[governance] Proposed workshop text on global net neutrality

Tue Apr 12 14:07:51 EDT 2011

On Apr 12, 2011, at 4:07 AM, Roland Perry wrote:

> In message <64D6BC24-2F1C-4B0E-836D-1D4FC5C78E49 at post.harvard.edu>,  
> at 20:58:18 on Mon, 11 Apr 2011, David Allen <David_Allen_AB63 at post.harvard.edu 
> > writes
>> Generally, in my experience, email is not a case with tiered prices  
>> to be paid for different size attachments.
>
> That's right. Nevertheless, it's a hopefully easy-to-understand  
> illustration of the concept that "size matters" when considering the  
> transport of content on the Internet.
>
> Of course, there also isn't a tiered pricing structure at my  
> blogging site, to ensure that I can "pay" to have my blogs  
> transported worldwide, unhindered. So a distant network seeking to  
> make more money [actually, "any money"] by trying to charge me for  
> that facility, is out of luck.
>
> The model of "charge the content provider" to get unhindered  
> distribution currently only works *very* locally to the website.
>
> Which is why we need to take care when there are proposals for  
> settlement-based international peering, which I see as a bigger  
> issue than whether YouTube should be allowed to pay a local mobile  
> network to carry its content over and above a handset user's monthly  
> quota (and therefore allowing that network's handsets to be  
> advertised as "unlimited YouTube", which will increase their sales).
> -- 
> Roland Perry

A framework - for analysis of NN - is necessary when so many pieces  
have been tossed into its policy cauldron.  Here is one:

Where is the power?  Is that power used responsibly?

The (almost canonical) case:  An ISP providing access for consumers  
often also serves as gatekeeper for access by users.  That is power.   
Does the ISP use its gatekeeper power to line its own pocket, or to  
push some ideology, at the expense of the excluded viewpoints?  That  
is abuse of power.

There are, by now hoary, examples from the present.

Of historical precedence:  Notably, on the US scene - from the bygone  
era when a telco was the whole and only story - a 'common carrier  
model' was sacrosanct.  And worked.  And likely not just the US scene  
(nor for just comms technology, for that matter).

The telco was required to provide 'common carriage.'  It could not  
interfere with the message.  What was put on the wire was delivered.   
Of course this had some underpinnings in freedom of expression.  The  
telco was required to play its part supporting expression of views,  
whatever those views may be.

(On the US scene, this was carried to unworkable extremes in for  
instance Computer Inquiry I and II.  The introduction of computers in  
the network meant some intra-transmission tinkering with the message.   
The US spent decades trying to find its way through both 'hands off'  
common carriage and the power of computers.  In some ways, the present  
NN quandaries echo those earlier conceptual conundrums.  The all- 
consuming effort put into US CI I and II does underline, however, how  
strongly were felt the dictates of common carriage.)

Today we can see, perhaps, through the relative clarity of the past's  
common carriage.

As one case:  An ISP takes money to favor one voice over another and /  
or has an economic interest in blocking alternative, competitive  
voices.  (An ISP, for example, that provides both access and also a  
menu of programming choices.  In that case, the viewer at home could  
use the access side to reach programming that is competitive with that  
offered by the ISP.  Which the ISP can then make less attractive by  
not delivering so fast or with less quality.)  That is abuse.

Or:  An ISP blocks content it prefers the populace not to see, for  
ideological reasons.  Bullies of all stripes - certainly dictatorial /  
autocratic regimes - would control the information ecology.  That is  
abuse.  Even though history teaches how open exchange tends to out and  
to upset the bully's apple cart, albeit perhaps only decades on ...

Those are the abuses - clear and unmistakeable - that an NN dialog  
addresses.  In this view.

Are there other considerations?  Indeed, that is what nuances the  
story.  Just as with CI I and II historically, for instance.

Networks must be managed.  Network capacity is one key to 'neutral'  
possibilities; yes, email attachments can be a useful illustration.   
Wired capacity, as fiber, can expand, not to infinity, but to its  
practical instantiation.  Wireless capacity is more limited by  
frequency availability.

In both cases, does the network manager responsibly expand?  And for  
wireless, does the arbiter of bandwidth, typically a government  
entity, behave?  Or, for instance, is the network manager(s) laggard  
in upgrade, and greedy in pricing, such as in the US where bandwidth  
seriously lags competitor societies and prices are many times higher,  
comparatively?  That is abuse.

When other 'management' may not be.

As to cross-border cases - content delivery networks, CDNs, are  
available to reach around the world.  On the one hand, CDNs raise  
those interesting NN questions, about favoring some voices over  
others.  On the other hand, they are a pretty much inevitable -  
present - extension of the architecture.  We need to get that into the  
bigger NN picture.  And I think you are right, to flag settlement- 
based international peering - it is not the first thought, when NN is  
the objective.

What might be an NN regime?  That is for a workshop to take forward.   
In my view, rules-based policy threatens to founder on the complexity  
of cases to be addressed.  There is always an exception.  Which turns  
the spotlight, instead, onto principles.  Which, in turn, depends on  
the culture - organizational and social - in which applied and  
ultimately upon the qualities of the human beings interpreting  
principles.

But most of all - the discussion proceeds fruitfully only with a  
framework that is clear about what is at stake.  Those framework  
concerns are addressed, first.  While the other - inevitable -  
considerations also find their due.  In this view.

For NN, in the above, that framework is power and its abuse.

In this regard, a proposition is at the heart of this view from 10,000  
meters:  that our comms networks provide a public service, albeit  
often from the hands of private actors.  The physical networks form  
the basis for the functioning of our social networks - our societies.   
As such, they are subject to considerations and policy that serve that  
polity, not just the private wishes of the so-called 'owners.'  Even  
the US, obsessed with empowering the individual, was entirely in the  
thrall of 'common carriage' for its telco net - a strict public onus  
on the 'private' actor.

In particular, wire-based networks, increasingly fiber, tend to  
monopoly at the local access level.  Even wireless - especially vital  
to the 'south' and the future - accommodates only a certain number of  
entrants.  Since there are - in this view - public responsibilities  
for these private actors, the implications are not hard to see:  wire- 
based quasi-monopolies require treatment as such; even wireless nets  
engender compelling public mandates.

All in my opinion, needless to say,  David

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