The U.S. Department of Justice is not neutral about network neutrality

The U.S. Department of Justice is not neutral about network neutrality. !!!! Whoa what a shocker! A Justice department, fashioned for nearly 8 years to 'Bush's bosses' desires, does not think regulation of carriers to assure neutral and broad access is important. Why whooed a thunk it?!

The Justice Department said that precluding providers from charging content and application companies for faster or more reliable service "could shift the entire burden of implementing costly network expansions and improvements onto consumers." It made a comparison to the U.S. Post Office, which successfully offers different delivery guarantees at different prices. ..... There is no evidence yet of a widespread problem that needs to be fixed, the DoJ said, adding that the details of what constitutes network neutrality are not yet clear.

.......... the Justice Department's argument was twofold. First, "it would be better to leave the market unregulated and deal with problems as they come up," and, second, regulation will mean that consumers will pay for infrastructure upgrading because content providers couldn't be charged more.

But, he pointed out, the government's lawyers don't make clear why consumers would be forced to pay a higher portion of infrastructure investment with network neutrality than they have for the past 15 years of Internet traffic.

Anderson also said the Post Office analogy does not apply because "no one is seriously proposing that ISPs not be able to sell different speed and bandwidth tiers."

I think the idea that we should wait until there are problems to worry about fixing them is a little strange. Sort of like saying no intersection stop signs until at least one person has been killed or no FDA oversight of drugs until the drug has sickened at least 5% of its users.

But other observers are less alarmed at the prospect of Internet life without network neutrality regulations. ZDNet's Larry Dignan, admitting that he's "no huge fan of AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast," said that "the idea that these guys will block sites they don't like is ludicrous. They need customers just as much as any other company." If they did, he said, there are already antitrust and other laws on the books.

I think Larry Dignan is missing the point. The point is they don't need more customers, their customers need more bandwidth! The whole point of the anti-neutrality push is to make more money with the bandwidth you have! Granted they say they will use that money to then create more bandwidth , but lets face it when you control a commodity (in this case bandwidth) it is a lot easier to increase profits by increasing the price of the commodity than it is to increase the supply. Without 'neutrality' regulations the carriers would simply supply bandwidth to the highest bidders among the content providers and let everybody else slip away. There would be no incentive to increase bandwidth availability unless you had high-bidders you couldn't service.

As I see it a neutral net works like this; Carrier A has a thousand gigabyte per second capacity. They set a price that they need (and can get away with given they do have competitors) which every customers pays and each customer uses as much as they need or can afford, but they use it on a 'first come first serve', packet by packet, basis. Netflix, sending movie to a customer, has to send its bits and pieces in turn just like the lady sending an email to her daughter. Netflix is going to pay more for the movie but only because they are sending more bits.

Ok now we come to the situation where Netflix says they could sell a lot more movies if it only took 30 seconds to download one instead of 3 minutes... And if they could do that they could actually afford to pay more per gigabyte.

Under neutral net rules the carrier has two options 1: raise the price for everybody to what Netflix says they are willing to pay and HOPE that forces enough customers off the internet that they can keep Netflix's business or 2: build more bandwidth so they KNOW they can meet Netflix's criteria and then charge them (and everybody else, of course) the price they need to pay for that new build of infrastructure (and as much more as competition will allow).

Under the rules the carriers want, they could simply assign that much bandwidth to Netflix, charge Netflix the price it is willing to pay and block the email lady until Netflix does not need the line any more. Guarantee Netflix the speed they were willing to pay for and make the higher profit and no need to increase infrastructure at all.

Company directors are not idiots. Give them a choice of doubling their profits with no additional investment or possibly doubling their profits with a large additional investment and which choice do you think they will make?