[governance] NET NEUTRALITY AND MORE

[Kerry Brown]

I agree with much of what Avri says here particularly the ideas about balance. What is needed to ensure net neutrality (however it is defined) are objective measurements and statistics. One of the biggest problems to defining net neutrality is we don’t have this. Most of the measurements we have are provided by commercial interests that are obviously not neutral. In order to get to a balanced Internet we need to define what measurements are needed and work towards finding ways to get them. We need a neutral party to measure and acquire data in IXPs then provide that data to regulators and civil society. In order to achieve balance we need data free from commercial bias.

Kerry Brown

From: governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org [mailto:governance-request at lists.igcaucus.org] On Behalf Of Avri Doria
Sent: May-28-13 5:40 AM
To: IGC
Subject: Re: [governance] NET NEUTRALITY AND MORE


hi,

While I am in true confessions mode, I think today is my day for inviting attack.

The fact that this thread calls itself NET NEUTRALITY and I have only spoken about  AND MORE keeps tickling at me.

[so to borrow an old time alt.newsgroup discussion list motif - donning my asbestos underwear, i venture forth]

I admit that this is a term I considered overloaded, and while I have seen various efforts to try and untangle the term, I don't beleive any of the attempts at untangling has ever taken.  So  i find coherent conversations on the topic few and far between.

Some of my simplistic yet contradictory impressions on the topic:

I have no doubt that in terms of the technical implications, there needs to be preferred treatment for some traffic: i.a. control, system monitoring, routing etc.  So the mechanisms for behaviors that thwart network neutrality are needed and will exist.

In terms of one commercial outfit wanting to collect money when some other commercial outfit that uses its plant gains profit: I understand that being a problem for those who run corporations and beleive that making a profit for their investors is their responsibility.  Why should the service provider suffer so that the content provider can rake it in? So some differential charging for content providers seems unavoidable, no mater how complex or problematic it might be.

Some  companies want to sell and some people/users/consumers want to buy better than best effort service for their gaming or streaming pleasure.  From one perspective it seems reasonable.  But it seems that this might be at the expense of the bandwidth/service available for best effort.  Whenever there is a premium product, the standard product gets short shrift because they want people to buy the premium product:  Marketing 102. But 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. I might prefer it was otherwise, but that is the way it is. So it is a problem that needs to be dealt with.

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.

Net neutrality is a classic tussle of interests in an overloaded discussion.  This is a problem that I beleive can only be solved by a continuous balancing of interests in an ongoing fully participatory mult-stakeholder process where these and the many other considerations I am ignoring in this short note, can be discussed and understanding can be developed.  But first I think we need unpack the term Net Neutrality and actually agree on what we are talking about.

avri







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