Hold Off On Net Neutrality -- a WashPost OpEd

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/18/ 
AR2007011801508.html

Hold Off On Net Neutrality
By David Farber and Michael Katz
Friday, January 19, 2007; A19

The Internet needs a makeover. Unfortunately, congressional  
initiatives aimed at preserving the best of the old Internet threaten  
to stifle the emergence of the new one.

The current Internet supports many popular and valuable services. But  
experts agree that an updated Internet could offer a wide range of  
new and improved services, including better security against viruses,  
worms, denial-of-service attacks and zombie computers; services that  
require high levels of reliability, such as medical monitoring; and  
those that cannot tolerate network delays, such as voice and  
streaming video. To provide these services, both the architecture of  
the Internet and the business models through which services are  
delivered will probably have to change.

Congress failed to pass legislation amid rancorous debate last  
summer, but last week a group of senators reintroduced several  
initiatives under the banner of "network neutrality."

Network neutrality is supposed to promote continuing Internet  
innovation by restricting the ability of network owners to give  
certain traffic priority based on the content or application being  
carried or on the sender's willingness to pay. The problem is that  
these restrictions would prohibit practices that could increase the  
value of the Internet for customers.

<snip>

David Farber is distinguished career professor of computer science  
and public policy at Carnegie Mellon University. Michael L. Katz is a  
professor of economics at the University of California at Berkeley.  
Gerald Faulhaber, a professor at the Wharton School and the  
University of Pennsylvania's law school, and Christopher S. Yoo, a  
law professor at Vanderbilt University, also contributed to this  
article.

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