Is the war of ideologies, finger-pointing, and childish rhetoric finally over? Can those interested in solving problems and finding common ground in the Network Neutrality debate finally come out of their panic rooms?

Well, it’s probably not time to start turning the panic room in a home gym just yet . . . but, things are looking a bit brighter this week.

Following the FCC’s clubbing of Comcast for "managing" BitTorrent traffic on the cable company’s network, many were expecting the war over NN to be ratcheted back up.  Instead, Papa Cerf, the father of the Internet turned Google’s Chief Internet Evangelist, offered up the proverbial fig leaf and Adam Thierer, one of the most thoughtful anti-NN advocates accepted it.

 

Yesterday, Vint Cerf boldly wrote on the Google Public Policy Blog that:

So the real question for today’s broadband networks is not whether they need to be managed, but rather how.

Many Network Neutrality advocates would fundamentally disagree with Cerf on this point.  Yet, instead of using the FCC Comcast ruling to rail against the dangers of network management he offers up some candid thoughts on ISPs can manage traffic while preserving the openness and flexibility of the Internet.  He even went on to say:

Over the past few months, I have been talking with engineers at Comcast about some of these network management issues. I’ve been pleased so far with the tone and substance of these conversations, which have helped me to better understand the underlying motivation and rationale for the network management decisions facing Comcast, and the unique characteristics of cable broadband architecture. And as we said a few weeks ago, their commitment to a protocol-agnostic approach to network management is a step in the right direction.

It really is amazing how much common ground can be found among technologists once they stop talking politics and start talking tech. 

Adam Thierer of the Progress and Freedom Foundation and Founder of the TechLiberation Front, picked up on Cerf’s post and wrote this:

I found this of great interest because for the last few months I
have been wondering: (a) why isn’t there more of that sort of inter-
and intra-industry dialogue going on, and (b) what could be done to
encourage more of it? With the exception of those folks at the extreme
fringe of the Net neutrality movement, most rational people involved in
this debate accept the fact that there will be legitimate network
management issues that industry must deal with from time to time. So,
how can we get people in industry — from all quarters of it — to sit
down at a negotiating table and hammer things out voluntarily before
calling in the regulators to impose ham-handed, inflexible solutions?
What we are talking about here is the need for a technical dispute
resolution process that doesn’t involve the FCC.

If the
anti-Net neutrality
regulation crowd (and that includes me!) wants to be taken seriously
when they talk about “self-regulatory” solutions, this sort of dispute
resolution process becomes essential. And the pro-Net neutrality regulation crowd needs to understand that, even if they ultimately desire some
role for the FCC here, regulatory resolutions to technical disputes are
notoriously slow and ultimately will always be one step behind the
technical dispute du jour. 

Therefore, wouldn’t it be nice if, as Cerf suggests above, those
parties with a technical dispute about network management had a way of
talking things through immediately and before they went to the
regulatory equivalent of mutually assured destruction?

Amen.  Let’s hope that Vint and Adam can help lead the Network Neutrality debate into a truly useful direction.  Keeping the Internet free, open, and innovative requires keeping the government out of getting too deeply involved in technology decisions.