Net Neutrality and other challenges for the future of the Internet. Proceedings of the 7th International Conference on Internet, Law & Politics. Universitat Oberta de Catalunya, Barcelona, 11-12 July, 2011

Peer-reviewed

Net Neutrality: Measuring the Problem, Assessing the Legal Risks

Network neutrality is a growing policy controversy. Traffic management techniques affect not only high-speed, high-money content, but by extension all other content too. Internet regulators and users may tolerate much more discrimination in the interests of innovation. For instance, in the absence of regulatory oversight, ISPs could use Deep Packet Inspection (DPI) to block some content altogether, if they decide it is not to the benefit of ISPs, copyright holders, parents or the government. ISP blocking is currently widespread in controlling spam email, and in some countries in blocking sexually graphic illegal images. In 1999 this led to scrutiny of foreclosure of Instant Messaging and video and cable-telephony horizontal merger. Fourteen years later, there were in 2013 net neutrality laws implemented in Slovenia, the Netherlands, Chile and Finland, regulation in the United States and Canada , co-regulation in Norway, and self-regulation in Japan, the United Kingdom and many other European countries . Both Germany and France in mid-2013 debated new net neutrality legislation, and the European Commission announced on 11 September 2013 that it would aim to introduce legislation in early 2014. This paper analyses these legal developments, and in particular the difficulty in assessing reasonable traffic management and ‘specialized’ (i.e. unregulated) faster services in both EU and US law. It also assesses net neutrality law against the international legal norms for user privacy and freedom of expression

Net Neutrality

Some discussion points about net neutrality

Net Neutrality Compendium: Human Rights, Free Competition and the Future of the Internet

The ways in which Internet traffic is managed have direct consequences on Internet users’ rights as well as on their capability to compete on a level playing field. Network neutrality mandates to treat Internet traffic in a non-discriminatory fashion in order to maximise end users’ freedom and safeguard an open Internet. This book is the result of a collective work aimed at providing deeper insight into what is network neutrality, how does it relates to human rights and free competition and how to properly frame this key issue through sustainable policies and regulations. The Net Neutrality Compendium stems from three years of discussions nurtured by the members of the Dynamic Coalition on Network Neutrality (DCNN), an open and multistakeholder group, established under the aegis of the United Nations Internet Governance Forum (IGF).

Net Neutrality and Mandatory Network-Sharing: How to disconnect the continent. CEPS Policy Brief No. 309, 18 December 2013

A lively debate emerged on the proposed “Connected Continent” legislative package presented by the European Commission in September 2013. The package contains a proposed rule on the ‘open Internet’, which was heavily discussed in European Parliament hearings in early December. This commentary argues that while the proposed rule is in principle balanced and appealing, it is utterly impractical due to the enormous uncertainty that its application would entail. At the same time, the rule is very far from what neutrality proponents have argued for almost a decade: rather than the place for internet freedom, it would transform the Web into a place requiring constant micro-management and tutoring of user behaviour. Both arguments lead to the conclusion that the current proposal should be at once reformed and analysed under a more holistic lens. On the one hand, Europe should launch an ambitious project for the future, converged infrastructure by mobilising resources and reforming rules to encourage investment into ubiquitous, converged, ‘always on’ connectivity. On the other hand, enhanced legal certainty for broadband investment could justify a more neutrality-oriented approach to traffic management practices on the Internet. The author proposes a new approach to Internet regulation which, altogether, will lead to a more balanced and sustainable model for the future, without jeopardising user freedom.

Antitrust, Regulation and the Neutrality Trap: A plea for a smart, evidence-based internet policy. CEPS Special Report No. 104/April 2015

When they look at Internet policy, EU policymakers seem mesmerised, if not bewitched, by the word ‘neutrality’. Originally confined to the infrastructure layer, today the neutrality rhetoric is being expanded to multi-sided platforms such as search engines and more generally online intermediaries. Policies for search neutrality and platform neutrality are invoked to pursue a variety of policy objectives, encompassing competition, consumer protection, privacy and media pluralism. This paper analyses this emerging debate and comes to a number of conclusions. First, mandating net neutrality at the infrastructure layer might have some merit, but it certainly would not make the Internet neutral. Second, since most of the objectives initially associated with network neutrality cannot be realistically achieved by such a rule, the case for network neutrality legislation would have to stand on different grounds. Third, the fact that the Internet is not neutral is mostly a good thing for end users, who benefit from intermediaries that provide them with a selection of the over-abundant information available on the Web. Fourth, search neutrality and platform neutrality are fundamentally flawed principles that contradict the economics of the Internet. Fifth, neutrality is a very poor and ineffective recipe for media pluralism, and as such should not be invoked as the basis of future media policy. All these conclusions have important consequences for the debate on the future EU policy for the Digital Single Market.

La démocratie à l’heure de l’internet : autonomie politique, vie privée et espace public dans un environnement numérique

L’objectif de cette thèse est double. Premièrement, il s’agira de comprendre l’impact que l’internet peut avoir sur la démocratie, c’est-à-dire de montrer ce que cette technologie change à la démocratie, en développant un cadre conceptuel précis et en m’appuyant sur un corpus empirique important. Il s’agira ensuite de développer un projet normatif, afin de montrer ce qu’il est nécessaire de faire afin de garantir que l’impact de l’internet sur la démocratie sera positif. Pour mener à bien ces objectifs, il me faudra d’abord disposer d’une conception claire de la démocratie. C’est pourquoi je proposerai dans une première partie de la comprendre à partir du concept d’autonomie politique dont je proposerai une analyse conceptuelle au premier chapitre. J’analyserai ensuite deux éléments centraux de ce concept, à savoir la vie privée et l’espace public. Je proposerai dans une deuxième partie une analyse à la fois précise et empiriquement fondée de l’impact de l’internet sur ces deux éléments, afin de présenter un argument qui ne sera pas simplement a priori ou spéculatif. Les conclusions que je présenterai ne vaudront, cependant, que pour l’internet tel qu’il est aujourd’hui, car il est certain qu’il peut évoluer. Il est alors tout à fait possible que ses propriétés cessent de permettre l’augmentation de l’autonomie politique que je décris au cours de ma deuxième partie. Il est donc important de mener à bien une réflexion normative afin d’identifier dans quelle mesure il pourrait être nécessaire de faire quelque chose afin de garantir l’impact positif de l’internet sur l’autonomie politique. Je montrerai donc dans une dernière partie qu’il est nécessaire d’assurer à l’internet une architecture non-discriminante, mais qu’il n’est pas nécessaire de protéger outre mesure la générativité de son écosystème. Je conclurai en montrant l’importance d’offrir à tous des éléments d’une littératie numérique, si l’on souhaite que tous puissent bénéficier des opportunités offertes par le réseau des réseaux.

Broadband in Latin America: Beyond Connectivity

Incluye bibliografía

La neutralità della rete

La tesi analizza il problema della Net Neutrality, prendendo in esame le aziende telefoniche italiane e la loro posizione rispetto al problema.

Trade Versus Culture in the Digital Environment : An Old Conflict in Need of a New Definition

Following the recent UNESCO Convention on the Protection and Promotion of the Diversity of Cultural Expressions, the first wave of scholarly work has focused on clarifying the interface between the Convention and the WTO Agreements. Building upon these analyses, the present article takes however a different stance. It seeks a new, rather pragmatic definition of the relationship between trade and culture and argues that such a re-definition is particularly needed in the digital networked environment that has modified the ways markets for cultural content function and the ways in which cultural content is created, distributed and accessed. The article explores first the significance of the UNESCO Convention (or the lack thereof) and subsequently outlines a variety of ways in which the WTO framework can be improved in a ‘neutral’, not necessarily culturally motivated, manner to become more conducive to the pursuit of cultural diversity and taking into account the changed reality of digital media. The article also looks at other facets of the profoundly fragmented culture-related regulatory framework and underscores the critical importance of intellectual property rights and of other domains that appear at first sight peripheral to the trade and culture discussion, such as access to infrastructure, interoperability or net neutrality. It is argued that a number of feasible solutions exist beyond the politically charged confrontation of trade versus culture and that the new digital media landscape may require a readjustment of the priorities and the tools for the achievement of the widely accepted objective of cultural diversity.

Communication networks beyond the capacity crunch

This issue of Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, Part A represents a summary of the recent discussion meeting 'Communication networks beyond the capacity crunch'. The purpose of the meeting was to establish the nature of the capacity crunch, estimate the time scales associated with it and to begin to find solutions to enable continued growth in a post-crunch era. The meeting confirmed that, in addition to a capacity shortage within a single optical fibre, many other 'crunches' are foreseen in the field of communications, both societal and technical. Technical crunches identified included the nonlinear Shannon limit, wireless spectrum, distribution of 5G signals (front haul and back haul), while societal influences included net neutrality, creative content generation and distribution and latency, and finally energy and cost. The meeting concluded with the observation that these many crunches are genuine and may influence our future use of technology, but encouragingly noted that research and business practice are already moving to alleviate many of the negative consequences.

A regulação diante da evolução da essencialidade do serviço público : a reclassificação da banda larga como serviço de telecomunicações nos Estados Unidos

Dissertação (mestrado)—Universidade de Brasília, Faculdade de Direito, Programa de Pós-Graduação em Direito, 2016.