[governance] What is Network Neutrality

[Milton L Mueller]

Parminder:

> It is my humble opinion that between these two positions
> lies a world of difference, and the real battle will be situated
> in this space. I think the Internet as we know  - and as we
> cherish in its egalitarian qualities - will be history if Lessig's
> version of NN is adopted by the new US administration.
> This in my view is the point in NN debate and advocacy that
> requires urgent attention.

I am repeatedly surprised at how you dismiss the relevance of nondiscrimination and universal access to content and applications, which is the _only_ thing important about NN, and elevate the economic equality argument (no one should be able to pay more for better service), which is unimportant to ordinary people and ultimately is impossible to achieve.

You say that the content and application discrimination issues "are easy to achieve" and "dont matter much." Let me give you a very simple example of why you are mistaken: VoIP.

In many developing countries, and in quite a few developing countries, the telco has monopoly power and can use it to prevent Internet users from using voice over IP as a substitute for their overpriced telephone service. Imagine then two mobile phone providers. One is NN compliant - you can use VoIP as a substitute for traditional mobile voice service. The other is not, it forces you to use _their_ service and accordingly charges high prices for regular, and especially international and roaming service. We are talking dollars per minute rather than pennies per minute. The amount of surplus profit or revenue generated by the second mobile ISP is, cumulatively, enormous, billions of dollars across the globe. It affects the affordability of service, and the consumers ability to choose qualities, modes and applications that they want. It affects the ability of new companies to enter the market, with all that that implies for innovation and competition.

I have made a simple case for large benefits caused by the correct conception of NN. Your turn. Please tell me, how does the ordinary user benefit from an egalitarian ideologue telling them and everyone else that if they want to pay more for a higher speed or better service they can't do it, even if it is offered on a nondiscriminatory basis? Tell us all how leveling down the market to the lowest common denominator enhances the public good.

Take the same logic to content discrimination. You blithely dismiss the idea of ISPs or governments being able to say, "we don't like this web site or that service, we are just going to block it." Doesn't matter? Wow. That need for liberty of choice and openness is fundamental to the value the internet delivers. By comparison, the equality of price and service you propose is meaningless. Who cares whether i get the same price and service as everyone else, when the content and applications delivered are censorsed and strangled and suppressed?

Do you argue that no one should be able to buy DSL service because there are people who have dial up and can't afford DSL? sounds to me like that's the basis of your argument. absurd. this is not an NN argument it's an economic egalitarian argument. NN isn;t about that.

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