Re: H.R. 3458, Rep. Markey's third bill proposing to DEregulate the Internet

[David Farber <dave () farber net>]

Begin forwarded message:

From: "Bob Frankston" <bob2-39 () bobf frankston com>
Date: August 25, 2009 3:43:45 PM EDT
To: <dave () farber net>, "'ip'" <ip () v2 listbox com>
Cc: <nnsquad () nnsquad org>
Subject: RE: [IP] Re: H.R. 3458, Rep. Markey's third bill proposing to  
DEregulate the Internet

..Usual caveat IANAL..

Something is indeed broken – the confusion between connectivity and  
telecom and the dysfunctional idea that we should fund the transport  
by selling services. While I don’t like mandating neutrality I see  
this bill as a step in the right direction by treating neutrality or  
nondiscrimination as a principle rather than an architecture. I also  
don’t like the “access” framing and “broadband” but that’s second-order.

(11) A network neutrality policy based upon the principle of  
nondiscrimination and consistent with the history of the Internet’s  
development is essential to ensure that Internet services remain open  
to all consumers, entrepreneurs, innovators, and providers of lawful  
content, services, and applications.

As I read it neutrality here is more of a principle than  
micromanagement. The implication is that the business  of offering  
network transport and the business of offering content services need  
to be arms-length. At least if you want to call it “Internet access”.

I see this bill as a step towards deregulation – telecom regulations  
tend to be obsessed with slicing and dicing the kinds of services and  
pricing. Without being burdened with dealing with each service there  
is very little regulation – just the assumption that we solve problem  
by providing more capacity and that’s it.

The easiest way to meet the provisions of the bill is to have the  
transport business completely separate from the content business.   
That avoids not only the appearance of conflict but also the  
irresistible urge to think one’s own services are necessarily more  
important than others’.

Whether the bill passes or not it would be very useful exercise to  
think about the implications of such a separation. Reduced to pure  
transport it would become obvious that we have redundancy rather than  
competition and we’d see rapid consolidation into a common transport  
and, I argue, set the stage for funding as infrastructure.

It would not prevent companies from offering video over their own  
network as long as they don’t call it “Internet” access. I just don’t  
think that such a specialized network business would be viable  
because, as with VoIP, video can work quite nicely over the common  
infrastructure, especially if we don’t rely on the brittle protocols  
that characterize today’s broadcast video.

Nor should it prevent companies like Akamai that use the network  
rather than claiming to offer access, from offering their services.

While I would prefer a simpler bill that explicitly said bits are bits  
and saying that we should fund infrastructure as infrastructure, this  
bill seems to put the idea of neutrality to good use.

Those who want neutrality get it, those who want deregulation can get  
it by being neutral.



From: David Farber [mailto:dave () farber net]
Sent: Monday, August 24, 2009 13:03
To: ip
Subject: [IP] Re: H.R. 3458, Rep. Markey's third bill proposing to  
regulate the Internet and ISPs.


It is a reasonable article djf

Begin forwarded message:

From: Brett Glass <brett () lariat net>
Date: August 24, 2009 12:09:54 PM EDT
To: dave () farber net, "ip" <ip () v2 listbox com>
Subject: Re: [IP] H.R. 3458, Rep. Markey's third bill proposing to  
regulate the Internet and ISPs.

Dave:

Please also post a pointer to Richard Bennett's excellent analysis of  
the Markey bill at

http://www.internetevolution.com/document.asp?doc_id=180730&print=yes

--Brett Glass

At 09:54 AM 8/24/2009, David Farber wrote:



http://www.freepress.net/files/H.R.3458-7-31-09.pdf

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