I’ve been using the Internet since the mid-1980’s and saw my first web browser in 1993. Since the web exploded on the scene, the growth in the Internet and broadband connectivity has been phenomenal. During this period of growth, two incidents I experienced stick out in my mind.
First, in the early part of this decade (somewhere around early 2002 I believe) I was working in Verizon’s Washington office on Internet technology policy. I was visited one day by a lawyer who was representing a new group called CBUI, the Coalition of Broadband Users and Innovators. He told me the group was promoting a concept called “network neutrality” and I immediately connected his comments to a paper I had just been reading authored by Tim Wu where that same term was used. The basic point CBUI was making in its meetings on the Hill and at the FCC was that ISPs, then in the early stages of building broadband networks, had incentives to “block” content, and regulations mandating neutrality were needed.
I had been thinking about this issue after reading Tim Wu’s paper. I knew that the Internet’s structure and operating characteristics were far different from the old style telephone networks of the past. While a broadband provider could interfere with or block traffic in some way, I just did not see how the incentives existed to either make this practical or make it a successful business model. I also recognized that packets had to flow through computers, routers, home networks, operating systems, applications, web services and web sites, backbone networks, and local networks in order to reach consumers and the content or applications they wanted to access. It was just as possible that some player in any of these arenas might do something to block or interfere with traffic, inadvertently or intentionally. Again, I did not see how the Internet ecosystem that was emerging – with all of its many players collaborating, competing and innovating to meet customer demands – would allow any player to get away for long with doing something to disrupt the Internet’s flow and operations.
The second incident came not long after that. I was using a browser made by Opera, a
Norwegian company. It was fast and sleek and I liked it better than other browsers I had tried. In 2003, some of the sites I visited with Opera did not seem to render correctly. Pop-ups, for example, often did not display when my mouse ran over links. At first, I was not sure what to think and then Opera began alleging that they had been given the wrong “style sheets” (which tell a browser maker how to interface its web application with the operating system so it renders correctly) by Microsoft web servers. In response, and to gain attention to the problem, Opera released the “bork” edition of their browser. If you went to any Microsoft web server, the browser would display all of the text as “Bork, Bork, Bork!” like the Swedish Chef from the Muppet Show. An Opera official at the time made this comment:
"This is a joke. However, we are trying to make an important point. The MSN site is sending Opera users what appear to be intentionally distorted pages. The Bork edition illustrates how browsers could also distort content, as the Bork edition does. The real point here is that the success of the Web depends on software and Web site developers behaving well and rising above corporate rivalry."
There was a spat for a while and if I remember correctly, Microsoft eventually said they had inadvertently sent the wrong style sheets. I took them at their word.
Why do I mention these two incidents? The entire debate about net neutrality has been about ISPs and the fear that they might somehow have the incentive and ability to block, degrade or interfere with traffic. That was what I first heard explained to me in 2002 from the attorney representing CBUI. But I knew that this was simplistic, that in fact packets could be interfered with in some way at any number of points in the Internet’s packet flows and by any number of actors whose services, products or networks handle or are involved in some part of a packet’s journey to the home computer or business computer and back. The incident with the Opera browser was one example. While packets weren’t “blocked” per se, some of the information they contained was clearly not rendered correctly by the Opera browser due to faulty interactions between Microsoft and Opera – first (perhaps unintentionally) by the web-server host and then (in order to raise awareness of the issue) by the browser maker.
I have said this over and over again but the incidents used to support the call for net neutrality rules for ISPs have been almost vanishingly small over the last decade. Yet, today we see many examples of blocking involving content sites and governments among others. Some of these situations involve content owners refusing to provide access to their content to companies making online TV applications or devices. In others, content is blocked for access via the web in disputes involving content for cable TV networks. In others, governments around the world are blocking or interfering with content for any number of reasons – some political, some having to do with content the governments think is inappropriate, some involving content from sites that are pornographic or allegedly violate “cultural norms” in a particular country.
I am not trying to offer policy judgments about these incidents although interference with free speech and political speech is abhorrent and harms the Internet’s growth. Instead, I use them to point out the irony of the continuing focus on ISPs and net neutrality in today’s world where so much involvement in the Internet’s traffic flows is not by ISPs but rather by a host of other players. I still have the presentations I used many years ago explaining how traffic could be interfered with in many ways as packets flowed through the various parts of the Internet’s structure. When it comes to commercial players as opposed to government, I still believe that most of those issues will get worked out as the Internet continues to evolve. The Internet ecosystem is robust and there are strong incentives to work out problems that harm the Internet’s traffic flows, competition or users. Given all of this, focusing on ISPs seems simply out of touch.