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.

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

What’s that sound? Is it the sound of another think tank concluding that net neutrality laws could be disastrous? Yes it is — this week the Phoenix Center for Advanced Legal and Economic Policy Studies (whew!) reached its own conclusion on what regulations like the Dorgan-Snowe bill could bring.

Lawrence Spiwak, president of the Phoenix Center, said:

The growing capacity demands of video on the Internet, coupled with the pernicious increase of spam and viruses, threaten an on-line traffic jam. To maximize bandwidth, operators need the flexibility to meet the different needs with different types of services. But many network neutrality proposals mandate rigidity.

Or as the report’s abstract puts it,

‘network neutrality’ proposals … seek to mandate an inflexible set of rules that would foreclose or severely limit many market transactions. Our model reveals that under plausible conditions, rules that prohibit efficient commercial transactions between content and broadband service providers could, in fact, be bad for all participants: consumers would pay higher prices, the profits of the broadband service provider would decline, and the sales of Internet content providers would also decline. Moreover, rules that prohibit the market from contracting efficiently may shift sales from content providers to the broadband provider’s content affiliate, a result entirely inconsistent with the stated desire of network neutrality proponents.

Got that? Net neutrality is not only a terrible idea that would hurt everybody involved, the likely actual effects of net neutrality regulations could actually bring about the world of ISP-centric online services that supporters of Dorgan-Snowe fear. With evidence like this mounting, we’re surprised they continue to back such an obviously flawed bill.

To read the full thing in PDF form, click here.

Like the Deloitte & Touche report last month, or the many independent experts and Internet pioneers including Robert Kahn and Dave Farber, by the time we get to Phoenix there are plenty of expert voices calling for the government to refrain from messing with the Internet. But more are always welcome.