Network neutrality is the idea that everyone’s messages should pass on the Internet according to the same rules. Technically speaking it means that everyone’s packets are all tangled up together. Some get lost, some get rerouted, some go faster than others, but whatever happens it happens equally to everyone’s traffic.

The reason why this is an issue now is because the companies that provide the Internet’s backbone - the trunk, where your service provider (e.g. Earthlink) is the branch and individual websites are the leaves - are having trouble making money. That’s it, plain and simple. Their profit margins are small, and they realized that by allowing companies to pay extra fees to have their packets delivered faster than other people’s they could make some dough. And that’s on top of what companies already pay for their Internet access. So, enter Congress, the FCC, everyone, and their brother.

(For some background on this issue, see this Washington Post article, a somewhat geekier take from Wikipedia, or this interview of Tim Berners-Lee.)

There’s a lot of debate about what to do by people much more informed than I am. It’s all very interesting, but I have the solution: do nothing. That’s right, forget about it. Don’t pass a law that allows companies to charge more for faster access. And whatever you do, don’t pass a law banning it. Don’t pass a law that defines neutrality. Don’t legislate on who has the right to define neutrality. Don’t have a series of open forums and a public feedback period. Don’t put it through its paces in the courts. Do nothing. Just drop it.

Now, I know that’s never going to happen. There are lots of good arguments on both sides, but the truly interesting thing to me is that, once the subject has been broached, there’s no going back. The arguments, at this point, must be made, and someone has to ‘win’. There’s influence to be exerted, connections to exploit, and public opinion to court. We don’t seem to be satisfied with the idea that if companies do what they want, and people do what they want, eventually the market and public opinion will find a solution. It won’t be clean, it won’t be fast, and it won’t leave anyone a hero or a martyr, though, and so it won’t happen. In this case, the phone comapnies have chosen to lobby Congress, instead of directing their attention towards customers. That’s because if they did, they’d get their heads chopped off.

Of course, if you took that argument to its logical conclusion you might think you could say the same thing for, say, murder. Eventually the market and public opinion will come to a resolution about it, so why legislate? But there’s a difference. Murder comes up as an issue for public debate because it goes against basic human values, because our sociocultural system has decided that it’s abhorrent. Network bias, on the other hand, comes up because some companies just want to make some more money. Plain and simple.

That’s not the most bullet-proof argument in the world, but hopefully it gets the point across.