Net Neutrality question for IP list]

[Dave Farber <dave () farber net>]

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Re: [IP] Net Neutrality question for IP list
Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2006 16:37:21 -0800
From: Lauren Gelman <lauren () woz org>
To: dave () farber net
References: <43F50712.8070002 () farber net>


FROM MARC COOPER

---

X-Sieve: CMU Sieve 2.2
From: MarkCooper () aol com
Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2006 19:25:41 EST
Subject: Re: [IP] Net Neutrality question for IP list Edited
To: gelman () stanford edu


Feel free to post this response.

If Bell South makes an exclusive deal with Cuban and refuses to make
the functionality available to other applications providers, the
benefit will be short lived.  Competition and innovation are stifled.
You get what Bell South thinks you deserve.  Since there is not
vigorous competition from a large number of other access providers,
you pay the price.

There are two possible solutions that deliver the consumer benefit,
without imposing the cost of stifling competition and innovation.

My preferred solution is to let Bell South sell the functionality to
the consumer, knowing full well that once the functionality it
available in the network the teeming mass of applications developers
will invent all manner of services to make the consumer want to buy
the functionality.  I love Cuban and hate Bell South; but no matter
how you feel about Cuban or Bell South, you have to believe that we
will be better off with a functionality widely available than with a
cabal deciding what to let the consumer have.

The second, less preferable solution, is to let Bell South sell the
functionality to applications service providers on nondiscriminatory
conditions.  Let them establish a generally available tariff of
rates, terms and conditions for network functionalities.  This is
less preferable because it excludes the start-ups who cannot afford
to pay the tariff.  Nevertheless, they have steadfastly refused to
commit to even this nondiscrimination condition.  They insist on the
right to do exclusives with the applications developer who they
prefer. The moment they do that, we know they are rent seeking.

Ironically, it is not only new services in which they are rent
seeking.  They are threatening to try to charge existing services
that work just fine on what they call the "public" Internet to be
available over their newly created "private" Internet.  In this case,
they are seeking to transform the Schumpeterian rents that accrue to
innovators into Rockefeller rents that are captured by the owners of
the tracks.

The bottom line is simple.  Discrimination in access to the
infrastructure of communications is bad for the public, always has
been, always will be.





> -------- Original Message --------
> Subject: Net Neutrality question for IP list
> Date: Thu, 16 Feb 2006 11:10:10 -0600
> From: Floyd Ferguson <floyd.ferguson () us fujitsu com>
> To: Dave Farber <dave () farber net>
> CC: Floyd Ferguson <floyd.ferguson () us fujitsu com>,        Floyd
> Ferguson <f.ferguson () verizon net>,        Rod Naphan
> <Rod.Naphan () us fujitsu com>
>
> Professor Farber,
>
> I have a question about the net neutrality issue that perhaps could
> be clarified by some of the participants in the Interesting People
> mailing list.
>
> Professor Lessig, in his Feb-7 Senate Testimony pays considerable
> attention to "application competition" and the risks associated with
> "access-tiering", characterized as adding "an additional tax on
> network innovators based on the particular service being offered."
>
> It's not entirely clear how this differs from a definition of
> "service differentiation ... to accommodate heterogeneous application
> and user requirements, and to permit differentiated pricing of
> Internet service" [RFC2475], and which forms the basis for the
> Differentiated Services Architecture.
>
> So, my specific question is, within the concept of Network Neutrality
> advocated by Lessig, whether a broadband provider like BellSouth
> would or would not be allowed to develop and deploy a RFC2474-based
> service to offer potential customers like Mark Cuban, that could
> support unique application requirements, as for instance,
> substantially superior error loss rate or packet delay variation
> between the service access point and the residential connection of a
> BellSouth broadband customer, which would enable Cuban's application
> to successfully play video to the large screen plasma TV rather than
> a computer screen.
>
> Certainly one can with little effort imagine how a carrier like
> BellSouth could use such a protocol to develop services for a
> customer like Cuban to provide significant competitive advantage for
> video applications for BellSouth broadband subscribers compared to
> video applications from other companies not willing to pay for such a
> service.  And how these differenitated services would yield
> significant benefit to the residential broadband user.
>
> Again, the question is whether this would be OK or not OK within
> Lessig's framework?  If not, why not?
>
> Thanks,
>
> Floyd Ferguson
> Distinguished Strategic Planner
> Fujitsu Network Communications
> floyd.ferguson () us fujitsu com
>
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-- 
Lauren Gelman
Center for Internet and Society
Stanford Law School
(ph) 650-724-3358
http://cyberlaw.stanford.edu/blogs/gelman/
CA Bar No. 228734

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