Hello Milton Mueller,<br><br><div class="gmail_quote">On Fri, Jan 9, 2009 at 11:06 PM, Milton L Mueller <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:mueller@syr.edu" target="_blank">mueller@syr.edu</a>></span> wrote:<br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
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<font face="Tahoma" size="2"><b>From:</b> Sivasubramanian Muthusamy
[mailto:<a href="mailto:isolatedn@gmail.com" target="_blank">isolatedn@gmail.com</a>] <br></font></div>
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<div style="margin-left: 40px;"><i>Wouldn't there be a balance if we seriously
begin to be open to the concerns expressed by the business sector to SOME
aspects of the 'discrimination' - a bad word, but may have to be permissible
[in a certain context]. If a Virginia uses the Internet for business email and
essential surfing, and Robert [co-panelist] is using it to download movies
24/7, what is wrong if Virginia is charged $10 and Robert a
$100? </i><span><font color="#0000ff" face="Arial" size="2"> </font></span></div>
<div style="margin-left: 40px;"><span><font color="#0000ff" face="Arial" size="2"></font></span> </div>
</div><div style="margin-left: 40px;"><span><font color="#0000ff" face="Arial" size="2">Siva, there is nothing wrong, indeed, a pricing regime
that charges users more based on what bandwidth they actually use is
scientifically known to be better for smaller users, who end up subsidizing
bandwidth hogs under many flat-rate regimes. If you care about
affordability you want price discrimination in this sense.
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<div style="margin-left: 40px;"><span><font color="#0000ff" face="Arial" size="2">The main point I want to make is that charging more for
more bandwidth use is NOT a net neutrality issue at all. This is unfortunately
how the economic equalitarians have diverted and potentially destroyed the
concept. NN has to do with anti-competitive or censorial discrimination among
applications, services or content based on the origin or destination of the
packets. Full stop. </font></span></div>
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<div style="margin-left: 40px;"><span><font color="#0000ff" face="Arial" size="2">We need to liberate the NN discussion from the efforts of
economic equalitarians to appropriate the term in order to sell Maoist snake
oil. Economic equalitarianism of the sort that says Virginia and Robert should
get the same price for very different services and consumption rates is just
plain dumb; it isn;t economically sustainable, and won't survive as a
political or regulatory movement. So linking NN to this is a sure way to
defeat it -- as the IGP paper warned over a year ago.</font></span></div></div></div></blockquote></div></blockquote><div><br>Your paper spells out clearly what net neutrality is not. Will take the time to go through that in detail. It is important that we at this Caucus defines what Net Neutrality is and then steers all discussions of Net Neutrality around the core aspects of Net Neutrality.<br>
<br>I agree with you fully on this. As I said, this is what I set out to say at the NN debate, and in the context of pointing out a distraction I made an observation about permissible commercial practices, which are issues beyond the purview of NN anyway.<br>
<br>Thanks.<br>-- <br>Sivasubramanian Muthusamy<br><a href="http://twitter.com/isocchennai" target="_blank">http://twitter.com/isocchennai</a><br><a href="http://wealthyworld.blogspot.com/" target="_blank">http://wealthyworld.blogspot.com</a><br>
<a href="http://www.circleid.com/members/3601/" target="_blank">http://www.circleid.com/members/3601/</a><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="border-left: 1px solid rgb(204, 204, 204); margin: 0pt 0pt 0pt 0.8ex; padding-left: 1ex;">
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<p><font size="2">Milton Mueller<br>Professor, Syracuse University School of
Information Studies<br>XS4All Professor, Delft University of
Technology<br>------------------------------<br>Internet Governance
Project:<br><a href="http://internetgovernance.org/" target="_blank">http://internetgovernance.org</a><br></font></p></font></span></div></div></div></div></blockquote></div>
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