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.

“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.

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.

The real news from this week’s Business Week isn’t the cover story on Google’s increasing hegemony across the web. It’s the more immediate concern that weak capital spending may upend the economy.

Look at the facts:

• Orders for capital goods fell 1.2 percent in February, the fourth decline in capital spending over the past five months.

• The 4.4 percent growth rate in equipment outlays in 2006 is the smallest increase in three years.

• The subprime loan hemorrhage and spike in the price of oil have hammered investor confidence to its lowest level in six months, according to a UBS survey. This is key because prospects for demand, which have slowed and show no signs of a pick-up, drive capital outlays.

Congress and maybe a few bloggers might want to consider this as they advocate for neutrality regulations. Take the Dorgan-Snowe bill which gives the FCC six months to write rules that will legally bind Internet carriers. Given the inevitable lobbying, litigation and the impact of new technology on static regulation, there’s a greater likelihood of Sanjaya joining the Mormon Tabernacle Choir than this getting done in only six months.

Telecom investment is a bright spot in the otherwise dismal capital spending economy. But a regulatory fiat that interferes with America’s network build-out — like six months of legal limbo — is an economic Russian roulette.

According to National Journal, the usual suspects are up in arms about the FCC’s notice of inquiry. Why? Because

the agency’s involvement is a “notice of inquiry” and not a rulemaking. The difference is substantial: Inquiries gather data, while rulemakings consider policy changes.

But why is this a mistake? Everybody agrees that there are no actual problems with net neutrality, and as our own Chris Wolf explained last week, it doesn’t make sense to fashion legislative remedies to situations that don’t actually need remedying. If anything, it just shows that the supporters of net neutrality laws are looking for any avenue possible to impose restrictions on ISPs that would benefit the big online content companies. Whether through the Senate, through the FCC, through the state legislatures, it doesn’t really matter. Any opportunity to regulate the Internet is one they want to pursue.

There is no consensus that we need new rules to govern the Internet, and net neutrality fans should be encouraged that the FCC is looking into it at all, despite their stated skepticism. One imagines that if the FCC ultimately decides that still, no new rules are necessary, the same usual suspects will cry foul then, as they are doing now. That’s one reason it’s so hard to take them seriously.

As everybody knows by now, Andrew McLaughlin from Google said recently,

Cutting the FCC out the picture would probably be a smart move. It is much better to think of this as an FTC or unfair competition type of problem.

As others have said, this is an important and encouraging shift, and we’ll be watching Google as the conversation moves forward. But this brings strident net neutrality advocate David Isenberg to dust off a ditty he penned last year:

Google and Yahoo and Microsoft and Skype,
They’re already successful, they can make deals for those pipes.
But when I want to publish stuff in my blog
It will not be OK for you to once again pay.
We already pay for our Internet connection.
We don’t need to subsidize a dying industry’s obsession!
If looking at my blog cost you an extra dime
You’d probably find another way to spend your time.

Well, sure, if that was the issue. Isenberg looks a little silly compared to his usual ally, Kevin Werbach, who writes:

What Google’s global policy counsel (and in full disclosure, my friend and law school classmate) Andrew McLaughlin said to kick of the firestorm was that differentiated quality of service (QOS) is OK, as long as it’s available to anyone who will pay. This is no different than the current situation, where all major websites pay a content delivery network (CDN) such as Akamai, or pay to self-provision a CDN, in order to deliver popular content quickly and efficiently to their users. Those who don’t pay for CDNs are disadvantaged, just like those who don’t buy enough bandwidth for their network connections, but that’s their economic choice. … So, put aside all the conspiracy theories. If supporters of network neutrality don’t have room in their big tent for the view Andrew expressed, they are really in trouble.

Not a bad point. The argument over net neutrality has developed a lot over the past year, and anybody still afraid that an Internet provider is going to cut you off from your favorite blog is unable to keep up with the times.

One thing this means is that Dorgan-Snowe, the Senate bill kicked around since last year, is itself out-of-step with the current landscape. Will net neutrality supporters ask that it be withdrawn? Maybe not – but it would be in their best interest to do so.

We were surprised to see TechDirt’s over-the-top reaction to one of our posts this week, “Hands Off the Wireless Spectrum.” If our characterization of their position as “reluctant” was wrong, we apologize. But we have nothing to apologize for in terms of our legitimate and substantive role in this important public policy debate.

Our focus is on the nation’s broadband needs and on the facts. Facts are neither honest nor dishonest — they are the facts — and people can reach their own conclusions over what the facts mean in terms of whether we need new laws on net neutrality. We happen to think we don’t need new laws, because the facts we have been pointing out for some time are these:

• There is no problem to solve. Nobody has shown that there have been any meaningful breaches of basic neutrality on the web. Pro-regulation activists have tried to make case studies out of AOL, Cox and a Canadian telecom firm, and none of those bore out. (This may have something to do with why you never hear about those situations anymore). Broadband providers are committed to a robust, uncensored Internet and also aware of the consumer outcry if they provide anything less.

• Nobody has effectively argued that current laws are insufficient to deal with any possible market abuses that could potentially arise in the future.

• More fathers of the Internet, including Dave Farber and Robert Kahn, have come forward to express their reservations about imposing net neutrality laws than have come forward to support such laws. That is because regulation has the real potential of adverse unintended consequences.

• It is probable and even likely that in the not-too-distant-future, worldwide demand for broadband will exceed existing capacity. A massive new build-out to handle that capacity is needed, and net neutrality would effectively require broadband providers to pass the cost of that build-out on to consumers exclusively.

• The Internet has never been “neutral” in the way that net neutrality activists claim. There is no utopia to return to; the Net has always been a mishmash of “best effort delivery” networks and loose agreements. Having smart networks, which net neutrality regulation would prohibit, will help to rationalize and improve the existing situation.

• In Canada, where a similar debate is occurring, their CTC bureaucracy is so mired in red tape they can’t even remove online death threats against human rights attorney Richard Warman.

• Dorgan-Snowe’s first effect would be to freeze the broadband marketplace exactly where it is, disallowing not just theoretical abuses but new innovations, too.

• The United States ranks 16th worldwide in access to broadband Internet.

• Hands Off the Internet has always endorsed the four principles of net neutrality: Consumers are entitled to access the lawful Internet content of their choice; Consumers are entitled to run applications and use services of their choice, subject to the needs of law enforcement; Consumers are entitled to connect their choice of legal devices that do not harm the network; Consumers are entitled to competition among network providers, application and service providers, and content providers.” We even took out a print ad last year to say so.

TechDirt, maybe we’re not so different. If we agree that the basic ideas of net neutrality are inoffensive but mandating them into law could be a disastrous move, then there’s more to agree on than disagree