If net neutrality advocates only knew how Tim Wu originally defined “net neutrality”

[Commentary] Since Tim Wu’s seminal 2003 article proposing an anti-discrimination (or “neutrality”) principle, it has become an article of faith among pro-neutrality advocates that any action by Internet service providers (ISPs) that could be perceived as discriminating by user, content, site, platform, application, type of attached equipment, or mode of communication constitutes a harmful activity warranting a heavy-handed regulatory ban. Given the rapidly expanding reach and use of the net neutrality principle, it is instructive to revisit that original article and see what Professor Wu originally identified as the problem.

The first point to note is that Wu’s primary concern in 2003 was with the physical elements of ISPs’ control over how end users (both consumers and content providers) used the Internet. He begins by stating that “the basic principle behind a network anti-discrimination regime is to give users the right to use non-harmful network attachments or applications, and give innovators the corresponding freedom to supply them.” Second, although framing his neutrality principle as an anti-discrimination tool, Wu does not say that all instances of ISP discrimination with regard to its customers should be banned. Neutrality as a concept, he says, “is finicky and depends entirely on what set of subjects you choose to be neutral among.” ISP neutrality is, he asserts, “a tradeoff between upward (application) and downward (connection) neutrality. If it is upward, or application, neutrality that consumers care about, principles of downward neutrality may be a necessary sacrifice.”

[Howell is general manager for the New Zealand Institute for the Study of Competition and Regulation]