Search Neutrality Before Net Neutrality?
posted by Frank Pasquale
Google’s influence on the terms of the upcoming FCC spectrum auction has gotten a lot of news coverage. I’ve praised Google’s approach to copyright, criticized it on transparency, but now I’m back to praise on this issue. It’s fighting for net neutrality–a big concern given AT&T’s apparent censorship of Pearl Jam for anti-Bush lyrics (and, even if you believe it was a “mistake” by AT&T, the power of the carriers the incident demonstrates).
However, Google should also think about its own obligations as a de facto common carrier in the digital age. Even the Wall Street Journal recognizes its unique status as digital bottleneck. In a July editorial, Holman Jenkins said
Google’s . . . dominance in search and advertising. . . [and] its ability to control which Web sites and Web businesses receive traffic make[] it a far likelier candidate for ‘public utility’ treatment than the . . . players who make up the broadband world.
Web journalist Brian Utter has also suggested that search neutrality may need to come before net neutrality.
In a recent paper I co-authored with Oren Bracha (to be submitted to law reviews in a few days), we examine whether some net neutrality principles should extend to dominant search engines like Google. The paper is constructively criticized here and here; I’ll soon post some responses from Oren and me.
August 10, 2007 at 12:03 pm
Posted in: Google & Search Engines
Print This Post
Responses (3)
Jack S. - August 10, 2007 at 3:27 pm
There’s a significant difference between the two ‘markets’. In one there’s choice and the other there is not. Net Neutrality is really quite a silly debate because it only exists in the absence of real competition.
A content creator is can be silenced easily in todays market because if one carrier chooses to not carry the content there’s few others if any who can come in to pick it up.
The absurdness of this debate is shown by the European market where such an issue is never even mentioned, much less talked about. Well, it is, but the EU’s definition is hardly related to that in the US.
Bruce Boyden - August 11, 2007 at 12:01 pm
I don’t get the connection between the AT&T thing and net neutrality. AT&T was hosting the concert on its website (right?), not just transmitting it across its network. This is like NBC bleeping something at an awards show. Is the news here just that AT&T has a bleep button? Is there some sort of danger that a network provider would edit individual feeds on the fly that were being transmitted from some other content provider? I can’t see that being a big problem, since presumably the copyright owner of the feed would have something to say about it.
Frank - August 11, 2007 at 10:15 pm
Bruce, a follow-up story in the WaPo has ATT making exactly that point:
“AT&T and other providers would like the ability to charge more for transmitting certain kinds of data, like live video, faster or more reliably than other data but have insisted such premium services would help, not hurt, consumers. [An ATT person] said, regardless, the issue of net neutrality is entirely separate from the mistake during the Pearl Jam show. ‘This was our own Web site,’ he noted.”
Nevertheless, to me this makes this situation all the fishier. Not only does the owner of the “pipes” want to decide which content gets priority, it also wants to be providing content and essentially competing with the very stuff which it’s supposed to be delivering to consumers.
Leave a Reply