Is Net Neutrality a Case of "Feeling Good" Rather than "Doing Good"?

With typical wit, Andrew Orlowski at the U.K.-based "The Register" skewers "network neutrality" as a squishy, intellectually incoherent concept. It is so nebulous it can mean anything a person wants it to be, and often is posed as a simple matter of "goodness." Which makes people feel righteous, without having to noodle through the logical implications.

Yes, there often is a difference between feeling good, and doing good, and Orlowski wants to point that out.

"As a rule of thumb, advocating neutrality means giving your support to general goodness on the Internet, and opposing general badness," he says. "Therefore, supporting neutrality means you yourself are a good person, by reflection, and people who oppose neutrality are bad people."

"Because neutrality is anything you want it to be, you have an all-purpose morality firehose at your disposal," he says. "Just point it and shoot at baddies."

Beyond that, there are fundamental issues that seem hard to reconcile, because they are hard to reconcile. Consider the analogy to freedom of speech.

In the United States, at its founding, the right of free speech was said to belong to citizen "speakers," engaged in clearly political speech. Recently, the opposite view has been taken, that the right belongs to "hearers of speech." But that means there is tension: is it the creator of speech who is to be protected, or those who might, or might not, want to listen.

Does copyright protect creators of intellectual content, or those who might want to access it? Do property rights in real estate protect those who own property, or those who want to own it?

Network neutrality essentially poses similar issues, and they will not be easy to reconcile.