As noted previously, there’s a new episode in the Net’s long-running soap opera, “Which Side Of Its Mouth Will Google Talk Out Of Today.”

Most recently, Google is trumpeting the fact that its YouTube subsidiary pumps out 100 million video streams per day.� � That’s almost equal to what techies call a petabyte - 10 to the 15th power - every day.� Yowza!� But then it sends out a senior official to tell the world that the Net isn’t scalable for video.

Actually, if you interpret his comments narrowly, he’s right: An IPTV product can’t really touch the public Internet without losing the level of quality consumers demand.

But the problem with Google’s position here is that conflicts with the company’s position in Washington.� There, Google’s advocating neutrality regulations not only for the public Internet, but also for virtual private networks.� These include the networks that telecom companies are building precisely because the public Internet doesn’t offer enough capacity.

It’s a convenient two-step and it may have something to do with Google’s overall business model, which is based on making a fortune by paying for less of the expensive Internet backbone than it uses.

Incidentally, there’s a wonderfully humorous part in this soap opera too.� That’s when certain bloggers belatedly recognize that Google’s decision to jump into bed with the cable guys is also its first step away from funding the Net neutrality LOBBYING movement (or “funding Net neutrality lobbying efforts”).

Rest assured, this first step won’t be the last.

Does Google’s right hand know what its left hand is doing? That’s the obvious question given this article from Reuters:

New Internet TV services such as Joost and YouTube may bring the global network to its knees, Internet companies said on Wednesday, adding they are already investing heavily just to keep data flowing.

Google, which acquired online video sharing site YouTube last year, said the Internet was not designed for TV.

It even issued a warning to companies that think they can start distributing mainstream TV shows and movies on a global scale at broadcast quality over the public Internet.

“The Web infrastructure, and even Google’s (infrastructure) doesn’t scale. It’s not going to offer the quality of service that consumers expect,” Vincent Dureau, Google’s head of TV technology, said at the Cable Europe Congress.

The phoniness is so obvious, it’s eye-rolling! Google paid the princely sum of $1.65 billion to acquire YouTube precisely to increase video traffic online. Now the company is objecting to Internet-based television because it… well, increases video traffic online.

Everyone knows that consumers’ TV habits are changing. In January 2006, not a single major network streamed its programming. Today, they all do. Add in YouTube and iPod downloads and you see why commentators have been using the phrases “TV viewers” and “paradigm shift” in the same sentence a lot.

Google’s obviously staking its claim to consumers’ eyeballs by planting scary stories designed more for public consumption than serious analysis. Honestly, you can’t get more transparently self-serving than this.

Our neighbors to the north are seeing the light and this has nothing to do with astrological miracles. Reports out of Canada suggest that the country may roll back its neutrality regulation. That would clearly be a healthy development for millions of Canadian Net users – and in particular one named Richard Warman.

A civil rights lawyer, Warman was targeted with death threats by several hate-groups operating websites based in the U.S. and Canada. Fearing for his life, Warman tried to get these sites blocked. The U.S. company hosting his site complied, commenting that while it supported free expression, it would not condone threats of violence. (A subsequent appeals court ruling upheld the company’s decision.)

In Canada, however, because of the country’s neutrality law, Warman had to appeal to the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission (CRTC), Canada’s FCC. There, Warman found bureaucratic red tape and inaction, which to this day keep the death threats online.

That’s why for Richard Warman, neutrality regulations aren’t just bad policy, they’re a life-and-death issue.

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.

You’ve heard this from us before, but Matt Sherman puts the facts about regulation and broadband capacity very eloquently:

We cannot legislate new bandwidth into existence. All we can do is to provide as free a playing field as possible, with basic protections (such as property rights and antitrust) at the outer margins. Especially in the case of the technology industry, keeping all possibilities open is the way to maximize progress and truly measure public demand. Prophylactic new laws — beyond the myriad ones we already have — can only slow this down.

The real threat to Internet equality has nothing to do with the fight groups like Save The Internet want to have. The real threat is that the United States lags far behind other developed countries in broadband speeds and many Americans living outside the cities can’t get online any faster than plain old dial-up. Those are the issues that matter, and “net neutrality” is at best a distraction.

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.

Hands Off the Internet campaign co-chair Chris Wolf participated in an FTC workshop on broadband issues, including the debate over “net neutrality” and what to do about the onrush of rapidly developing web services now threatening our already-outdated broadband networks. Well worth reading:

Prepared Remarks of Christopher Wolf
Co-Chair, Hands Off the Internet
Federal Trade Commission Public Workshop
“Broadband Connectivity Competition Policy”
February 14, 2007
Session on “What Framework Best Promotes
Competition and Consumer Welfare”

Good afternoon. My name is Christopher Wolf. I chair the Internet law practice group at the law firm of Proskauer Rose LLP and I co-chair the public policy advocacy group Hands Off the Internet. Hands Off the Internet is a nationwide coalition of Internet users and companies united in the belief that a regulatory hands-off policy has allowed the Internet to flourish thus far. We also believe that unnecessary regulation in the future will adversely affect the build-out of the Internet infrastructure that is vital to the coming demands for broadband capacity.So our answer to the question of today’s session “What Framework Best Promotes Competition and Consumer Welfare” is that the existing framework, the one that encourages and promotes innovation and progress, is the best one for the future of the Internet and for consumers using the Internet.In particular, the members of my coalition believe that adoption of so-called net neutrality regulation will have adverse consequences for innovation and competition in the market for broadband access by, among other things, making it more difficult for ISPs and other network operators to recoup their needed investments in broadband networks. There is zero evidence of harm to competition or consumers to warrant such regulation. Moreover, competitive conditions in the market for broadband access will protect consumers from the hypothetical harm theorized by net neutrality proponents. Beyond that, the antitrust and consumer protection laws, as well as current regulatory oversight, are sufficient to address any harms that may arise.As much as we might disagree over the need for new regulation, we agree completely with those on the other side of the regulatory question that no legal website or content should be blocked by a broadband provider. And we also share the belief that it is and should remain improper for service to be intentionally degraded. In addition, we fully support the use of existing law to pursue anti-competitive conduct if and when it occurs. The FCC, FTC, Department of Justice and state Attorneys General, as well as the private bar, all have tools at their disposal that may be used if anti-competitive or unfair tactics are engaged in by broadband providers. Existing law provides sufficient oversight, in our view, especially in light of the adverse unanticipated consequences of proposed new regulation.

For the rest of Wolf’s remarks, click the link below:

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