Net Neutrality Was Bad
With net neutrality laws being repealed last week in the U.S., there has been heated debate over the implications for all Internet users. Personally I don’t think it will hinder the average user’s freedoms and experience due to the fluid nature of the net.
What I learned
- What is net neutrality?
- Net neutrality is a relatively new concept anyway
- You can’t treat ISPs like telcos
- The Internet was designed to be open and free
- I’ll continue to fight censorship every step of the way
- Customers will always go with the best service
- Freedom of speech will always prevail
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What is ‘Net Neutrality’?
What I wanted to talk to you a little bit about today, was net neutrality. I’m surprised you’re able to watch this video, because the Internet died. That’s what I heard anyway. Net neutrality, so the laws in the US were basically nullified last week. We’ve had a lot of people … This site is one of the main ones out there, talking about net neutrality. When I look at this site, one of the things, as I said, basically they’re saying that net neutrality is the Internet’s guiding principal. Net neutrality means an Internet enables and protects free speech. It means that ISPs should have open networks.
It also says that it’s the way the Internet has always worked. Well, that’s just simply not true. Net neutrality has only been around since 2015, as legislation in the US anyway. The concept of a free and open Internet has been around a very long time though. The Internet has been around since the late ’60s. The web, early ’90s. If you’ve been watching this show for a little while, you’ll know that I will do everything to keep the Internet free, to keep it open. I’ve spoken on the laws of Parliament House in Australia, protesting censorship. I was protesting censorship back in the 1990s. We’ve had both liberal and labour governments that have tried to bring in censorship of the Internet, and I have rallied against both of those pretty hard.
I’m gung-ho about open and free Internet. Net neutrality though … Look, if I’ve got a network, if I’ve put all this money into an infrastructure, to build something, and the government comes along and tells me, “Well, you can only use it this way,” it’s like, “Well, that’s not what I planned.” So I have a problem with that firstly. It’s my network. I built it. Why can’t I do with it as I please? This net neutrality act basically turned broadband providers in the US, and put them under the same classification of a telco. So they had all these other regulations and everything that they had to follow. They couldn’t regulate different traffic.
The concept of net neutrality is that an ISP can’t say, block, one type of traffic. I might want to block BitTorrent traffic. Or I’m looking at all the video that’s coming through my network now, and it is bucket loads. It’s basically saturating my network, and I’m going to have to invest in new networks, and put things up. Well, maybe I don’t want video on my network. Maybe I don’t want people watching Netflix on my network. Maybe that’s going to cost me too much. Okay, so we’ll turn off Netflix. Then what is going to happen in that situation? The Netflix viewers are not going to subscribe to that broadband provider. They’re going to move on.
The Internet Evolves
What’s going to happen in this situation, and I wish I had thought of this idea, but it’s not mine, it’s Ken Rutkowski’s of Business Rockstar. I’ve known Ken, we used to do a show together in the late ’90s. Ken, well, he’s probably one of the first people that was streaming online. So he knows a bit. He’s been around a while. He came up and he just said, “Look, what happens in these situations? When people try to shut something down on the net, we get new things coming up. We get new things growing.” You can’t really do that with the net.
I forget who said it. It might have been John Postel, one of the original ICANN members, or charter members, but he’s no longer with us. But I think it was him who said, “The Internet detects censorship as an error, and routes around.” The same will happen in this situation. We’re going to get new technologies emerging. Google is not going to want to pay extra to be on the Verizon network. It’s not going to happen.
Even if those telcos do that, and we do have some more expense in the short term, then it’s not going to last forever, because Netflix wants to have its subscribers. Verizon doesn’t want to lose customers because it costs more for Netflix. It’s not going to happen that way. Just be aware that a lot of the noise out there is pretty shrill. But a lot of it is from people who haven’t seen the web go through its various stages over the years.
Net neutrality, whilst it’s a fantastic concept of, hey, let’s just treat all protocols equal, so you can’t restrict free speech. Well, free speech doesn’t get really restricted by a telco. Free speech gets restricted by a platform, typically. I mean, we look at all the criticisms around Facebook, and Myanmar, and the Rohingya, and all those sorts of things. That’s where you start to see corporate censorship come into play. I don’t have a problem with that either. If I have a problem with a corporate censorship, I’m just not going to use that brand anymore. I’m moving on. That network, if I don’t like it, I’ll move on. We’ve seen plenty of people do that with Facebook as well.
The same will happen with the telcos, and the broadband providers. If a broadband provider starts looking at filtering traffic, and stopping you going to certain sites, you’re going to switch broadband providers to one that doesn’t do that. The ones that will win, will be the ones that give the customer what they want. That’s what we all have to do, as a business, is give the customer what they want. Once we do that, then our businesses grow. The same is true with broadband providers.
Just remember, when you see a lot of this noise around, I’m seeing stories in Australia saying, “Oh, net neutrality could affect the Australian Internet as well.” No it won’t. It’s a lot of noise, a lot of shrill, panic. Just a lot of noise really. We’re on day three, or day five, or whatever it is of net neutrality, and the Internet still seems to be working pretty okay. Have a great Christmas. Have a great New Year. Whatever other holidays you want to celebrate, have awesome ones of those as well. Thank you very much, once again. We will see you next year. Got a big year next year. Got a book coming out, and I’m going to be very interested in your feedback on it as well. Thanks very much, we’ll see you next time. Bye.
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