Sam Reynolds: Regulating net neutrality in Canada isn’t common sense

On December 3, the Straight ran an op-ed criticizing current Canadian Internet policy. This piece, written by the communications manager of an advocacy group known as OpenMedia.ca charged that “usage-based billing”, or an “Internet meter”, will be catastrophic to our most favoured mode of communication, and the government of Canada through the Canadian Radio-television and Telecommunications Commission should step in and preserve an “open Internet” through regulation. In a rather economical treatment of such a complex issue, the author of the piece, Lindsey Pinto, ignores the notion that the bureaucratization of the Internet is detrimental to the very ethos that the Internet embodies and is condemned by the architects of the network itself.

It is certainly amusing that in the light of events such as WikiLeaks, and the various attempts to censor the site by governments, an argument would be made for the state to have a larger role in regulating the Internet. Why should the Internet, a cornerstone of democracy, be pushed further into the hand of the state under the auspice of protection? When information is released in great quantities onto the Internet isn’t it reasonable to assume that the government, if they are given expanded power through deeper regulation, will use their newfound clout to purge these damning documents from cyberspace? If Prime Minister Stephen Harper is really the autocrat that some say he is, it is wise to give his government more countenance over the Internet? Anyone concerned with the increasing erosion of civil liberties should answer in the negative.

In addition to the democratic argument against any form of regulation regarding “net neutrality”, there is a technical one and it comes from the architects of the Internet. Robert Kahn, the inventor of Internet Protocol that runs the backend of the Internet, has said many times that net neutrality is merely a slogan and any regulation will stifle innovation as well as create a fragmented Internet.

David Farber, another noted contributor to the development of computer networking, shares Kahn’s concerns about government regulation inhibiting the development of the Internet. In a 2007 op-ed written in the Washington Post, Farber argues that some traffic is more important than others and should be given obvious priority; packets containing data from a patient’s heart monitor is of greater importance than packets containing a music download. Equality is not given to all packets, but this does not mean that democracy is being overridden.

Proponents of net neutrality seem so forget that the Internet cannot be entirely equal by very virtue of the requirements of certain applications. VoIP, for instance, is incredibly sensitive to latency whereas e-mail or regular web packets are not. If VoIP packets are not given priority on ISPs’ networks, calls will suffer from lag or will be outright dropped. Thus, in order to maintain a certain quality of service certain packets are prioritized.

As Pinto points out, audio and video content is becoming more ingrained in the fabric of the Internet. Both audio and video files require more bandwidth when being transferred. Unless more capacity is built to carry the traffic load of Web 2.0, we will simply run out of capacity to carry this data. The last thing we need is price controls from the CRTC under the guise of “net neutrality”. If money can’t be made through investing in broadband networks this needed capacity will not materialize and the Internet will slowly grind to a halt.

It is the government’s role not to tell ISPs how to run their respective networks, but to ensure that an anticompetitive market is not formed and consumers have adequate choice. One day Google might bypass ISPs completely and offer free Wi-Fi in certain cities; it’s already the case in their home of Mountain View, California. If Bell implements usage-based billing, and drives up the price for users of its network and the independent ISPs which rely on their backbone, consumers will leave the company in droves and move to another ISP which has lower prices and less restrictions on use. It’s the free market at work—a common-sense revolt.

Sam Reynolds is a freelance writer and a contributor to the Peak student newspaper at Simon Fraser University.