“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.

Hands Off The Internet co-chairman Mike McCurry recently spoke at Ohio University where he introduced the Seven Deadly Sins of Net Neutrality. We here at the HOTI blog are going to spend a little time explaining each of the Sins and what they mean for you, the consumer. So without further ado, let’s get started with Deadly Sin number one:

“Net neutrality would finance the future of the Internet by shifting all of the costs onto consumers.”

Don’t believe us? Then just take the content providers’ word for it. For instance, according to a news report this January, Amazon’s spokesman on net neutrality argued that,

“In today’s Internet model, content is not pushed to the consumer by big media companies, but pulled into the network by paying consumers requesting the content. Those consumers and not the content providers, he argued, should pay the price.”

Or maybe you’d believe Google, who has recently asserted,

“By selecting and pulling in content and applications over their broadband connections, the end user is the cost causer. [...] Any new charges should be imposed on those end users.”

From where we’re sitting, it would appear that the big content providers are interested more in using net neutrality to protect their bottom line than to protect the consumer.

Remember a long, long time ago when no major network streamed programs over the net? That was last year.

Now they all do, which is why the Wall Street Journal story that CBS is about to announce a flurry of deals to put shows online seems almost anticlimactic. If you can’t get enough of CSI or Katie, then rejoice. But the fact that once-blockbuster deals like this are now commonplace shows how dramatically networks have migrated to the web since only last year.

But it’s also a timely reminder of how these deals are placing unprecedented strain on the web’s capacity. Internet traffic growth surged past capacity growth last year. Average traffic was up 75 percent while capacity grew only 47 percent, according to the folks at TeleGeography.

Any way you look at it, the web’s capacity has to ramp up and that’s expensive. Now you know why Google and eBay are trying to so hard to avoid paying their share of these costs by lobbying for neutrality regulations. And it’s worth repeating: If they don’t, guess who will?

“Saving” the Internet requires placing restrictions on what the ISPs can and can’t do, right? Wrong. There’s an interesting op-ed in the University of Texas Daily Texan explaining that imposing new laws is not how to save the Internet:

Proponents of net neutrality would like you to think that large service providers had nothing to do with inventing our modern Internet, but this notion isn’t true. Even though explorations into the Internet began at major academic universities for the purpose of research, it is highly unlikely that private companies would never have entered into the market of Internet services. Companies eventually moved into the Internet communications market, albeit backed by government protectionism through such policies as the Communications Act of 1934.

Sure, the government invented the Internet, nobody can dispute that. But it’s equally indisputable that private enterprise and the free market made the Internet great. As we look toward the future, it’s still business and the market that will build the next generation Internet. The only question is who pays for it, and the proponents of “net neutrality” want to shift that burden from big companies, including the ISPs and content providers, to you the consumer:

The net neutrality argument isn’t really a “little guy” movement, but a corporate protectionist measure on behalf of those like Google and Amazon. If economic prosperity in the Internet service industry is our goal, then we should not hinder Internet service providers from demanding varying prices from different content providers to finance important and necessary upgrades to the Internet infrastructure.

If you really want to save the Internet, it doesn’t need saving from the marketplace — it needs to be saved from the regulators.

Wall Street analyst Anna-Maria Kovacs is out with an interesting take on the FCC’s Notice of Inquiry proposal (Link 1). In an email to investors, she notes:

“What is interesting is that the NOI asks about the practices of content and application service providers as well as those of broadband network and access providers. The record built as a result of this NOI could expand the focus of the debate on the potential for harm caused by other parties, such as portals or site managers. Thus, it has the potential to broaden the scope of the debate substantially and to put some of the parties who have been pushing net neutrality on the defense .” (Emphasis ours)

If the FCC follows through on this, consumers could be treated to quite a show as regulations biggest advocates suddenly head for the hills. After all, eBay and Google have been locked in a year-long fight over the security of Google Checkout. eBay uses PayPal… which coincidentally happens to be owned by eBay.

And let’s not forget Amazon, which loves to advertise its one-click check-out simplicity. That company hasn’t exactly welcomed either Checkout or PayPal with open arms.

Of course, the truth is that in a free market, companies that do the best job of appealing to consumer tastes win and it shouldn’t be up to the Feds to save companies from their own shortsighted actions. Still, it would be a little bit fun to see certain folks in San Jose and Seattle squirm over their own non-neutral practices.

So what’s the real story behind yesterday’s FCC decision to open a “notice of inquiry” on broadband market practices?

Strip away the usual government-ese and this is pretty obviously a shrewd move by the commission because it calls the bluff of those lobbying for broad new regulations.

Google, Amazon and other pro-regulation companies now face a choice: Cither come up with an actual example of online discrimination or admit that existing laws protecting consumers’ Internet experience are working.

The first option is about as likely as Paris Hilton becoming a rabbi. That leaves the regulation agitators with no alternative but to admit that their rationale for ‘neutrality’ is just a transparent effort to shift build-out costs onto ordinary Net users.

Watch for their upcoming filings to have more twists and contortions than an Upper East Side yoga class.

“I have dozens of friends and the fun never ends
That is, as long as I’m buying”
–”Too Much Time On My Hands,” Styx

In the spirit of being kinder and gentler, let’s recognize our friends at Amazon for their latest effort to turn the Internet into a venue resembling the Los Angeles 405 at rush hour.

Recently, the company unveiled its new video download service. Interested web viewers will be able to check out “Jimmy Neutron”, “Three Kings” and if they’re really desperate, episodes of “Laguna Beach.” With this program, Amazon aspires to send additional terabytes of data to consumers in the form of TV shows, sports events and movies. (By the way, one terabyte = 1000 gigabytes.)

And there’s the problem.

The only way to accommodate the spiraling demands for instant data transfer from Amazon and its online brethren is through expensive network deployment. But if Net neutrality regulations become law, Amazon and its ilk will have a perfectly legal loophole to avoid paying anything for the massive new bandwidth they consume.

So if these guys don’t pay for the bandwidth cost they use, guess who will?