Network neutrality                                                 

From Watchapedia, the information source

 Network neutrality is a general principle of Internet regulation requiring networks to satisfy all users needs without priority.

 Pros

Collecting premium fees from certain "preferred" customers would distort the market for Internet applications in favor of larger and better-funded content providers and against small providers.

Service impact on the end user who has purchased broadband access from a carrier, only to experience differing response times in interacting with various content providers, some of whom paid the carrier a "premium" and some who did not.

 Cons

No ability to ration what perhaps will become scarce bandwidth

 Legal History

• United States-funded research network governed by an Acceptable Use Policy (AUP) prohibiting commercial activity.
• In the early 1990s, it was privatized and the AUP was lifted for commercial users.
• In 1983 the end-to-end principle of Internet networking argued that network protocols should generally be "dumb".
• In 2001 the Internet2 project concluded that QoS protocols were not deployable on the Abilene network with equipment available at the time.
• In 2003 Tim Wu published and popularized a proposal for a net neutrality rule, in his paper "network neutrality, broadband discrimination."
• In 2005, in the Madison River case, the FCC showed for the first time a willingness to enforce its network neutrality principles by opening an investigation about Madison River Communications, a local telephone carrier that was blocking voice over IP service.
• On 2005-08-05, the FCC adopted a policy statement stating its adherence to four principles of network neutrality.
• 2006- over 1,000,000 signatures were delivered to Congress in favor of a network neutrality
• Approved on May 25, 2006 by the House Judiciary committee, the "Internet Freedom and Nondiscrimination Act of 2006" made it a violation of the Clayton Antitrust Act for broadband providers to discriminate against any web traffic, refuse to connect to other providers, block or impair specific (legal) content.
• On June 8, 2006, the "Communications Opportunity, Promotion and Enhancement Act of 2006" bill was introduced in the US House of Representatives, which referenced the principles enunciated by the FCC and authorized fines up to $750,000 for infractions.
• The Center for American Progress held a 90 minute debate on Monday July 17, 2006 in Washington DC.

 Advocates

• Tim Berners-Lee- "If I pay to connect to the net with a given quality of service, and you pay to connect to the net with the same or higher quality of service, then you and I can communicate across the net, with that quality of service.”
• Tim Wu- "The basic principle behind a network anti-discrimination regime is to give users the right to use non-harmful network attachments or applications, and give innovators the corresponding freedom to supply them."
• Susan Crawford- “The Internet's transport layer should not be shaped in accordance with particular applications but should rather provide only the transport service appropriate to the careful file transfer that was defined in the early 1970s as the Internet's canonical application. Timing of packet delivery is a form of anti-competitive discrimination. Open access would promote network neutrality.”
• Application companies: IAC/InterActiveCorp, Ebay, Amazon, Yahoo!, YouTube, Earthlink and Google
• Non-profits: Moveon.org, Consumer Federation of America, AARP, American Library Association, Gun Owners of America, Public Knowledge, the Media Access Project, Free Press, the Christian Coalition, and TechNet

 Opponents

• Network equipment manufacturers: Cisco, 3M, and the National Association of Manufacturers
• Bell companies and by some major cable companies
• Non-profit pro free-market organizations: the Freedom Works Foundation, National Black Chamber of Commerce, Progress and Freedom Foundation, New American Century (PNAC), and the Ludwig von Mises Institute

 The Big Ten- the ten largest media companies in the world, as of 2001:

• AOL/Time Warner
• AT&T
• General Electric
• News Corporation
• Viacom
• Bertellsmann
• Walt Disney
• Vivendi Universal
• Liberty Media Corporation
Sony