Category: Internet Neutrality

Briefly…

New Orphaned Works Act would limit copyright liability (Ars)
Without passing any kind of judgment on our copyright structure, we should realize that “orphan works” wouldn’t be a problem in earlier versions of the law. Shorter terms and registration/renewal requirements would solve this in the clearest possible way.

State Secrets (New Yorker)
I haven’t read the whole thing yet, but I understand it’s a worthwhile overview of a wiretapping case.

Your virginity for Net neutrality (MSNBC)
Um, I’ll let this speak for itself.

The Music Industry’s Extortion Scheme (Slate)
$5 a month conveniently added to your Internet bill for all the music you could want. Aside from the slippery slope to fees for other media, this would literally make music worthless. Where’s the identity in ownership for music you didn’t even have to take time to consider what you want?

Georgia only occasionally on my mind (Patry)
A great catch on the issue of sovereign immunity in the Georgia State decision. Who’s liable in this case? The instructors?

Here, Warren and Cobb focus on the fact that their allegedly infringing activities were done in the scope of their employment. As discussed above, however, the test is not whether the acts were done in the course of an employee’s official duties but whether a judgment against the employee would in fact operate against the state.

Here’s an interesting read on sovereign immunity.

Economics of tiered vs dumb network

A neutral Net needs up to twice the bandwidth of a tiered network

This article is a bit dated, but here’s an interesting take on  the economics of tiered vs dumb network architecture:

According to Isenberg, the cheapest and best alternative is simply to build out dumb capacity: to “overprovision” by as much as 100 percent. The “bandwidth is scarce” argument plays right into the hands of the major ISPs, which can use it to start charging a premium for crucial services that run across their networks. If they simply built out the networks to the point of abundance, they couldnt make all this extra money.

Gaming Net Neutrality

University of Florida News – Study: Abandoning net neutrality discourages improvements in service and Study: No net neutrality, no ISP incentive

A game theory study out of the U Florida decision and info science department found a number of factors to support network neutrality. Based on the reports of the forthcoming article, many of the economics-like findings are sort of no-brainers (companies who have to double pay for access and consumers who prefer services which don’t pay for enhanced access are the “losers”). However, one interesting finding which also makes sense is that incentives for communications companies to enhance their infrastructure go down.

Improving the infrastructure reduces the need for online content providers to pay for preferential treatment, Bandyopadhyay said.

“The whole purpose of charging for preferential treatment to content providers is that one content provider gains some edge over the other,” he said. “But when the capacity is expanded, this advantage becomes negligible.”

I hadn’t considered this, but again it makes sense. When controlling and charging for access to a limited commodity (bandwidth), the provider has greater incentive to keep that commodity limited. It seems as though, if we are to catch up with the better-connected parts of the world, removing incentives to upgrade our network infrastructure might not be a good idea.

I still truly enjoy how the breadth of this debate has brought out so many interesting perspectives. It may be occasionally painted as partisan, but in some areas the quality of reasoning has been remarkable.