The groups opposing net neutrality — like Hands Off The Internet Coalition — argue that heavy regulation of the internet runs against free market economics, and that such restrictions slow down the rate of innovation on the internet. They argue that different kinds of internet traffic have different requirements. For instance, live chat requires less bandwidth, but the traffic cannot be delayed, on the other hand streaming video requires high bandwidth, but can afford some delay because the video is buffered at the viewing computer, downloads can withstand occasional delays and low bandwidth. It makes sense treat each of these traffic streams differently in order to provide a better user experience, but net neutrality prohibits this.

Lets see how the arguments for and against net neutrality really stand up to criticism.

Now, if net neutrality was implemented as a strict regulation, this can give rise to a lot problems. For instance, how do network providers treat spam under net neutrality? Currently, network providers can block spam at the entry point into their network. If the networks are expected to treat all traffic equally, then they have to treat spam the same as other traffic. Which implies that they are having to bear the cost of routing spam on their networks with no income from it. Guess who they will pass that cost on to: the consumers. So is net neutrality really what the consumers want?

If customers subscribed to a pay-per-view service over the internet, then customers have every right to be guaranteed a satisfactory viewing experience. However, the network provider cannot do that under net neutrality because the provider is not allowed to allocate bandwidth for the pay-per-view service. So is net neutrality really helping?

On the other hand, if net neutrality wasn’t implemented then this would allow network providers to treat different kinds of traffic differently, thus providing a better user experience. But if that were truly an issue then how do different classes of network traffic work well today without so-called ‘tiered’ services for different classes of traffic. Answer: there is more bandwidth in the network core than the traffic consumes. As long as there is good admission control on the edge of the Internet, it doesn’t seem like you need such ‘tiered’ services. Wouldn’t that make the ‘tiered’ services argument too weak?

Consider the competition between VoIP services and traditional phone lines. Typically all your phone providers are also ISPs. And VoIP is very sensitive to delay in the traffic, more so than web browsing, streaming video, or downloads. So if the ISPs wanted to discourage their customer from using VoIP services, then they could do that by simply delaying packets for a few seconds randomly. For web browsing and other services, it would only show up as a few seconds delay in a page loading, or a delay in the video starting, which is easily tolerable. But with VoIP, this would show up as a jitter in a voice call. This would make VoIP unusable. Don’t we need regulations to protect the customers from such practices? Isn’t net neutrality a way out of this?

So net neutrality, while addressing some issues, opens up other problems which the Internet community will have to deal with. Worse, while it is easy to make a regulation like net neutrality, it is very difficult to enforce it. How do you detect a violation of net neutrality? If ‘bad’ ISPs are smart enough, then they can hoodwink any mechanism to detect such violations. It can range from delaying all traffic for a few seconds so that only VoIP services are affected, to dropping only certain kinds of traffic during periods of traffic congestion. The above two techniques is indistinguishable from situations where a `good’ ISP is having traffic management problems and so is forced to delay traffic, or is forced to drop traffic during congestion. So how do you distinguish ‘bad’ ISPs from ‘good’ one and penalize only the ‘bad’ ones? Its not always possible.

So, if net neutrality is more a regulation in theory, than something which can be enforced successfully, and people do realize it, then why do we have groups advocating for it so strongly? What could be gained from it, other than a rhetorical stand on the ideals that they strive for? The answer might surprise you.

Ironically, the arguments being made on both sides of net neutrality fails to address the real issue. In fact, it serves to hide the real issue of why net neutrality has become such a focal point of conflict on the internet today. To understand this better, lets see who are the corporate entities involved in the net neutrality debate. The supporters of net neutrality include the likes of Google, Yahoo, eBay and AeA. The opposers of net neutrality include the likes of 3M, Cisco Systems, Qualcomm, Verizon, AT&T, and Time Warner. Note that there is a clear division of the functional roles of each camp. The camp which supports net neutrality are all content providers where as the camp which opposes net neutrality are all network infrastructure providers.

Why do content providers like net neutrality? Because it allows the content providers to innovate and come up with new applications and solutions without having to worry about how these application will be treated by the network. Why do network infrastructure providers oppose net neutrality? Because this will aloow for innovation and diversity in network infrastructure to accommodate new applications and solution which can evolve from the Internet. What does this mean? This means that net neutrality is no longer about free speech, or democracy, or free market, or any ideals. Its all about who gets to control the internet and the innovation in it. Net neutrality, under the hood, is an ongoing battle between content providers and infrastructure providers over who controls the web and the innovation in it.

When stripped down to essentials, the Jury is a collection of ‘average’, ‘everyday’ people who decide on a court case based on the evidence presented to them. The basic idea being, if 9 (or whatever number of) common folk think you are guilty, then you probably are. And if they think you deserve to spend x number of years in jail for it, then you probably do.

The Jury is supposed to deliver Justice. But what is justice? According to Plato “Justice is the interest of the stronger”, but Criminal Justice, on the other hand, can be stated as “a system of legislation, practices, and organizations, used by the state to maintain social control, deter and control crime” (paraphrased from wikipedia). The jury, in the present context is expected to deliver Criminal Justice. Now the question is, does it?

Objectivity (or lack thereof)

Criminal Justice operates upon a set of Laws. If any individual or organization violates the law, a crime is said to have been committed. One of the duties of the Jury is to determine if the law has indeed been broken. This process involves interpreting the law (often done by the lawyers for the jury) and determining whether or not the law was indeed broken. Such interpretation should, ideally, be an objective exercise. This is necessary to ensure ‘fairness’.

Let me digress for a few sentences. How does one determine the validity of an argument in a scientific effort. Typically through peer-review among subject matter experts. Why? Because they know the subject best, and are the best judge in determining if an argument is valid or not.

In other words, a person who is an expert in a particular area is a good judge of arguments in that area. Why should law be any different? Why is it assumed that an argument about the law is somehow best judged by a group of laypeople?

The consequence of this is loss of objectivity, and fairness in the system. People are too easily swayed by emotions, they are prejudiced by their own views, opinions, and value system. It takes an expert (like a judge trained in law) to divorce all this from the case at hand and be able to weigh the evidence and arguments. Jury of laypeople are no where near as qualified or skilled.

Awarding a Sentence

Often, the jury is also asked to determine the sentence (in terms of prison time, or financial payments) in many cases. This is an exercise that the jury is hopelessly ill-equipped for.

The prison system is often referred to as a ‘correctional system’. This is so because functionally, a prison is meant to serve as a place where the criminal does ‘penance’ for his/her crime and at the end of the term comes out as a ‘reformed’ person. So when a person is being sent to prison for x number of years, it has been determined that it will take the correctional facility x number of years to reform the person into a productive member of the society.

So my question is:By what (justifiable) qualification does the jury possess the authority to determine the time necessary for a criminal to be ‘corrected’ or ‘reformed’? The jury is regular people like you and I. If someone were to ask me how long does it take for (say) a street thug to be reformed, my honest answer would be “I dont know”. Then how can a jury, who have no knowledge or training in this matter, possibly know the time it takes for such a reform? Then how can they determine the right magnitude of sentence?

Restorative Justice vs. Retributive Justice

Most criminal justice systems in the world are based on restorative justice. Restorative justice focuses on establishing social harmony and mutual responsibility. So when determining whether or not a crime has been committed, and if so, then what the magnitude of sentence should be, it is important that social harmony be established by the justice system in that process. There have been many cases where the social harmony has been a major motivation for certain decisions by courts, eg:Brown vs. Board of Education, Gay Student Services vs. Texas A&M University, etc.

Such exercises in restorative justice, however, requires a excellent and thorough understanding of factors at the regional as well as global level. Even with local cases, because any case can become a precedent for future cases. The individual engaging in restorative justice must be aware of the implications that his/her decision will have on the landscape of law and justice in general.

Often, jury based justice system is only as smart as the jury (who are often average-joe-kind-of people), and hence not in any way enabled to engage in restorative justice. In the absence of specialized training, jury has no choice but to resort to a more primitive form of justice: retributive justice. Which essentially says that the punishment must fit the crime. An easy, but flawed yardstick to go by. Such retributive justice can result in denial of justice, and worse, become a precedent for future cases to follow, thus propagating this denial to future parties.

All of the above deficiencies can be remedied by moving away from a jury based trial to a trial by judge (under the assumption that the judge is a trained subject matter expert in law). Based on the above arguments, it hard not a conclude that the jury system is a model that is designed to fault undetectably. The undetectability of its faulting provides a false sense of confidence in the system. It is best done away with.