philip lelyveld The world of entertainment technology

The strange resurrection of Net neutrality

At the annual meeting of the Congressional Internet Caucus, the only issue that appeared likely to appear soon on lawmakers' agenda was an old one -- Net neutrality.

...But let's not kid ourselves. These are already fast lanes on the Internet, and Netflix its right to be deploying technologies to expand them as fast as possible. Critics who reflexively point to such developments as violating the spirit if not the letter of the FCC's Open Internet rules dangerously oversimplify a complex technical and business architecture. They aren't helping anyone, and certainly not consumers.

As U.S. Rep. Steve Scalise (R-La.) said in the closing keynote at State of the Net, "Our response to this newly converged marketplace should not be to level the playing field by extending legacy regulations to new entrants and technologies, but rather to let the Internet work and repeal the archaic and obsolete rules now on the books."

Scalise was talking about regulations that are unintentionally constraining the ability of legacy phone companies to replace their switched networks with new IP-based technologies. But, it seems, the FCC's more recent efforts to "preserve" the open Internet may have aged even more quickly.

Even if the FCC's Net neutrality rules survive the impending court challenge, they may prove to have little to offer Internet users -- little, that is, except for unfortunate and unintended consequences.

Read the full story here: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13578_3-57565561-38/the-strange-resurrection-of-net-neutrality/?part=rss&subj=news&tag=title