“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.

The Internet’s sharks are not only still in the ocean, they’re getting a lot closer to shore. According to Thursday’s Washington Post:

Approximately 5.5 million malicious software programs were unleashed on the Web last year, according to AV Test Labs, a German company that measures how quickly and accurately anti-virus products detect the latest malicious software…. That volume, AV said, forced anti-virus firms to analyze between 15,000 and 20,000 new specimens each day — more than four times the daily average they found in 2006, and at least 15 times as many the company recorded in 2005. In the first two months of 2008 alone, AV Test found more than one million samples of malware spreading online.

“Back in 1990 we were seeing a handful of new viruses each week,” said David Perry, global director of education for Trend Micro, an anti-virus company headquartered in Japan. “Now, we’re having to analyze between 2,000 and 3,000 new viruses per hour.”

Much of this is coming from organized gangs outside the U.S. stealing passwords, credit card numbers and other financial information from unsuspecting Net users.

And speaking of illegal behavior, Paul Sweeting at ContentAgenda reports that FCC Jonathan Adelstein said this week that Net Neutrality would not cover illegal behavior online, including copyright infringement and illegal P2P sharing.

So here’s the latest version of the question that Net Neutrality advocates refuse to face: With Net Neutrality pushing a “dumb network” regulatory structure over the web, just how are network engineers supposed to keep up with exploding challenges from viruses, malware, and other illegal behavior?

As students around the country are leaving behind their studies and moving on to summer jobs, backpacking trips around Europe or auditions for the next installment of Survivor, we here at Hands Off the Internet are getting back to our studies — or in this case, a study by the American Consumer Institute called “Net Neutrality and the Effects on Consumers.” You can read the whole thing in PDF format.

The bottom line: “restrictions on price, product and service differentiation would result in higher prices for lower income broadband consumers, which would result in significantly lower industry demand and revenue, deterring investments in next generation network and reducing consumer welfare.”

In short, net neutrality regulations would have a negative impact on the average Internet user. Here are other findings from the summary:

This study also finds that restrictions on multi-sided market pricing would mean that consumers lose $69 billion in potential benefits over the next 10 years. In effect, net neutrality regulations would require consumers to pay all of the upgrade costs of the next generation Internet and prohibit voluntary commercial agreements that would lower consumer broadband prices.

Net Neutrality regulations would also increase the price of broadband services, because it increases the cost of the network that provides those services. Because broadband services are very price sensitive, just a $5 increase in price could lead to a 15% drop in total broadband subscribership and a 60% decline in demand for lower-income, price sensitive consumers. In summary, this study finds that Internet regulations would harm consumers and agrees with an earlier finding by the FCC1 – namely, that Internet regulations would impede investment, reduce broadband demand and raise consumer prices. In summary, net neutrality is not, by all accounts, about helping consumers.

More numbers and charts in the full study itself — unless you’re heading out to the lake or the movie theater, check it out. In fact, bring it along — it can’t be any worse than this.

Tech reporter Andrew Orlowski likes controversial subjects, and some of our favorite reporting by him tweaks the assumptions the “net neutrality” die-hards take for conventional wisdom. His latest is for the (liberal) UK Guardian, and the whole thing is required reading. His depiction of the pro-regulation movement as head-in-the-sand conspiracy theorists is certainly amusing, and we suspect he has a point. And their unwillingness (or unfamiliarity) with the technical aspects of how networks actually work only makes them look foolish:

Save The Internet took full advantage of rational fears, argues veteran internet engineer Richard Bennett, but in doing so, it created “an Intelligent Design for the Left”.

“The gap between fear and reality is even more stark when the technical issues are examined. The Neutrality amendments rejected by Congress last year would have made many of today’s private contracts illegal, and outlawed the techniques such as “traffic shaping” that ISPs use to curb bandwidth hogs, says Bennett.

“Even worse was the long-term chilling effect. Neutrality would have made designing a better internet much harder, says the man commonly described as the father of the internet.

“Dr Robert Kahn says that Neutrality legislation poses a fundamental threat to internet research because it misunderstands what the internet really is; it’s a network of networks, and experimentation on private networks must be encouraged. “The internet has never been neutral,” explains Crowcroft. “Without traffic shaping, we won’t get the convergence that allows the innovation on TV and online games that we’ve seen in data and telephony.

Vocal “net neutrality” kids want one network to rule them all, and they seem oblivious to the fact that it doesn’t work that way and never will. We say: Let a thousand networks bloom.

How neutral is the Internet right now? As we’ve pointed out on more than one occasion, the answer is: Not very. The Internet is a network of networks and technology tools at the input end of networks can result in a content owner getting priority over others on the Internet. It’s an expensive network of networks at that, funded by private investors and public agencies and requiring yet more investment for upkeep. In short, access may be equal, but the pipes aren’t. Illustrating the point last week, Nick Carr from the IT blog Rough Type, wrote a let’s-be-honest-with-ourselves post directed primarily at supporters of net neutrality:

Net neutrality exists in the abstract, in the realm of protocol. Because the content of any packet of data is invisible to the pipe carrying it, by protocological fiat, every packet is treated the same. If that was all there was to it - if theory and reality were one - then pro-neutrality would mean pro-competition. But it’s not all there is to it. In addition to the abstract realm of protocol, there’s the very real - very physical - realm of infrastructure. Regardless of protocol, superior infrastructure provides superior quality of service - ie, faster, more reliable transmission of data. … If net neutrality becomes law, it would prevent big companies from locking in an advantage at the protocological level - giving certain types of data privileged status - but it would allow big companies to lock in an advantage at the infrastructural level.

His chief examples are not new, either. Akamai is a company that operates servers around the world so the big companies that can afford their services can get their content delivered faster than the smaller companies that can’t afford this. When you consider that one of the main arguments in favor of net neutrality is to keep big companies from overpowering little companies, it’s clear that big companies already have this advantage. And yet new web companies succeed every day.

We don’t know very much about the blog Alonline except that it is probably written by a guy named Al, and that Al definitely works in the telecom field. One other thing we know is that he makes a great case about why “net neutrality” legislation would be a bad deal for consumers:

Working in a telecommunication company I can understand the immense investment that is required to get a measurable increase in Internet speed for customers. Just working on a very local level can involve digging up roads, buying land for equipment to stand on, and a lot of very expensive equipment. When you come to the connection to the backbone then you are looking at considerably more expense as you head into units that have figures like 256Gbps in their description. And when you see what these units need to do then you realise why they cost so much. However the cost of the units is nothing compared to ensuring that the fibre optic network they connect to has the capability to carry the volume of data required - quality fibre optic cable is not cheap at all. So if a telecommunication company cannot realise any major revenue from upgrading these expensive items what do you think it’s going to do? Spend and be damned, or wait until it has to spend and then spend as little as possible? As you can see, offering the telecommunication companies an opportunity to charge the service provider companies that use the most bandwidth might be the only way that the Internet can get a chance to expand to have any redundancy and spare capacity. So it might, actually be worth voting against Net Neutrality from now on - at least if you hope to get speeds above a couple of Mbps.

If you’re reading this now and you’re in the position of voting on net neutrality, two things: 1) Hello, Senator or Representative! It’s good to have you here. 2) Alonline has a point.

With each passing week, it seems more and more voices are stepping into the debate about “net neutrality” — and many (perhaps even most) of them are adding new points about why net neutrality legislation would be a big mistake.

Try David Cowan, a venture capitalist and blogger, who recently posted an extremely insightful essay about the claims and realities of the proposed legislation. It’s clear and concise, but even better, it tackles the “FedEx analogy” with important detail that’s worth quoting at length:

The call for net neutrality is superficially appealing, in the same way that it’s easy to oppose free trade in defense of your countrymen’s jobs. But just like regulating imports, regulating ISPs with rules on net neutrality is short-sighted and, in the long term, terrible for both businesses and consumers. It’s politically incorrect to say so, it’s likely to get me flamed, and Google won’t like me for saying it, but it’s true.

Market forces will, as they always have, drive innovation on the internet. ISPs will find ways to accelerate and guarantee delivery with all sorts of interesting new services, and businesses who can deliver more value to their consumers through better internet performance can afford to pay for them. Should Fedex have been prohibited from competing against the Post Office, so that “big corproations” wouldn’t have an advantage over the little guy? Of course not.

Proponents of net neutrality would counter that Fedex doesn’t hurt the performance of old-fashioned mail, while express lanes for packets will necessarily slow down “free packets” pushed to the back of the line. On the contrary: allowing ISPs to profit from delivering express services for special classes of traffic will directly lead to the rapid development of additional internet capacity. There is no limit to the number of lanes one can build on the information highway, unless of course you regulate and cripple the only entities capable of building those lanes.

As we’ve long argued, net neutrality would almost certainly hinder investment in new broadband capacity, while allowing the pipe-owners to innovate will spur more innovation and investment. And Cowan has a great find in the quote he uses to lead his post. We’ll use it to end this one:

“People who demand neutrality in any situation are usually not neutral but in favor of the status quo.” — Max Eastman

We couldn’t have said that better ourselves.