Susan Crawford blog :: The arguments on the other side -- in favor of a prioritized internet

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The arguments on the other side -- in favor of a prioritized internet

by Susan on Mon 20 Feb 2006 01:53 PM EST | Permanent Link

If you're going to argue for an open internet, you'd better be able to respond to the following:

1. It's strange to have as a default background assumption FCC regulation.

2. Your empirical assertions about collective activities online being of greater value than property rights of network builders etc. are untested and may be incorrect.

3. People always free-ride. There may be so much freeriding online (eg across P2P networks) that such collaboration isn't actually efficient.

4. Your view of the internet is profoundly static. What about the inventions that haven't arisen yet? What will provide the incentive structure for them to emerge? Where's the money going to come from? Network builders need to monetize their networks in order to continue to innovate.

5. We should rely on markets and wait for market failure before having government intervene.

6. Moving from two broadband providers to three won't provide substantial consumer benefits.

7. Generally speaking, if there's value to users in collaboration, then a market-driven provider should be able to meet users' needs. Notion that you need regulation in order to provide valuable services is a non sequitur.

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Re: The arguments on the other side -- in favor of a prioritized internet

by Eric Johnson on Tue 21 Feb 2006 12:17 AM EST | Profile | Permanent Link

My quick feedback:

#1) No more so than assuming the FTC, SEC, or state Attorneys General.

#2) Demonstrably true based on past ten years around the explosion of internet usage.

#3) How are they free-riding, if they're paying for ISP services? ISPs already adjust their customers bandwidth based on how much they pay per month.

#4) Inventions like RSS, Atom, BEEP, Skype/VOIP, IM all have been tremendously useful to the development of the internet, and are completely separate from the network itself.... Is the innovation really in the laying of the wires, or what is carried by the wires. I think the latter is demonstrably true based on the current state.

#5) All markets are regulated. "Unreglated" markets usually fail - in that monopolies and criminals intervene to "regulate" in ways that are quite inefficient. The question is always how much regulation, and why? Is it the minimum regulation necessary to be effective, and can it be enforced?

#6) Don't know, not an economist.

#7) See #5

Re: The arguments on the other side -- in favor of a prioritized internet

by Rick Thomas on Tue 21 Feb 2006 04:02 PM EST | Profile | Permanent Link

A free market and tiered pricing may well make sense, but it seems the other side's arguments are avoiding the one true issue :-) Should the incumbents be allowed to discriminate against network users who are their competition in content and services? Or should all users and suppliers have equal access at equal prices.

If we think of the network as analogous to the hardware+OS and the content as application software, then perhaps there's a precedent: DOJ vs MSFT.

Re: The arguments on the other side -- in favor of a prioritized internet

by Hamish on Wed 08 Mar 2006 05:59 PM EST | Profile | Permanent Link

Hi,

#1. Agreed, I think now that collective action can be co-ordinated outside of the State model, particularly as the proportion of people who depend on open networking grow. Further, technology improvements are reducing the need for "heavy lifting" and long investment in costly and complex equipment to solve the scaling and last mile problems we have had in the past.

#2. Collective co-ordinated action has succeeded in proving more valuable AKA successful, than Kings, priests and all other forms of centralised command and control. Heavy-duty cores lose to light-weight flexible ones. And if property rights are so beneficial in networks, why don't we completely privatise rights of ways in physical space?

#3. People always free-ride, OK, but that doesn't mean they free ride in all activities. It is the efficiency of P2P distribution that makes it a problem for command and control incumbents. I believe your democracy depends on freedom of communication.

#4. Optimisation of the network for existing applications is the greatest choke-point to innovation we know. I'll leave this to your co-advisor David Isenberg to address. The Next Generation Network (NGN) isn't. Its a network optimised for a triple-play of existing applications. The simple, permissionless network is where innovation occurs.

#5. Markets are great. Competitive service provision over shared infrastructure produces cheap infrastructure (no duplication) and cheap customer desired services. As long as the infrastructure remains simple and uncaptured, new services can arise without the control or permission of the operators. Complicating the infrastructure to optimise returns or performance for a narrow range of services is wasteful. As long as the seperation between infrastructure and services is maintained, the infrastructure can be improved by competition and substituted without disruption.

#6. Agreed, but moving to one shared generalised infrastructure certainly will.

#7. "if there's value to users in collaboration, then a market-driven provider should be able to meet users' needs," but what we are seeing is "if there's value to the users which compromises the revenues of a share-holder driven provider, the provider will impede the users meeting their needs."

In closing I'd observe that closed networks can exist within an open one, but the reverse is not possible. There will not be an open Web (or anything else) within a closed network.

"There never was and there'll never be a mouse's nest in a cat's ear."

Hamish MacEwan
http://del.icio.us/Hamish.MacEwan

Re: The arguments on the other side -- in favor of a prioritized internet

by WesleyNukeUmWholeFeld on Mon 24 Apr 2006 02:26 PM EDT | Profile | Permanent Link

If the ISP is a First Amendment speaker, then any regulation of its speech may be subject to strict scrutiny. When a cable company makes access to its favored sites faster it is equivalent to making an editorial judgment and according to Miami Herald v. Tournillo, government cannot mandate free access to the speaker's printing press.