What Goes Around

Tuesday wasn't exactly a banner day for the FCC as a federal appeals court unanimously decided that the agency had overreached itself when ordering broadband provider Comcast not to block its customers from using BitTorrent.  Comcast's spokesman was clearly pleased with the ruling when relaying the company's official statement: "our primary goal was always to clear our name and reputation."  And yes, I just threw up a little in my mouth typing that.

This particular case has me feeling highly ambivalent.  On the one hand, I'm not exactly a cheerleader for the expansion of government power, and the FCC has demonstrated that when they use their power, they're about as subtle as a sequoia falling down, and not nearly as intelligent.  One slipped nipple and the Super Bowl halftime shows have largely suffered for it for the last several years (though I did like it when Tom Petty went on).  On the other hand, I'm not exactly a firm believer in the inherent goodness of the average American corporation either, particularly not one who's in the position to dictate how a measurable percentage of Americans access the Internet.  The old saw about being between the Devil and the deep blue sea certainly comes to mind.

So, what exactly happened on Tuesday and how is this going to affect the country?  To begin with, while I am not at all happy about the ruling, I do have to tip my hat to the judges for at least recognizing that the stated goal of the FCC in attempting to keep the Internet "free and open" wasn't at issue, merely their efforts to go about making it happen.  In a nutshell, the court ruled that the FCC's policies did not have the force of law.  By and large, this is a quite reasonable position to take, since the ruling doesn't just prohibit sound policies from being applied as law, but it also prohibits stupid policies from being applied as law.  If the FCC wants to enforce net neutrality, they have a few options available to them.  The first option would be to go to Congress and tell them to give the FCC the necessary power to make Comcast stop blocking subscribers.  This is probably the least likely to happen, mainly because it could possibly be years before such a bill got out of committee and up for a vote.  Moreover, Congress isn't exactly beloved of the people right at the moment, and all it would take to kill any bill would be a few whispers placed in the right ears of the right talking heads.  "Look!" the heads would say with gravity and outrage, "Look how Congress is trying to ram more government down our throats!"  The second option would be to appeal up to the Supreme Court.  This one might actually take longer than having to deal with Congress.  With Congress, you can always reintroduce a bill.  If the Supremes decide to take a case, or decline to take it, that's it.  Do not pass Go, do not collect $200.

Probably as we speak, Comcast technicians are putting the port blocking in place for BitTorrent and other file sharing programs, and probably other programs that it feels "unfairly competes" (read: free) with their subscription services, all while the suits are chortling and thinking that they showed the FCC who's boss.  That would be a fatally foolish attitude to be adopting, because there is a third option, one that is not only the most expeditious but also potentially the most troublesome.  The FCC could decide that that broadband services are to fall under the same rules as phone lines, with all of the attending "common carrier" regulations.  It's less of a "nuclear option" and more of a "neutron bomb option," meaning that all the infrastructure will still be there, but nobody will be around to use it.  Why will nobody be around to use it?  Because once those regulations are in place, the broadband ISPs like Comcast and Cox will not be lowering prices, they will be raising them. Purely for "administrative costs" to defray "traffic generated by other networks."  The increase in prices, particularly in a recessionary climate, will cause people to cut back or even abandon their broadband connections, as much as it will pain them to do so.  This will cause the ISPs to raise prices further, to cover the costs of "maintaining our award winning broadband services."  In turn, more people abandon their broadband.  When it's all said and done, ISPs won't be offering broadband anymore because they'll claim that "there's no interest in the product."  Nevermind the fact that people once had broadband and were quite happy with it as a general rule.  The difference between a ripple effect and a blast wave is a matter of perspective.

It's not going to be just the average American consumer who's going to get hit by this.  The earliest victims will be bandwidth-intensive but incredibly popular sites and services.  YouTube?  Reduced to a shell of its former self.  Skype?  Gone.  Hulu?  The biggest disappointment for NBC Universal since they screwed Conan O'Brien.  From there, the carnage spreads out into other areas, predominantly into the game sector.  The twelve million plus players on World of WarCraft will suddenly find themselves brought down by a foe more terrible than Onyxia or The Lich King.  Microsoft's XBox Live and Sony's Playstation Network will become shadows of their former glory, reduced to branded patch servers.  Steam and Impulse will collapse as gamers are cut off from the virtual marketplaces.  All those stupid bastards who went and bought the PC version of Assassin's Creed II will howl at the money wasted because Ubisoft wasn't smart enough to foresee the possible amputation of broadband, and the guys at Blizzard will probably be living out of their cubicles to try and change Diablo III to avoid that same mistake.  Would there be any survivors of this apocalypse?  Twitter might well survive, despite some people's desire to the contrary, since anybody with a cell phone could update on that.  Facebook and MySpace will probably take a hit, but continue on as before.

I can hear somebody out in the Peanut Gallery saying, "The world will not end because you stupid Americans don't have broadband!"  Whoever that is, you're right.  The world will not end.  But it will change.  If the last fifteen years or so have been any indicator, what happens on the Internet and to the Internet in one geographic area can have almost incalculable changes to the rest of the world.  And there is no guarantee that those changes will be good for any other part of the world.  It would be a sorry state of affairs that America entered the Information Age equivalent of a Dark Age simply because one ISP went and sued the FCC because of a spat over the use of bandwidth for a program that competed with the ISP's non-Internet products.  Some will doubtlessly argue that such a nightmare scenario could never possibly happen.  Perhaps not to the degree that I've outlined here, but don't think for one instant that the blowback from this case won't touch anybody beyond Comcast and the FCC.

Even today, karma is a vital and active force within the Internet.  What goes around does come around.  And I don't like to think what will happen when it finally comes around.