How a 'Star Wars' game can help us understand net neutrality

[Len]

Next month, the Federal Communications Commission is expected to vote to roll back so-called "net neutrality" rules put in place two years ago by a previous version of the same body. The FCC under then-President Barack Obama decreed that Internet service providers and wireless carriers were utilities in an information age and should be regulated as such.

But a different administration brings with it a different philosophy. Under President Donald Trump, the FCC now believes that the Internet would thrive best with as little government oversight as possible. Under Commission Chairman Ajit Pai - who was on the FCC and voted against the rules in 2015 - the best Internet is one governed by market forces, with maybe a little outsourcing of discipline from the Federal Trade Commission.

The FCC will vote on the rollback (you can read the 220-page proposal at the bottom of this post) on Dec. 14.

The concept behind net neutrality is simple: the gatekeepers of the Internet should keep those gates wide open, granting everything equal passage. But it is the reality of economics and ebb and flow of politics that render it confusing.

If you're looking for a way to easily understand the net neutrality debate, you might find a suitable analogy in a controversy currently roiling the world of computer gaming and the storied "Star Wars" franchise. The issue in this brouhaha is called "pay to win," and it parallels the fears net neutrality advocates have about the FCC's pending action.

Goliath gaming publisher Electronic Arts earlier this month released a new game called "Star Wars Battlefront II." It's a first-person shooter with an online emphasis, and like a lot of games of this sort, you can gain new weapons, capabilities and other goodies the further you advance.

But in an early, pre-release version of the game, players who were in a hurry, and who had cash to burn, could buy objects and skills that others would have to work over time to earn. Thus wealthier people - or at least those more willing to split with cash in this way - would gain an advantage on the virtual battlefield over those who could not or would not spend their way to glory.

It's not without irony that the virtual goods were found in stashes dubbed "loot boxes." Also, this approach wasn't unique to the beta version of "Star Wars Battlefront II" - other games have featured a "pay to win" component - but this game added a twist: when you shelled out for an object, you were never really certain of what you'd get. That caused some to complain that the feature was little more than gambling, and one aimed at young players who'd be drawn in because this was a "Star Wars" title.

There was enough of an outcry that EA opted to pull the feature at the last moment. When the game launched, these "micro-transactions" were gone. However, it has promised that they will be back, but with changes designed to rebalance the gameplay.

How does this relate to net neutrality? You can think of the players flush with cash and ambition as being equivalent to the big Internet providers who have opposed net neutrality regulation. Comcast, Verizon, AT&T are paying big bucks for "loot boxes." The valuables they're hoarding are massive content providers like Yahoo, NBC-Universal, Time Warner.

And with these new weapons and skills, neutrality advocates warn, they'll be able to leverage their ownership of the Internet's gateways to enrich themselves and lay waste to their enemies - particularly the smaller ones that are trying to innovate and bring new approaches to the online world. The giants can promote their own content and throttle or block those of competitors. In a post Dec. 14 world, only the strong and wealthy survive and thrive.

In an op-ed that appeared in the Wall Street Journal, Pai argued that the Internet was doing just fine, thank you, prior to the 2015 rules. He hearkens back to the 1990s and early 2000s, when the Internet's growth came from rampant innovation spurred by competition.

But that was then, and this is now. Consolidation is the order of the day, as witnessed by AT&T's proposed merger with Time Warner (which really is a response to Comcast's buying the loot box that contained NBC-Universal). In the 1990s there were hundreds of local and regional Internet service providers; today, there's a fraction of that. If Pai thinks the landscape of 1999 can be applied to the Internet of 2017, he's truly living in the past.

There's a reason why the earlier incarnation of the FCC enacted net neutrality rules. The 2015 vote came in response to tentative steps by Internet giants to treat competing traffic differently. For example, Verizon was accused of throttling Netflix in 2014 by allowing congestion to build up at network locations through which Netflix's traffic passed. And in 2009 Comcast settled a class- action lawsuit over its throttling of peer-to-peer traffic in an attempt to crack down on piracy.

Next month's vote will be far from the last word. Expect protests, lawsuits and possible congressional action that will take months and likely years. And even if the rollback sticks, there will be more legal challenges to individual actions taken by Internet providers that appear to violate net neutrality principles. And to further complicate things, a change of administration is possible in 2020 that could reverse the reversal.

No, this won't be ended easily. It's a dispute that won't be settled as simply as pulling "pay to win" features out of a game. But by the time it's wound down, the damage will be done.