[governance] Net neutrality: Definitions

Tue Aug 17 16:47:41 EDT 2010

Professor,

You skirt an issue very closely here with your example of "boycott" if we were 
truly competitive.

Too often the battle cry of Neutrality is just that; a battle cry for the 
outsider.  When we as here argue zealously for neutrality often what we are 
really arguing for is the other guy or the new guy or anything but status quo.  
How often did we see communism, christism or muslimism or capitalism argued the 
same, and always it was just a new brand of who was on top. 

I say "Bully" march on and put Neutrality on top.

________________________________
From: Milton L Mueller <mueller at syr.edu>
To: "governance at lists.cpsr.org" <governance at lists.cpsr.org>; Bertrand de La 
Chapelle <bdelachapelle at gmail.com>; Ginger Paque <gpaque at gmail.com>
Cc: Parminder <parminder at itforchange.net>
Sent: Tue, August 17, 2010 11:35:08 AM
Subject: RE: [governance] Net neutrality: Definitions

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> 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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