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[ NNSquad ] Re: Expanding the struggle


David Reed has pointed out what I also consider the best definition
of net neutrality, which is Tim Berners-Lee's:

"If I pay to connect to the Net with a certain quality of service, and
you pay to connect with that or greater quality of service, then we can
communicate at that level."

http://dig.csail.mit.edu/breadcrumbs/node/144

However, that doesn't answer questions that have been raised on this
list, such as what about spam, other abuse, or criminal activity?
Not to mention rampant governmental legal and ethical violations:

 http://riskman.typepad.com/peerflow/2007/11/wiretapping-bef.html

And in many countries net neutrality is (or has been until recently)
considered a U.S.-only problem.  It's not.  It's really about free
speech, free association, and free trade.  And we've already seen that
what is or is not considered kosher differs even between U.S. and Canada.

This is what Milton Mueller is getting at in his draft paper
for the UN Internet Governance Forum:

 http://riskman.typepad.com/peerflow/2007/11/normative-net-n.html

For those of you who have immediate negative reactions to anything UN:
if somebody savvy like Mueller doesn't do it, somebody else will.

And for those who think that we can just avoid defining net neutrality
and get on with citing cases of violations of it: if you don't define
it explicitly, you're defining it implicitly by what you choose to cite.

Better, I think, to address the problem, adding onto TBL's definition
connections to the kinds of issues Milton Mueller is getting at.
Especially if you want cooperation between U.S. and Europe, Latin America,
etc. on this subject.

-jsq
John S. Quarterman <jsqdell@quarterman.com>

> Hello,
> 
> this message is just to point out that a couple of daring people from 
> Italy joined the list and would like to expand the struggle for network 
> neutrality to the Old Continent (the one with too many former monopolist 
> telcos).
> 
> Of course, I guess that we first have to agree on what network 
> neutrality actually is - on the IGF(*) civil society list we're in the 
> middle of a long thread with very different viewpoints. I think we all 
> think we can recognize the usefulness of the principle, and its 
> violations when we see them, but when it comes to writing down a general 
> rule, it might not be so easy.
> 
> For example, depending on how you define it, your ISP filtering spam for 
> you might be violating network neutrality. So I guess that issues of 
> transparence, public scrutiny and opt-in/opt-out possibility by the 
> final user would be a piece of the picture, as well as market shares and 
> the process through which the decision to filter is taken. In any case, 
> I look forward to the discussion.
> 
> Regards,
> 
> 
> (*) That's the UN Internet Governance Forum, just about to start in Rio 
> de Janeiro.
> -- 
> vb.                   Vittorio Bertola - vb [a] bertola.eu   <--------
> -------->  finally with a new website at http://bertola.eu/  <--------