Tim Wu asks if Network neutrality is a fad. Such phrases have a lifecycle, he says. The phrase doesn’t matter as much as the ideas and intuitions it captures. It depends on what you see a network for, he says. If you see a network as something that facilitates other human activities — the idea that the “value of a network is what it makes possible” — is enough to get you to want law to keep the network as open as possible. “That’s the link between neutrality and the social value of the network.”

Tim talks about the history of the telegraph. In the 1876 election, a squeaker, Western Union leaked information about Democratic concerns to the Republicans, which ultimately changed its outcome. This is an example of what happens when a carrier isn’t neutral. The same arguments occurred over opening ports to any type of cargo. Our intuition that openness works better is strong and right.

You’d think carriers would figure out that being neutral is in their interest, says Tim, but sometimes that doesn’t happen: Hotels refused service to African Americans for a long time. Sometimes it takes government action.

Tim says there are internal battles in the relevant companies with people — often engineers — saying the restrictive, discriminatory models are crazy. Some of the most successful companies offer general purpose tools.

Tim singles out blocking, non-transparency and tiering as problems.

[Excellent]

(Frank Paynter recomends the wikipedia article on the Kingsbury Commitment. Looks good.)

[Tags: f2c tim_wu net_neutrality]

Categories: Uncategorized dw