[BULK] Re: [governance] What is Network Neutrality

[Lisa Horner]

Hi

 

George wrote:

 

>>“One of the advantages of having ISPs lay out precisely what their delivery policies are (my suggestion) and understanding what the user can do about it, i.e. what degrees of freedom users have (Carlos' suggestion) is that at least on multiple provider neighborhoods there exists the possibility of competition in the delivery space.  If one ISP has a less desirable delivery policy than another, at least it will be clear to the users what the situation is, and they can select their provider accordingly.”

 

The Global Network Initiative has gone some way to addressing these issues, but is primarily concerned with situations in which governments seek to restrict private sector service providers.  For example, their implementation guidelines for realizing free expression and privacy principles include:

“Communications With Users
Participating companies will seek to operate in a transparent manner when required by government to remove content or otherwise limit access to information and ideas. To achieve this, participating companies will, unless prohibited by law:

*	Clearly disclose to users the generally applicable laws and policies which require the participating company to remove or limit access to content or restrict communications.
*	Disclose to users in a clear manner the company’s policies and procedures for responding to government demands to remove or limit access to content or restrict communications.
*	Give clear, prominent and timely notice to users when access to specific content has been removed or blocked by the participating company or when communications have been limited by the participating company due to government restrictions. Notice should include the reason for the action and state on whose authority the action was taken.”

Whilst the GNI is focused on how businesses should respond to government demands, I guess the next step would be to build on these commitments to address wider public interest concerns.  Although I guess they’ll need to get over the first hurdle of adhering to what they’ve already signed up to before committing to more.

 

I know that Max Senges and others in the BoR coalition are working on “human readable icons” that could be displayed on websites to reassure users that they adhere to certain privacy standards.  A similar concept might be relevant for certain “neutrality” standards?

 

Lisa

 

From: George Sadowsky [mailto:george.sadowsky at attglobal.net] 
Sent: 11 January 2009 15:48
To: governance at lists.cpsr.org; Parminder; Michael Gurstein
Cc: 'McTim'; 'Steve Anderson'; 'Milton L Mueller'; 'Brian Beaton'; isolatedn at gmail.com
Subject: [BULK] Re: [governance] What is Network Neutrality
Importance: Low

 

All,

 

Well, this is a discussion that seems to be going somewhere, and without a lot of verbosity.  That's good.

 

Parminder has grasped what Carlos and I were saying.  But I am hesitant about taking the net step forward in detail, because "appropriate" depends upon cultural context.

 

I would agree that there are gross (in the sense of large) standards of appropriateness, such as not discarding messages without informing the user, not diverting content to others (such as the police) without a legally obtained warrant or equivalent.  Wen you get to the details, however, they will vary country by country, as well as opinion by opinion.

 

I do see Parminder's suggestion as helpful in beginning to formulate such a list, but I would not want to see a lot of effort go on around the "edges" of such a list, with increasing arguments about what should go on and what should not go on a list.

 

One of the advantages of having ISPs lay out precisely what their delivery policies are (my suggestion) and understanding what the user can do about it, i.e. what degrees of freedom users have (Carlos' suggestion) is that at least on multiple provider neighborhoods there exists the possibility of competition in the delivery space.  If one ISP has a less desirable delivery policy than another, at least it will be clear to the users what the situation is, and they can select their provider accordingly.

 

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