Should we choose regulation over collaboration?

A good op-ed in today's Seattle Times by Robert McDowell, a member of the Federal Communications Commission. In the piece he talks about how the Internet has been a remarkable case-study in network management through private collaboration, as opposed to government mandates.

McDowell correctly states that,

"The Internet has flourished because it has operated under the principle that engineers, not politicians or bureaucrats, should solve engineering problems."

In fact, that is the issue with the idea behind Net Neutrality -- namely, how are we going to manage data streams when the data starts to bottleneck because of congestion? We are faced with millions of consumers and businesses using up more and more bandwidth. This is an engineering problem, and just like back in 1987 when 35,000 users could force the Internet into gridlock, today's engineers need to find innovative solutions to help stave off Internet congestion. Again, as McDowell states, it's not just a matter of building bigger or faster bandwidth pipes -- that is just a part of it. We also have to figure out how to manage the bandwidth hogs versus the light bandwidth users.

When 5 percent of Internet consumers are using 90 percent of the available bandwidth because of peer-to-peer file sharing, we are heading towards a congestion problem. But while some see that government regulation is the only thing to save us, others like McDowell recognize that we've faced this situation several times before and each time we manage to get through just fine without a government mandate.