[governance] What is Network Neutrality

[Parminder]

Milton

 >you have framed these options poorly.

McTim has been very helpful in forwarding an article which has a senior 
professor and commentator in this area framing the options almost 
exactly as I did. However, if is doesnt suit your idealogical taste, I 
can hardly help it.

>Define better what you mean by different "quality and speed" in Option 
1. Does it mean that a telecom can't sell me DSL because someone else 
can only afford dial up? If> not, how is the effect of such economic 
differentiation any different than nondiscriminatory offerings of faster 
treatment?

You know very well the difference between charging differently for 
levels of access (pipe size, but without discriminating among different 
content) and charging for different speed and quality of relay of some 
content over other. Milton, do you seriously believe that the two things 
are the same, or even similar. The structural impact of the latter on 
the Internet will be devastatingly different from merely costing access 
differently, as happens already. And you know it very well.

>  Does Option 2 mean Akamai becomes an  illegal business? (do you know 
what Akamai does?) Does it mean that edge caching becomes illegal? if 
no, how is the effect > different from what you purport to oppose?

If a content provider is free to put his servers anywhere, the same can 
also be done through a third party. That is very different. Any such 
private service to enhance content in any way is just a outsourced 
private service. (Though the regulators will need to watch all such 
activities - especially of the systemic variety - closely to see where 
the line is crossed.) But anyone involved with the 'publicness' of the 
Internet, like a common carrier, should not provide such discriminatory 
services.   That should be the condition that the 'collective ownership 
of the Internet' imposes on anyone who wants to use / leverage the 
'public Internet'. Else the concerend telecom company can in any case 
use IP or any other technology for a 'private network' that can do 
whatever (within a different, less intrusive regulatory regime, if 
required, dealing with private networks).

>please don't impose your own egalitarian fantasies on the internet. 
imposed equality has nothing to do with what the internet is, what it 
was, or what made it successful.

'imposed equality'! Well, everything 'rights' is in a way an 'imposed 
equality', isnt it. And the IGC has been adopting statements on rights 
based approach to IG. Citizenship is also 'imposed equality'. If we dont 
impose any equality at all dont know where the world will be. In fact 
'imposed equality' also sounds like something of a 'social contract', 
which is an interesting idea and concept to explore. Since we mostly 
agree that the Internet underpins a new global social order (the 
information society) with new political basis and requirements, is there 
to be a 'social contract' vis a vis the Internet!

Parminder

Milton L Mueller wrote:
>  
>  
>
>     Option 1. Telecoms are constrained from doing any ad-hoc and
>     discriminatory interferences with traffic based on their business
>     interests and arrangements with different providers of content and
>     applications. However, this does not mean that they may not charge
>     content providers differently for quality and speed for
>     transmitting their content, as long as this special treatment is
>     available to all for the same price and conditions.
>
>     Option 2. Telecoms are absolutely barred from charging content
>     providers for any special treatment of their content, i.e. we do
>     not have a tiered Internet, with different quality and speed of
>     delivery of content as per different charges. 
>      
>     you have framed these options poorly.
>      
>     Define better what you mean by different "quality and speed" in
>     Option 1. Does it mean that a telecom can't sell me DSL because
>     someone else can only afford dial up? If not, how is the effect of
>     such economic differentiation any different than nondiscriminatory
>     offerings of faster treatment?
>      
>     Have you considered that end users might benefit from such
>     anarragnement? it is clear you olny see the benefit for the
>     suppliers.
>      
>     Does Option 2 mean Akamai becomes an  illegal business? (do you
>     know what Akamai does?) Does it mean that edge caching becomes
>     illegal? if no, how is the effect different from what you purport
>     to oppose?
>      
>     Who gets classified as "telecoms"? (don't think the answer to that
>     one is simpe, my friend. i can point you to decades of regulatory
>     debate with millions or billions hanging on the answer).
>      
>     please don't impose your own egalitarian fantasies on the
>     internet. imposed equality has nothing to do with what the
>     internet is, what it was, or what made it successful.
>      
>
>     Milton Mueller
>     Professor, Syracuse University School of Information Studies
>     XS4All Professor, Delft University of Technology
>     ------------------------------
>     Internet Governance Project:
>     http://internetgovernance.org <http://internetgovernance.org/>
>
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