Questions for the FCC on Net Neutrality
The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation (ITIF) released a Web Memo today with questions the FCC and Congress should “get a much better handle on before taking action” on net neutrality. Among their questions:
- Does any favoring of some packets over others by ISPs without individual consumer choice represent a per se violation, or is there some discrimination (blocking, degrading, charging for usage and network management) that is pro-competitive and pro-consumer.
- What is the record of ISPs with regard to engaging in anti-consumer and/or anti-competitive discrimination in the past?
- How easy it is it to distinguish between pro-consumer and/or pro-competitive discrimination and anti-consumer and/or anti-competitive discrimination?
- Does quick discovery of potential ISP transgressions lead to correction in the marketplace due to public outcry and loss of customers or are ISP’s likely be able to “get away with” transgressions absent direct government action?
Along those lines, University of California, Irvine Professor Scott Jordan has done some fascinating research on how we might consider distinguishing between reasonable and unreasonable discrimination and network management.
“How easy it is it to distinguish between pro-consumer and/or pro-competitive discrimination and anti-consumer and/or anti-competitive discrimination?”
I answer that here.
http://www.digitalsociety.org/2009/09/fcc-5th-principle-must-allow-for-reasonable-discrimination/
I also answered it here when I was at ITIF.
http://www.itif.org/index.php?id=205
Leave your response!