[governance] IGP Alert: "Net Neutrality as Global Principle for Internet Governance"

[Suresh Ramasubramanian]

> That section of the US code is very complex and relies on some rather
> tight definitions that may or may not apply to any given specific
> situation.  Moreover, section (d) does impose certain obligations of
> notification in the context of an agreement with a "customer".  In
> other words, this is a part of the law that providers need to study
deeply.

A lot of providers are familiar with it, and have certainly used it. For
example there was this case (district court only so no precedent) - Zango v
Kaspersky.  Spyware / adware company blocked by AV vendor, sues, case
dismissed in favor of Kaspersky.
 
> But most of us don't have relationships with core providers.  Their
> link to us is indirect via our edge providers.  So the permissions and
costs

For email at least you don't have core and edge providers as such. You have
a relationship with your email provider. Not with whoever provides his
upstream, peering, transit etc.

> And as a practical matter, core providers are not good places for
> traffic to be winnowed for naughty bits - the circuits of a packet
> switching fabric inside a carrier grade router are hardly the place to
> do semantic evaluation of application layer content.

As the Saudis, Pakistanis, etc keep finding out.  But we are not talking
about that kind of filtering or censorship here.

> I believe that those who want non-filtered will often end up paying
> more - if for no other reason then they are causing more bits to be
carried.

Not for the bits to be carried.  For all its volume, spam / email etc is a
drop in the bucket compared to, say, p2p and traffic to sites like youtube.
Gmail's smtp traffic wont even be a blip in google's overall traffic
patterns, trust me.

> demands.  Rather I'm saying that users should be given information that
> clearly defines what they are buying.  Some providers may chose to

I'm all for that - but providing extra filtering at a higher cost is a mug's
game. Especially when you buy a site license or use open source and roll
your own, anyway.

You have no incentive in such cases NOT to filter across the board.

	srs

____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.cpsr.org
To be removed from the list, send any message to:
     governance-unsubscribe at lists.cpsr.org

For all list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.cpsr.org/lists/info/governance