I wanted to make a clarification regarding a blog post we recently published, called “FCC Weighs In On Network Neutrality.” In that post, we talked about the FCC plan for network neutrality policies and legislation, and quoted FCC chairman Julius Genachowski extensively when he explained his reasoning for those policies.
What we did not make clear enough was that NetQoS does not specifically endorse those policies or agree with the FCC’s reasoning. But the same token, NetQoS does not specifically not endorse those policies or not agree with the FCC’s reasoning.
I know what you’re thinking: that we’re just another corporate company that can’t take a firm stand on a controversial issue. But that’s not it at all. The reason we don’t have a stance is that NetQoS isn’t just one person – it’s a collection of people, all with different viewpoints and different ideas of what makes good governmental policy regarding the public Internet. We have every political viewpoint amongst our ranks: libertarians, neo-conservatives, paleo-conservatives, moderates, liberals, socialists, and one guy who votes for the candidate that looks most like Sam the Eagle.
I don’t think we did anything wrong, per se, in our coverage, but I do think we could have done a better job. When the article was written, the primary concern was answering three questions for the readership: What was going to be the FCC’s new policy? Why did the FCC come to its decision? How would the enforcement of these policies impact network performance?
What was in retrospect, misfortunate, was not asking a fourth question: Are there other alternatives, and what are they?
Where we are not ambiguous is on the ideal of a neutral network. That is, that we believe that the primary goal of any governmental policies towards the public Internet should be those that encourage innovation from all comers and in all possible ways. Tools such as traffic shaping, if used at all, should be used to preserve performance for everyone. They should not be used to raise the barriers to entry for new technologies, new competitors, and new ideas.
But as a collection of individuals, we’re just divided on the best way to get there.
The liberal viewpoint will tend to agree with the FCC’s reasoning for new policies. If you trust the government’s ability to keep a neutral network more than the market’s ability to keep a neutral network, then in your view, it likely follows that you believe network neutrality policy needs to be drafted and enforced.
But a libertarian viewpoint would suggest that a free market would be better able to keep network neutrality than the government, if only for the idea that the government can be bribed or intimidated into passing legislation that would make networks non-neutral as easily, or more easily, than they can be convinced to pass legislation that preserves network neutrality. To the libertarian viewpoint, any governmental stance on network neutrality legislation is a bad idea because even good government policies can be reversed to favor bad outcomes by the next guy to come into the office, and that the market can exert enough pressure on the operators of public Internet gateways to favor a neutral stance.
A moderate, of course, would suggest that it doesn’t really matter how we preserve a neutral Internet, so long as we end up with one.
So, with that in mind, please understand that the coverage of the issue on the blog will focus on the impact that policies, events, and decisions by all players in this space will have on network neutrality and on network performance. That our goal will focus on trying to explain how the network will change under different plans, rather than arguing for or against any particular viewpoint.
Except for our unabashedly pro-puppy stance. Anyone who doesn’t love puppies is a commie mutant traitor.
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