Outrage in Search of A Problem

The “internets” have been abuzz about a recent bill being pushed through the US Congress that many reports claimed would allow the President of the United States to “take control” of the internet in a national security emergency. This would be incredibly alarming, if it were true.

News outlets as prestigious as CBS were reporting the inaccuracy, helping to stoke the flames of Right-leaning bloggers everywhere while simultaneously trying to inject some adrenaline into what was clearly a slow news week.  Nicholas Thompson of Wired wrote an excellent blog post on the subject, categorically shooting down several issues that have helped degrade the conversation and in the process revealed the true fault of the bill.

This recent set of events got me thinking about a few of the other core issues that seem to drive heated policy conversations within the tech community in America, and presumably elsewhere in the world as well. Net Neutrality, that great, not-yet-realized threat in the sky has been an enormous rallying cry for concerned bloggers and web companies for years now.

The threat, as explained by proponents of net neutrality is thus: without legislation specifically preventing it, internet service providers will eventually create a tiered internet whereby individuals and corporations who pay for a higher tier will have higher priority over individuals and corporations who pay for a lower tier. Higher tier packets move faster through the tubes, and lower tiered packets wait their turn.

Let me be clear here, if this were true, it could severely damage innovation on the internet and create a de facto caste system in ecommerce.

But it’s not true, and it hasn’t happened in the U.S.

The web is a terrific way to disseminate information, but that doesn’t mean it get’s disseminated accurately. There is no need for net neutrality legislation for the same reason we don’t need anti-dinosaur legislation…it’s legislating a problem we simply don’t have. Likewise for the outrage, pundits are getting worked up for nothing.

In America, there is an inherent distrust of the government. Depending on who is currently in control, the level of paranoia shifts from right to left and back again. From a political and cultural level, this is to be expected.

I don’t mean to slight those countries where there have been truly atrocious policies pushed by ISP’s, there are indeed many. But the webhosting industry prides itself on innovating our way out of a slump. When the world needed connectivity the Internet came to prominence, when the Internet needed structure the World Wide Web came to the rescue, the chain goes on and on.

The tech world, be it the software developers, hardware engineers, service providers, or open source community will not allow seismic shifts in the prioritization of information. It just doesn’t flow with the way business is done.

The increasing urge to have the government step in as a mediator before there is conflict is counter-productive. Conflict, from a technological standpoint, is a good thing, why would we stifle the ebb and flow of economics to avoid “problems” that aren’t even problems yet? Even worse, the argument is being muddled and warped as we speak.

What was originally a 1st amendment issue with the prioritization of packets has now become a metering issue with people arguing over whether they should be charged more for using more bandwidth. That’s not net neutrality, and that doesn’t infringe on anyone’s rights.

So everyone take a deep breath, relax, and keep on keeping on. Don’t base the priorities of your business on hypotheticals.

But if you do, I have some dinosaur insurance to sell you.

The opinions expressed in this commentary are solely those of Eric Morales.

Photo by pdxdj.