I've been meaning for weeks, months - years? - to write something about the problems with Net Neutrality legislation, in its' current form, and even moreso as many advocates would like to see it in place.  This morning, ZDNet flew across the top of my GMail window and let me know that I am not alone, and that those of us who oppose net neutrality are not all big telcos trying to line our pockets.  Some of us participated in the beta testing efforts for the first broadband offerings, and remember dreaming of just a portion of the access that we have today, and hold in our hearts a dream of a boundless and freewheeling internet that is in many ways very different from that outlined by the "Internet Freedom Preservation Act".

First and foremost, I'd like to say that most of what telecom providers are accused at savetheinternet.com of doing is either exagerrated or uninformed.  I definitely share some of the concerns, but I don't think that any of it matters if all of the legislation proposed by this movement passes, because we won't have an internet - that's the truth.  The Internet is more responsive to market forces than any other business or communication medium and to some extent, I believe we should lean toward trusting that, rather than passing legislation which may be nearly impossible to reverse or amend.  It's clear today, before we pass a law, that we must address the primary concerns here, which I believe are well divided between the co-inventors of the Internet Protocol who, unlike Alexander Graham Bell, are still alive - so let's listen up:

• Vinton G. Serf: "The Internet was designed with no gatekeepers over new content or services. A lightweight but enforceable neutrality rule is needed to ensure that the Internet continues to thrive."
  
• Bob Kahn: "If the goal is to encourage people to build new capabilities, then the party that takes the lead in building that new capability, is probably only going to have it on their net to start with and it is probably not going to be on anybody else's net."

I can agree with both of these statements, I think that Neutrality in concept is very important, and that everyone who wants to protect innovation would like neutrality towards new innovation as well.  I actually think that many of the advocacy agencies are hurting this cause by promoting ideals that have nothing to do with the law, as I read it this morning, and that's what's leading to backlash in opposition from informed parties who, above all, know Not To Trust The Government(tm).

After reading the law, I note that there sure seems to be a concerted effort to address opponents' concerns, there are allowances for QoS, and even for customers to pay for a "level of service", which makes sense to a lot of people who would like to pay *less* than the average cost, for limited service that serves a need.  I also find it notable that some organizations like Comcast, who are amongst the "indicted" by advocates, are neutral on the law, and in fact may be split across departments within the company.  Additionally, while many people are afraid of organizations like Comcast banning protocols like BitTorrent, the author of BitTorrent is concerned that while he supports the spirit of this law, he feels it could hamper development of future versions of the protocol.

Illustrating that Net Neutrality laws could actually exacerbate the extent to which abuse of networks makes them unusable, Wikipedia tells me about Fair Queuing, a method which penalizes abusive or reckless uses of the network, rather than rewarding them with the ability to overtake other users' needs, but which prioritizes based on factors which may be illegal under proposed neutrality laws.  Sure, neutrality laws can be *amended* for any individual case like this, but what I see is evidence of Murphy's Law looming overhead, saying that anything we decided is not dangerous to measure today will be the worst factor to limit tomorrow.

Am I concerned that apathy toward this issue could be dangerous?  Sure I am, many of the concerns that advocates have are very valid, but I think that market forces will continue to address them, and that this law will continue to grow up.  I'm concerned that this issue brings to light some perfectly valid situations which could be illegal under Antitrust statutes written to break up a telecom conglomerate whom we've allowed to re-assemble in the presence of competition.