[governance] What is Network Neutrality

[Lee W McKnight]

I've bee biting my tongue for a while now, since as some of you may recall I have objected to the incredibly vacuous term 'network neutrality' since before it became a buzzword.  (Partially because it was some of my former students who popularized the term initially - you see  I taught them too well.)  

I do admit that the old 'common carriage' term used to describe non-discriminatory treatment of people crossing bridges, using ferries, or riding trains has always been a favorite of mine, but may feel a bit outdated when speaking of the Internet. But the emotion in the NN debate comes partially from folks knowing it is just not right to treat people or packets otherwise.

And I do agree with this quote from one of Milton's messages:

'nondiscrimination and universal access to content and applications...is the _only_ thing important' (about NN)

However, as Milton and others note the word 'discrimination' doesn't sound particularly appealing since forms other than price discrimination are social evils, and even in the pricing case noone like paying a higher price. Hence I prefer 'open.' Which is vague too I concede but has the right connotation.

So if we can agree that 'open and universal access' is the real objective, then let's focus on specifying what that means in the Carlos/George context.

Lee.

PS: My big concession: if igc can define NN as 'open and universal Internet access,' then I'll try to control my gag reflex every time I hear the NN term. Maybe there's something I can take for that...


-----Original Message-----
From: Sivasubramanian Muthusamy [mailto:isolatedn at gmail.com]
Sent: Fri 1/9/2009 1:34 PM
To: Milton L Mueller
Cc: governance at lists.cpsr.org; Ian Peter
Subject: Re: [governance] What is Network Neutrality
 
Hello Milton Mueller,

On Fri, Jan 9, 2009 at 11:06 PM, Milton L Mueller <mueller at syr.edu> wrote:

>
>
>  ------------------------------
> *From:* Sivasubramanian Muthusamy [mailto:isolatedn at gmail.com]
>  *Wouldn't there be a balance if we seriously begin to be open to the
> concerns expressed by the business sector to SOME aspects of the
> 'discrimination' - a bad word, but may have to be permissible [in a certain
> context]. If a Virginia uses the Internet for business email and essential
> surfing, and Robert [co-panelist] is using it to download movies 24/7, what
> is wrong if Virginia is charged $10 and Robert a $100?  *
>
> Siva, there is nothing wrong, indeed, a pricing regime that charges users
> more based on what bandwidth they actually use is scientifically known to be
> better for smaller users, who end up subsidizing bandwidth hogs under many
> flat-rate regimes. If you care about affordability you want price
> discrimination in this sense.
>
> The main point I want to make is that charging more for more bandwidth use
> is NOT a net neutrality issue at all. This is unfortunately how the economic
> equalitarians have diverted and potentially destroyed the concept. NN has to
> do with anti-competitive or censorial discrimination among applications,
> services or content based on the origin or destination of the packets. Full
> stop.
>
> We need to liberate the NN discussion from the efforts of economic
> equalitarians to appropriate the term in order to sell Maoist snake oil.
> Economic equalitarianism of the sort that says Virginia and Robert should
> get the same price for very different services and consumption rates is just
> plain dumb; it isn;t economically sustainable, and won't survive as a
> political or regulatory movement. So linking NN to this is a sure way to
> defeat it -- as the IGP paper warned over a year ago.
>
>
Your paper spells out clearly what net neutrality is not. Will take the time
to go through that in detail.  It is important that we at this Caucus
defines what Net Neutrality is and then steers all discussions of Net
Neutrality around the core aspects of Net Neutrality.

I agree with you fully on this. As I said, this is what I set out to say at
the NN debate, and in the context of pointing out a distraction I made an
observation about permissible commercial practices, which are issues beyond
the purview of NN anyway.

Thanks.
-- 
Sivasubramanian Muthusamy
http://twitter.com/isocchennai
http://wealthyworld.blogspot.com
http://www.circleid.com/members/3601/

>
>
> Milton Mueller
> Professor, Syracuse University School of Information Studies
> XS4All Professor, Delft University of Technology
> ------------------------------
> Internet Governance Project:
> http://internetgovernance.org
>
>


<http://www.circleid.com/members/3601/>


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