[governance] Net neutrality & IG - a proposal to the IGC

[Milton Mueller]

>>> "Parminder" <parminder at itforchange.net> 4/10/2006 2:14 PM >>>
Milton wrote:
>>To pose a dichotomy between "public" ( = good) and "private" 
>>( = bad) is to fundamentally misapprehend what the Internet is. 
>
>Milton, I think you misunderstood my dichotomy here. [snip]
>So the dichotomy I indicated was between the terms 'private' and 'public' -
>they certainly mean the opposite, and derive their meaning from that
>opposition. This certainly doesn't mean that the world has either to be
>public or to be private. These spheres are of course complimentary

Here is the relevant language from your theme proposal:

"[The Internet's] essential public and egalitarian nature must be asserted as basic principles through open discussions at the IGF."

and...

"The Internet, as understood by most of us, is what it is basically because of its egalitarian and public nature. It is important to articulate these fundamentals of the Internet strongly, and use them as the guiding principles to debate and develop global public policies on IG."

Sounds to me like you are asserting all public, no private. As I said, I believe this is factually untrue, that is would be harmful to try to make it true, and it completely misses the "essential" nature of the Internet (if we are going to be Platonic about it).

>As to why our proposal of 'public-ness' asserts one point 
>to the exclusion of other is that the context - in this case 
>issues like network neutrality and shrinkage of public domain
> may often require one to do so. 

But your theme proposal did not assert that the public dimension to the Internet was threatneed, nor did it document specific ways in which it is becoming less public, nor did it show any concern about retaining the beneficial private aspects. It simply said that the Internet's "essential nature" is public and egalitarian and that ALL policies relating to content and infrastructure must be derived from that principle. 

>So if you still call it the US model I think you realize that US models 
>are 'larger than life size' and get mercilessly exported - with or 
>against wishes of people of other regions.

This is true, of course, and it is one reason why I am uncomfortable with exporting the NN debate, which is largely driven by a conflict of economic interest between large US content/service providers (Google, Yahoo, VON) and large US bandwidth providers (AT&T, etc.) But by the same token if things could be worked out internationally outside the us context it might be better. 

>You surely know that in many countries VoIP services are not 
>being allowed "to innovate and to reach anyone via universal 
>connectivity".

I sure do. And usually that happens through some kind of assertion of the "public" principle; i.e., the state telecom monopoly which "serves the public" cannot be undermined by greedy private service providers who don't subsidize their infrastructure or support universal service goals. 

you raise a good point about compariung the Freedom of Expression and NN debates but I have to run and will deal with that later. 




_______________________________________________
governance mailing list
governance at lists.cpsr.org
https://ssl.cpsr.org/mailman/listinfo/governance