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

[Karl Auerbach]

Suresh Ramasubramanian wrote:
>> 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

You have to be *extremely* careful - the way that the law you cited is 
written makes the outcome very, very tightly tied to the way that the 
factual situation fits the tricky definitions in the code.

In other words, the way that the law is written, what seem to be tiny 
differences - such as whether the provider has a website, could turn the 
entire outcome on its head.  That's why I suggest that any provider that 
does even the tiniest bit of filtering do so only after deep 
consultation with some good lawyers who have spent some time wrangling 
with this stuff.

(There's an interesting reverse twist to this - companies here in the US 
could be considered liable if they do not filter out bad stuff and it 
causes an employee to consider himself/herself to be thus subject to 
sexual harassment.)


>> 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.

What we are talking about here is generalized filtering.  So yes I agree 
with you that if we think in levels of abstraction, the routing of email 
does bring users closer to email forwarding providers.

But the picture I have in my mind is packet-forwarding providers, 
whether near the edge or in the core, that decide to move up the stack 
and add spam filtering.

>> 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.

I agree.

I suspect that off-color video makes up a lot of that traffic.  A decade 
ago when I built IP/TV we typically an aggregate of several gigabits to 
the viewers of any single item [we were using IP multicast so our basic 
stream rate of 5 to 15 mbits/second was heavily multiplied].  I suspect 
that the cumulative bit rate for video on the net is rather larger these 
days, especially since IP multicast has kinda disappeared.

But we're drifting a bit here - the point I started with we need to find 
a way so that users can know what filters are being applied, have some 
way of saying "no" (which perhaps might mean moving to another carrier), 
and so that the providers don't get into a squeeze in which they have 
provide services without the ability to recoup the costs from those who 
a) cause those costs or b) won't let the provider deal with the issue 
itself.

		--karl--
____________________________________________________________
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