to save the Internet, it doesn’t need saving from the marketplace — it needs to be saved from the regulators.

Wall Street analyst Anna-Maria Kovacs is out with an interesting take on the FCC’s Notice of Inquiry proposal (Link 1). In an email to investors, she notes:

“What is interesting is that the NOI asks about the practices of content and application service providers as well as those of broadband network and access providers. The record built as a result of this NOI could expand the focus of the debate on the potential for harm caused by other parties, such as portals or site managers. Thus, it has the potential to broaden the scope of the debate substantially and to put some of the parties who have been pushing net neutrality on the defense .” (Emphasis ours)

If the FCC follows through on this, consumers could be treated to quite a show as regulations biggest advocates suddenly head for the hills. After all, eBay and Google have been locked in a year-long fight over the security of Google Checkout. eBay uses PayPal… which coincidentally happens to be owned by eBay.

And let’s not forget Amazon, which loves to advertise its one-click check-out simplicity. That company hasn’t exactly welcomed either Checkout or PayPal with open arms.

Of course, the truth is that in a free market, companies that do the best job of appealing to consumer tastes win and it shouldn’t be up to the Feds to save companies from their own shortsighted actions. Still, it would be a little bit fun to see certain folks in San Jose and Seattle squirm over their own non-neutral practices.

Hands Off the Internet hearts Sonia Arrison, and in her latest column for Tech News World, she asks an intriguing question: “To what extent are supporters of net neutrality also tacitly supporting piracy?” Arrison works through the issue, and arrives at the conclusion that it’s probably “a lot.” She explains:

Perhaps that’s why the music and movie industry associations, in the past at odds with ISPs over obtaining pirate data, have remained fairly silent in the net neutrality debate. It also makes a recent announcement by the “Future of Music Coalition” look rather silly.

On March 22, Jenny Toomey, executive director of the Future of Music Coalition, said, “With Rock the Net, we intend to get thousands of the nation’s musicians, independent labels and music services to become part of the effort to keep a ‘payola’ system from being established on the Internet.

What’s ironic is that by supporting the issue of Net neutrality, these artists may also be supporting the theft of their products online. That would indeed ensure the elimination of payola, but it would also ensure an elimination of artists’ intellectual property.

The irony is that the music industry has no direct stake in the “net neutrality” debate, yet they have hopped aboard this bandwagon without considering the real threats to their own livelihood.

Networks are great, but they can be abused, and those who use more should pay more. Likewise, if you want to move audio or video packets along a network at a guaranteed rate, that costs a bit more, too. If anything, musicians should want their music and music videos to be delivered using state of the art technology. Whatever Dorgan-Snowe would do, it certainly won’t help that.