Hope For the Internet, Hopefully

Following a distressing announcement from the FCC last week that it wants to break the structure of net neutrality comes this piece from Ars, which suggests some reason for hope.

As a ((very) brief) background, net neutrality is the principle that internet service providers must offer equal quality of service to all legal content providers, regardless of their size or commercial affiliation. The absence of net neutrality could lead to (1) blackmail, where an ISP requires additional fees from a web content provider to deliver content at a speed or quality acceptable to consumers, and (2) silo-ing of web content to create a restricted environment which only includes content that serves the business interests of the ISP. (Your world will look like AOL, circa 1996.)

If neither of those possibilities seem scary to you, which they should, consider, at least, that the internet as we know it developed under the principle of net neutrality, and an internet without it will likely develop in a very different way.

Back to the hope.

Ars reports that Netflix is "researching 'large-scale peer-to-peer technology' for streaming." Peer-to-peer (P2P) streaming can currently be used to illegally stream live, copyrighted video online like live sports (if you're into that kind of thing), and for other legitimate uses, I'm sure. The relevant point is that applying the technology to Netfilx's product could mean a diversion of net traffic away from Netflix's servers and toward connections between Netflix users themselves. As the bulk of traffic became smaller-scale transfers between users, the relationship between Netflix and ISPs would become less important -- and less susceptible to blackmail.

That's all fine for Netflix if they end up using the technology in such a way. It would be good for consumers too, if it meant Netflix did not need to pass on any new fees to its customers.

The larger point about P2P transfers, though, is that web technology has the possibility to develop in a way that can attenuate the power of ISPs. This does not diminish the importance of net neutrality, but it suggests that future business models can (potentially) succeed online in new ways. Technology could circumvent any new capabilities of ISPs to discriminate in favor of wealthy and well-connected content providers, and a web based on more P2P connections could retain its democratic spirit and possibilities. Perhaps more importantly, P2P illustrates the possibility of new and yet unimagined technologies to be similarly disruptive.