[governance] Net neutrality: Definitions

Tue Aug 17 14:35:08 EDT 2010

From: Bertrand de La Chapelle [mailto:bdelachapelle at gmail.com]

>On Net Neutrality : one of the outcomes I took from the discussions in the 2010
>EuroDIG (the european IGF in Madrid) is that the question could be reframed
>around : "limitations to traffic management". It combines the recognition that
>there is legitimate traffic management by operators (for instance to ensure QoS
>for VoIP or streaming video) but that there could be limitations to it, in order to
>preserve for instance principles of non-discrimination, transparency, enabling
>innovation, etc...

Actually some of the most important aspects of NN had nothing to do with "traffic management" but rather with blocking/discrimination against content, applications or services based on their origin or owner. The NN movement got its first real impetus in the US from the Madison River case, in which a telco providing internet access sought to disable competing VoIP services. The idea that an Internet access provider would, like a cable TV system, assert "editorial control" over what content, services and applications we could connect to struck many of us as undesirable, and even inimical to the entire foundation of internetworking. It is an attempt to make us captive audiences for their own (higher-priced) services.

This selectivity would not be a problem if the market for internet access were highly competitive; anyone who discriminated or assembled a bundle of services that was undesirable could simply be abandoned and we could move to another supplier, who would have every incentive to meet our demand for an unrestricted service. But the linkage of internet access to massive fixed investments in physical infrastructure means that there are likely to be one or two providers of broadband access - unless one unbundles the physical facility - which in turn requires the provision of nondiscriminatory access to the underlying physical facility, so the problem is just pushed back. (And of course, in many countries the state, with its blocking/filtering policies, is the worst discriminator against content, services and applications, let's not forget that.)

"Traffic management" came into the picture later. (Basically after an AT&T exec started making noises about how he wanted content/services providing web-based video to pay him for expanding the pipes.) The traffic management issue became conflated with the content, services, applications blocking because people feared that traffic prioritization practices could be used in a discriminatory manner to favor certain suppliers (again, think of cable TV). Here there would not be actual blocking of services, but the improved performance associated with special traffic management arrangements could still constitute a devastating form of discrimination. Again, it would put the network operator in the inappropriate position of deciding what content, services and applications we have access to based on their business arrangements.

The odd thing about this debate is that it is of course perfectly possible now for some service providers and organizations to buy more bandwidth than others. And there is absolutely nothing wrong that. If I pay $X for bandwidth N and someone else pays $2X for bandwidth 2N, fine. Indeed, any network marketplace that doesn't allow that is going to be dysfunctional. The difference, however, is that the price for bandwidth is uniform for all - so if I can afford $2X or $4x, I can get 2N or 4N bandwidth, whether or not the network operator likes me or believes my service is good. The NN issue arises because, as long as network operators have market power (and they do), they might choose to sell Yahoo 4N or 16N levels of performance and refuse to sell me the same amount, even if I am perfectly capable of paying for it. If we prohibit that kind of activity, it is a feasible and productive approach to NN.

This debate is often messed up, however, because there are still extreme egalitarians (or, to put it less charitably economic ignoramuses) running around who think it's unfair for there to be any differences in resource allocation based on ability to pay, and there are even some who think it's an evil capitalist conspiracy to make anyone have to pay for anything. (I no longer waste time with debates like that, I had  my share on the sidewalks of college campuses in the 1970s. ;-)

--MM

On the notion of Public Internet : in many respects, the global Internet could be qualified as a "common pool resource" as defined in the seminal work of Elinor Ostrom (nobel Prize in Economics 2009). The framework for the collective governance of such a CPR is the multi-stakeholder model we are trying to establish (cf. the other thread on this list).

Additionally, in a joint initiative with the Netherlands regarding Freedom of Expression on the Internet, France is suggesting to explore international arrangements that could give the Internet a legal status analogous to what is used for international canals, waterways or straits : right of free harmless transit, responsibility of the upstream actors (including governments) towards downstream actors, etc... The Council of Europe is working on similar paths with a group on trans-border issues regarding the Internet. These are very early thoughts and analogies only go so far, but it is worth exploring. Comments welcome.

Best

Bertrand
On Sat, Aug 14, 2010 at 9:28 PM, Ginger Paque <gpaque at gmail.com<mailto:gpaque at gmail.com>> wrote:
This discussion will be productive. Do we have any proposed definitions as starting points:

Internet:

Public Internet:

Internet as a public good:

Net Neutrality:

On 8/14/2010 3:28 AM, parminder wrote:

When the issues of managed services and a tiered interent are so current, it is useful to look at possible definitions of what constitutes a public Internet, or well what constitutes an Internet. (Google has used the term non-Internet services for managed services). Obviously, it is important to know what is Internet before we pursue IG.

Is it possible to work on some of these issues in the IGC?

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--
____________________
Bertrand de La Chapelle
Délégué Spécial pour la Société de l'Information / Special Envoy for the Information Society
Ministère des Affaires Etrangères et Européennes/ French Ministry of Foreign and European Affairs
Tel : +33 (0)6 11 88 33 32

"Le plus beau métier des hommes, c'est d'unir les hommes" Antoine de Saint Exupéry
("there is no greater mission for humans than uniting humans")
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