[governance] Proposed workshop text on global net neutrality

[Ivar A. M. Hartmann]

As I see it, discussing net neutrality includes making en effort to
understand this "absence of infinite bandwidth", e.g. the allegation of
scarcity. Is such scarcity an inescapable fact or the result of an elaborate
planning by big Telcos?

I daresay there's at least one aspect of organizing this workshop that
everyone who manifested themselves so far seems to agree upon: we need a
debater with profound knowledge of the American experience with net
neutrality, especially of the legal aspects.
The discussion in the list on the FCC's current stance on this subject
illustrates this need.

Also, but much less important to the issue at point right now: If you're
going to mention advances in different countries that relate to this issue,
Chile's should be mentioned in addition or instead of Brazil's - they
actually enacted a law on net neutrality, we're still working with a rough
draft that so far (unfortunately) has no prospect of being approved in
Congress and in order to see the light of day.

 Best, Ivar


On Mon, Apr 11, 2011 at 15:10, Roland Perry <roland at internetpolicyagency.com
> wrote:

> In message <4F2D2352-9964-40E5-A4C4-7DB62C476A7C at post.harvard.edu>, at
> 12:38:35 on Sun, 10 Apr 2011, David Allen <
> David_Allen_AB63 at post.harvard.edu> writes
>
>> In the current Internet model it's simply not possible for a content
>>> provider in UK to pay a consumer-eyeballs network in Pakistan to deliver its
>>> content preferentially (which includes paying not to restrict it).
>>>
>>> And when the "content provider" is the individual Internet citizen,
>>> wanting his blog to be transmitted everywhere, or wanting the files he's
>>> sharing by P2P to be received unhindered anywhere in the world, there's
>>> simply nothing approaching a mechanism for him to pay for that.
>>>
>>
>> Following that logic:  It becomes even more important - for international
>> receipt of material originated elsewhere - that _national_ NN regimes are
>> 'in the public interest.'
>>
>
> In the absence of infinite bandwidth within the country, and to the
> country, it may be in the "National Interest" to use what bandwidth you have
> to enable the majority of users to have a satisfactory experience.
>
> In an attempt to illustrate what I mean, it's not unknown for email systems
> to put limits on the size of attachments, to perhaps 8MB, in order to share
> the system's resources equitably between users. There's an implication that
> either (a) 8MB is enough to express anything which should be circulated as
> an email or (b) that if you want to use email as a file-transfer protocol,
> there's a limit to the file size it's acceptable to attach.
>
> Therefore email of that kind is not "network neutral" because of that
> arbitrary limit. And nor is there any money attached to each email to assist
> in building infrastructure for its delivery.
>
> Similar arguments can be made for other protocols (such as HTTP, NNTP), but
> email is a good one to start with because many people will be familiar with
> this particular restriction, and indeed many who have been on the receiving
> end of bloated attachments may actually welcome it.
> --
> Roland Perry
>
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