“Consumer advocates and Web heavyweights like Google Inc. and Amazon Inc. [say that] it’s a bedrock principle of the Internet that all traffic be treated equally.” — Associated Press, October 19, 2007

Oh really?

The Net neutrality implication of yesterday’s announcement is clear: Technology increasingly has the potential to take effective, real-time action against websites that peddle child porn. So far, so good and those on both sides of the Net neutrality issue almost certainly support this.

But as the article notes:

“While officials from the attorney general’s office said they hoped to make it extremely difficult to find or disseminate the [child porn] online, they acknowledged that they could not eliminate access entirely.”

That’s why emerging network technologies, in addition to improving the Web’s overall functionality, are so critical to this effort. Both the technology and the ability to make real-time decisions that keep up with the child porn dealers’ own rapid changes are vital to this effort.

But Net neutrality threatens this, especially the deployment of better networking technologies.

It would be beyond tragic if efforts to combat this serious problem were hampered because of Net neutrality regulations designed to combat a hypothetical problem.

• “We believe that the new [Clearwire] network will provide wireless consumers with real choices for the software applications, content and handsets that they desire. Such freedom will mirror the openness principles underlying the Internet….” - Google public policy blog on its $500 million Clearwire WiMax investment, May 7, 2008
• “Exclusive web and local search provider” - Google’s investor relations statement [pdf] on what it’s getting for its $500 million (Slide #9)

There’s a pretty big temptation to crow about Google’s hypocrisy. But as Don Corleone said in The Godfather, “That would be wrong.”

Is Google backtracking on its support for net neutrality? Sure. But that was inevitable and few took the company’s Messianic pronouncements in favor of Net neutrality seriously anyway.

The real issue is that the Sprint-Google-Intel Clearwire announcement shows once again that broadband deployment is frighteningly expensive, whether wired or wireless. Even with all the benefits of modern technology, there is simply no easy way to bring high-speed service nationwide – especially to rural and underserved Americans.

Will WiMax be a nationwide silver bullet? Probably not. Will it be a plausible option for some consumers? More likely.

But that’s why the federal government is right to retain the traditional evenhanded approach to the Internet that it’s had since the 1990s and not try to regulate new technologies, especially if the financing for these systems holds the promise of lower-cost options for consumers.

As the Chinese adage goes, Let a hundred flowers bloom. Consumers will then choose the winners and this whole neutrality issue will crumble from its own irrelevance.

At a Congressional hearing on Net Neutrality back in 2006, proponents couldn’t get their answers straight when asked to define the concept. Two years later, evidently not much has changed:

Jonathan Rintels writes this week at SaveTheInternet that Net Neutrality is “a requirement that broadband Internet consumers be permitted to access the lawful content of their choice.” We agree. But if that’s the definition, then this Net Neutrality fight is over since consumers already have that right.

Google blogged a different approach recently, saying that prioritizing some types of traffic over others is completely consistent with Net Neutrality – a comment at odds with the “all data is equal” crowd. Though it’s correct about that, Google’s problem is its position that Net users, not the company, should pick up the tab for the new pipes that need to be built to handle its video content.

Then there’s Net Neutrality advocate Susan Crawford, who testified on the Hill last week. She’s argued that content-based regulation couldn’t be done without “a heavy handed regulator.” (She’s right.) So that’s why Net Neutrality requires government policies “separating transport from other activities, and separating access from backbone and backhaul transport….”

Net Neutrality advocates can help clear up the confusion by acknowledging at least this: Writing the regulations that would govern how data traffic travels across the Internet will give an army of Washington lawyers and lobbyists a lifetime guarantee of full employment.

Chalk one up for common sense.

At last week’s Internet Video Policy Symposium in DC, Cowen & Co.’s Arnie Berman offered a sharp response to the claim that Net Neutrality would put a “toll booth” on the Internet. According to press reports, Berman noted that video data on the web is like a bus that’s three lanes wide. So to handle all this traffic – and remember that last December, 140+ million U.S. Internet users watched more than 10 billion online videos – you’d need highways that are 30 lanes wide.

Earth to Google: Care to explain how Net Neutrality helps us fund all that?

NetworkWorld’s Johna Till Johnson is definitely not being evil with this cool blog on Google:

“Google wants net neutrality? Great! Virtue begins at home. Let the company first propose federal regulation of all search engines to ensure ‘neutral’ rankings of search results, and to guarantee that information isn’t getting concealed (or revealed) for political purposes. Let’s see Google regulate itself — then we’ll consider regulating its competition.”

The interesting thing about Johnson’s Google critique is that when it comes to data management on the network, she gets it. Only a few weeks ago, she posted a column on the problem of applying yesterday’s “dumb-pipe” approach to todays’ Internet, writing:

“The lesson of the Internet (and of free-market democracy, at least so far) is that more freedom is generally preferable, even at the cost of limited performance guarantees. But ‘generally preferable’ doesn’t mean ‘true at all costs’….

In network terms, the network should be dumb enough to permit freedom, but smart enough to stay functional under stress. In other words, add just enough intelligence to keep the ‘net functional, but not so much that it breaks.”

That’s a pretty good summary of what the net neutrality fight is all about. The “bandwidth glut” from earlier this decade has disappeared faster than the latest Lindsay Lohan movie. With network operators reporting 60 percent annual data growth, there isn’t any choice but to add a limited amount of network intelligence to keep the web functioning properly.

Sure Google objects, but as Johnson notes about Google’s commitment to neutrality:

“Try Googling Google, and you may notice something surprising: very few negative comments on the company pop up. Odd, no?”

“This [60-day] deadline is appropriate in light of the Commission’s failure, after eight years, to develop lawful unbundling rules, and its apparent unwillingness to adhere to prior judicial rulings.” – Final sentence in the U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia’s 2004 opinion overturning FCC rules on telephone competition

The DC Court of Appeals’ verbal guillotine on federal efforts to create “wholesale” vs. “retail” phone service competition should be a timely reminder to anyone entranced by Google’s siren song urging same kind of federal rules for wireless broadband.

Like a bad Hollywood sequel, Google seems hellbent on pushing Congress and the FCC into making the same mistakes that delayed investment and caused thousands of lost jobs in the phone industry over the past decade.

Let’s go back to those thrilling days of yesteryear: Entire forests were sacrificed to produce the paper necessary for all the NPRMs, court and regulatory filings, amicus briefs, FCC orders, lawsuits, stays, more FCC orders, more lawsuits, and more stays – all in an eight-year adventure in the pointlessness of federally managed “retail” competition. As Adam Thierer at PFF notes, the three FCC attempts at creating regulated wholesale vs. retail “competition” alone totaled 1,575 pages and included 6,770 footnotes. Incidentally, let’s remember that in 2004, the ink was barely dry on a 576-page FCC “competition” plan – its third try! – when the DC Appeals Court struck it down.

As usual, Holman Jenkins has pegged this issue perfectly, though candidly we’re not sure if he’s trying to invoke an image from the old “Kung Fu” TV series or from the climax of “Return of the Jedi”. One thing is certain: With our economy dependent on broadband investment, Google’s plan for new wireless regulation is a loser for everyone except, not surprisingly, Google.

Que viva Roberto de Posada y la Coalicion Latina!

Writing about net neutrality in today’s New York Sun, Don Roberto, president of the non-profit Latino Counsel, explains:

“Today, only 29% of Latino adults subscribe to broadband at home, compared to 43% of white America. That statistical difference represents thousands of potential Hispanic leaders and entrepreneurs that are being left behind when it comes to acquiring the online skills necessary to succeed in tomorrow’s world.”

As for net neutrality, Don Roberto is clear:

“An open Internet is good and we should oppose any effort by broadband providers to balkanize it. But the necessities of competition have proven the best antidote for bad behavior by broadband companies, and the net neutrality campaign may be a case where the cure is far worse than the poison.”

His oped makes a key point about net neutrality and the Digital Divide: By shifting deployment costs onto consumers, Net neutrality hits hardest at the most price-sensitive consumers. They include the millions of Hispanic Americans in underserved communities – a point that LULAC also made to Congress prior to last June’s stinging floor defeat for net neutrality.

Indeed, proponents of net neutrality don’t argue the central point about price hikes hitting the poor and underserved the worst. Instead, they try to dress up their argument for net neutrality with rhetoric about unspecified doom for everyone sometime in the future.

It’s a reach. Or as the old Spanish proverb puts it, “Aunque la mona se vista de seda, mona se queda.”