[governance] NET NEUTRALITY AND MORE

[Tapani Tarvainen]

On May 28 14:39, Avri Doria (avri at ella.com) wrote:

> while I am not a fan of the so-called free market, I accept that the
> world I live in is populated mostly by people who do beleive in it.
> People want to sell what people want to buy and people want to make
> money.

Mostly agreed but for one thing, that needs at least a bit
opening up:

"People want to sell what people want to buy"

The problem with this is that "what people want to buy" is not fixed,
something sellers just react to. Today more than ever before, it's
a question of making people want what you have to sell.
Of course that's simplification, too; a bit better might be
saying people want to make things that are easiest, or
rather most profitable, to get other people want.

In terms of net neutrality, this suggests that we should also think
about who gets what kind of power to influence what people want.

> In terms of NGOs, people with small businesses and users with
> something to say/read/learn/share/inform, anything that moves the
> Internet away from the best universal best effort service harm
> peoples' rights to proper (for some definition of proper) access to
> the Internet.

Yes. And it will bias towards those who can pay most - that is,
favour those who have most power (money) to begin with.
Which is a rather natural tendency in ... more or less everything.
But principles like net neutrality could be interpreted and used
in a way to counterbalance that. Perhaps.

> Net neutrality is a classic tussle of interests in an overloaded
> discussion. This is a problem that I believe can only be solved by a
> continuous balancing of interests in an ongoing fully participatory
> multi-stakeholder process where these and the many other
> considerations I am ignoring in this short note, can be discussed
> and understanding can be developed.

Yes.

> But first I think we need unpack the term Net Neutrality and
> actually agree on what we are talking about.

I doubt that can be done, for the very meaning of the term
is inextricably tangled in that conflict of interests.
But by the same token, talking about its meaning would
be essential in order to make the term useful at all.

-- 
Tapani Tarvainen

-------------- next part --------------
____________________________________________________________
You received this message as a subscriber on the list:
     governance at lists.igcaucus.org
To be removed from the list, visit:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/unsubscribing

For all other list information and functions, see:
     http://lists.igcaucus.org/info/governance
To edit your profile and to find the IGC's charter, see:
     http://www.igcaucus.org/

Translate this email: http://translate.google.com/translate_t