A quick break from the basics

This news is too important not to share at least some of it right off the bat:

According to an ABC News article, a U.S. Federal Appeals court has sided with the telecoms and against the FCC on key net neutrality legislation.  The basic gist of what happened earlier today is that the courts decided that the FCC has no authority to stop any quality of service (QOS - see yesterday's post for more info) from happening on telecom controlled broadband.  In other words, the FCC is not allowed to stop telecoms and other broadband providers from giving preferential treatment (including completely blocking access) to specific online content or actions (such as BitTorrent downloads - I'll do a post about torrents at some point down the line if you aren't to knowledgeable on them).  

A lot of the court's ruling seems to be based on two things right now.  First, back in 2005 the FCC deregulated broadband essentially allowing for it to be owned, controlled and operated by the internet service providers (ISPs - can mean groups like Google and yahoo as they are providing an internet service, but in this post assume it's anyone providing an internet connection like AT&T or Comcast) who use them today.  The other aspect is that government agencies like the FCC don't have the rule of law on their side (though they're trying to change that through actual net neutrality legislation).  What they have is essentially the power to recommend when it comes to most internet activity as net neutrality is nothing more than a principle, not law. There is plenty more if you are interested in the political side of things and it can be read here.

I would like to shift real quick to talk about what this means for marketers without spoiling too many of my future posts or getting ahead of what I expect most marketers currently understand about the issue.  I will expand on all of this in future posts, but , basically, if internet remains regulated by the ISPs and not the government as this court decision leans, certain sites and the subsequent advertisements could be entirely inaccessible by large segments marketers are targeting. This is especially interesting, in my opinion, for the marketers employed by ISPs as their online campaigns could be getting screwed by the very legislation they are supporting (in this case it's actually a lack of legislation they are supporting, but you get what I'm saying).

Don't get me wrong, I'm in no way trying to sway your opinion of net neutrality.  If the FCC gains control over and subsequent capabilities to regulate the internet, there are any of a million scenarios that could equally hinder a marketer's ability to effectively communicate and market online.  This is likely especially true of e-mail marketing since it takes more of a direct and sometimes invasive approach to communicating with customers (think do not call registry only likely stronger as there will be proof of people getting contacted by companies).

Which is right and which is wrong?  I have absolutely no idea and probably never will (actually I feel like both sides are wrong, but I digress).  I encourage anyone to follow this story and comment to let me know if I'm missing anything or if they think I'm getting something wrong here.

The Basics - Part I

I'd like to start with a quick disclaimer:
I am not an expert (maybe someday, but certainly not right now), I expect that there will be errors throughout my posts.  Please prove me wrong and point out inaccuracies in the comment section.  If its a matter of opinion or it turns out your correction is wrong I will write about it in the weekly comment responses, however, if it is right I will alter the post to reflect the correct information and acknowledge the edits in the same comment response post.

Now, with that out of the way, let's start looking into what exactly Network Neutrality means and where it came from.  As it stands right now, net neutrality is nothing more than a principle...an idea or opinion of how things ought to be.  Nothing is set in stone as no official bills, laws or otherwise remarkably official writings have been created.  Because of this, to stay neutral (not intended to be a pun, sorry) I will be attempting to give equal attention to both sides of the argument rather than attempting to simply stay in the middle where official and factual bits would otherwise exist.

One of the first and probably most important concepts in network neutrality is Quality of Service (QOS).  QOS refers to resource reservation control mechanisms, not actual measurements in quality.  What this means is that QOS basically is a set of predetermined rankings for what kind of internet traffic gets priority over others.  While this could exist for any of a number of reasons, most believe it is supposed to exist as a way of dealing with congested traffic (essentially giving more important communication for a given network more bandwidth to work with when there isn't much to spare).

QOS can do more than just issue priority, however.  It can also be used to completely cut-down any service to certain sites or specific content online allowing customers of specific telecommunications companies (from hence froward to be referred to as telecoms by the way) access to only what the specific telecom deems suitable for their customer's eyes.

The real issue that has so many choosing sides here is that QOS isn't at all that its common practice, in fact what we in the U.S. operate under right now is more or less network neutrality as there is no real QOS from telecoms.  The problem for net neutrality supporters is there is no law stopping them from being able to do so. 

In the next post: Net Neutrality History (or politicians and CEOs bickering)

In the meantime, if you can stomach it, here are two links to net neutrality info on wikipedia:
net neutrality - general


net neutrality - US specific