Free Press and their fellow Net Neutrality advocates are a classic example of this contradiction when they say “it’s not their first amendment but ours” and Nicholas Deleon of Crunch Gear is making the same mistake.  Everyone loves to support free speech when it comes to speech they support, but the true test of a person’s conviction is when it comes to speech that they don’t support. Its great to oppose “indecent speech” until it comes time to decide what qualifies as “decent” and what doesn’t.  And when we empower the government to impose a “decency standard” over the Internet and we realize that they may be abusing their privileges, it’s too late and the First Amendment is already gone.

The other entity that groups like Free Press love to hate and target as undeserving of free speech is “corporations”.  Never mind that a corporation is merely a group of individuals that form a job creating entity and generates economic wealth, the word “corporation” is essentially used as a synonym for “evil”.  Individuals have the right to assembly and exercising those rights shouldn’t mean losing other rights.  To say that certain types of groups (such as a “non-profit” advocacy group) have rights but others don’t is arbitrary and capricious.  A business’ obligation to carry the free speech of others shouldn’t mean that they have to give it away as free beer.  Furthermore, bandwidth cost isn’t even a financial barrier to free speech to begin with.

Enough of the philosophical rant, I’ll get to practical matters and respond to Mr. Deleon’s specific concerns.  Deleon ponders what would happen without Net Neutrality:

“Is the ISP “free” to throttle that traffic for whatever reason it wants to invent? Is Blizzard “free” to make available vital patches via the Internet, and to expect that you’ll be able to download it without interference from your ISP? Are you “free” to download said patch, or do your wishes play not part in any of this?”

First of all, anyone who is even remotely up to date with the policy debate on Net Neutrality knows that the alleged ISP censorship or throttling has nothing to do with the specific regulatory and legislative battle.  The blocking or throttling of Internet content on wired broadband is a nonstarter for any ISP that doesn’t want to draw the ire of the media, regulators, and legislators.  The issue of throttling is a part of the debate on reasonable Network Management and it isn’t a core part of the debate on Net Neutrality regulation.  There are separate matters of FCC authority to address but the FCC never lost to Comcast.  The real debate is whether ISP should be allowed to offer “enhanced and prioritized” services to content and application providers and not whether ISPs are allowed to censor content or throttle traffic.

Despite the lack of relevance to this debate, I’ll address Mr. Deleon’s concerns.

• Can ISPs throttle anything they want for any reason?  Unless they want to commit a public relations and regulatory suicide, they better have a good reason for throttling and it better be done in a fair manner such that it ensures true neutrality in the network.
• Is Blizzard “free” to make patches available over the Internet?  Since this is more of a rhetorical and hypothetical question, I’ll answer with a question first.  There is no Net Neutrality regulation or legislation in place today.  Is anyone blocking Blizzard from delivering patches using the server bandwidth they have purchased?  The answer to the best of my knowledge is no.  Hypothetically speaking, can an ISP block access to Blizzard’s data coming over its Internet transit connections or throttle it below best effort?  Only if they want to violate their own peering agreement contracts and commit a public relations and political suicide.
• Are you “free” to download said patch?  You’re free to download anything you want over broadband bandwidth you paid for.  Does that mean it will be free of throttling?  You should be free of undue throttling but the packet switching nature of broadband and the Internet means that the bandwidth you get isn’t guaranteed and it varies with traffic conditions on the Internet.  Unfortunately, the Internet’s TCP congestion control protocol isn’t always fair when it comes to distance unfairness and multi-flow unfairness.
• Do we need specific regulation or legislation to address this?  The status quo says that the free market is working and there is no need for regulation or legislation.  However, I personally wouldn’t be opposed reasonable guidelines but every proposal I’ve seen goes too far.  Every Net Neutrality proposal is stuffed with anti-ISP regulation that limits their ability to offer enhanced or prioritized services even if they are on a truly voluntary basis.  Even common carriers have always been allowed to offer different services at different prices.
• Do my wishes (the consumer’s wishes) play in any part of this?  Absolutely!  But it’s ironic that it is the proposed Net Neutrality regulations that reject the “will of the user”.  Users should be able to discriminate in favor of the content they want and against content they don’t want and they should be able to authorize their ISP to do this on their behalf, but Net Neutrality advocates don’t believe users are smart enough to make their own decisions.  The FCC’s proposal for Net Neutrality regulation and the Google-Verizon agreement does not permit the end-user to have the final say.