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What matters in net neutrality

August 9th, 2010  |  by jz  |  Published in Future of the Internet  |  14 Comments

It’s hard to know what to make of the Google/Verizon deal since until earlier today both companies have denied that there is one. And it’s hard to argue about net neutrality because it means so many different things to different people. I’ve got lots of reading to do to catch up on the newly released set of principles from the companies, but in the meantime here are a few thoughts on the topic.

The core question is this: when Internet Service Providers turn out to have captive audiences of subscribers — either because their customers have few if any alternatives for broadband, or because switching is complicated and cumbersome, or because ISP practices are obscure and thus hard for customers to adapt to — how far should they be allowed to leverage that captivity?

That question arises in the midst of a very confused economy for the movement of bits over the Internet.  With telephones the baseline rule was simple: sender pays.  On the Internet, it’s more complicated: both sender and receiver pay their respective Internet Service Providers to move their data traffic.  Now, suppose these are large ISPs who are considering connecting to each other directly.  The ISP who hosts a sender of traffic like YouTube might say to the ISP with lots of individual users who watch YouTube videos: “We seem to have a lot of stuff that your users want, and they’re paying you to get it to them.  What will you pay us to pass this stuff efficiently over to you?”  The ISP with the individual users might reply with a different point of view: “You’ve got a lot of stuff you want to send to our users, and your corporate customer is making money through advertising or subscription fees when our users access it. What will you and your corporate subscriber pay us to be able to reach our captive audience?”  It’s an odd puzzle: both sides benefit from the transaction, so who should pay for it, given that there’s no baseline rule like “sender pays”?

In the past this dilemma between large ISPs has been resolved through peering arrangements that have amounted to simple handshakes: I’ll carry your traffic aimed at my subscribers if you carry mine aimed for yours, and we’ll call it even.  Today those deals are more complicated, and their details are typically trade secrets.  But we know this much: Verizon, like other broadband providers, already says to its customers: pay us more and we’ll give you faster Internet access.  That’s not controversial.  So should Verizon also be able to make a similar offer in the other direction, to faraway upstream content providers?  Verizon could say to Google: regardless of what you pay your own ISP to get your bits launched on the Internet, pay us more and we’ll make sure your YouTube videos get to our subscribers all the more quickly as they come in for a landing.

Google might well be able to pay — and then leave poorer content providers behind.  The next two guys who want to start, say, ShmouTube won’t be able to do it if they’ve got to negotiate business development deals with one ISP after another in order to reach those ISPs’ subscribers.  And that’s the real danger: when each ISP can, in effect, speak on behalf of its unwitting subscribers, serving as the troll under the bridge offering up different conditions for access to them, the economics of the Net will start to favor the consolidated, the well-connected, the well-heeled.  Verizon and Google each have reason to take the trouble to negotiate with one another to begin with — they’ve both big, and each can offer uniquely desirable benefits to the other.  The generative power of the Internet is that it has offered a perch for anyone who wants to plant a flag in the ground.  Set up www.mynewamazingwebsite.com, and people the world over can beat a path to it or not as they please.  That represented a huge change from the proprietary consumer networks of the 1980s and 90s, where AOL or CompuServe got to say who could have a presence within their gated communities.

It may turn out to be too simple to have a blanket rule against ISPs charging faraway providers for access.  There are even some outcomes that make that desirable for consumers — imagine if Internet access were free, with ISPs beating down your door to provide you with broadband, because if you choose them then they’ll get paid by Google et al. for the privilege of sending bits (and ads) to you.  That’s a dubious outcome for a number of reasons, but it’s theoretically possible.  But much more dangerous is if ISPs get to pick and choose: one deal for Google, another for the New York Times, a third for eBay, and no deal at all for mynewamazingwebsite.  In a medium in which so many of the giants were yesterday’s scrappy upstarts — eBay, Google, even the Web itself — it would be a travesty to freeze out the next round of innovation from odd corners by deploying an impenetrable web of contracts and fees.  That’s what I take to be at the core of Chairman Genachowski’s comment that “Any outcome, any deal that doesn’t preserve the freedom and openness of the Internet for consumers and entrepreneurs will be unacceptable.”

Update: More thoughts here.

Responses

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  1. Lecturas sobre neutralidad de red « IT ruminations says:

    August 10th, 2010 at 4:28 am (#)

    [...] Jonathan Zittrain, “What matters in net neutrality“ [...]

  2. Room for Debate: Google, Verizon und Netzneutralität : netzpolitik.org says:

    August 10th, 2010 at 7:37 am (#)

    [...] (Sinngemäß übersetzt und zusammengefasst. Volltext hier. Längere Version hier.) [...]

  3. turn.self.off says:

    August 10th, 2010 at 9:49 am (#)

    i am reminded of a similar story between microsoft and disney.

    microsoft sent some execs to disney in the hopes of licensing wmv to them.

    the exchange was something like this:

    ms: “so, how much are you willing to pay to use our codecs?”

    ds: “no, how much are you willing to pay us for use of out content?”

  4. Robert W Gehl says:

    August 10th, 2010 at 11:19 am (#)

    The real tragedy of this, in my view, is that these big sites (Google/YouTube, Facebook) are fueled by the labor of unpaid people – the users. The users supply all the content. For Google to turn around and try to negotiate faster speeds via ISPs like Verizon is a slap in the face of all the users who took the time to upload, comment on, and tag videos, because it will lead to newer sites, and newer opportunities for users, to be slowed down. If these sorts of agreements go through, the formula will be: capture user labor and value (by dressing it up as “participation”), grow to gargantuan proportions, then shut out all the little sites to protect your ill-begotten profits.

  5. Human Rights Society of Uzbekistan » Blog Archive » The neutrality principle has made the Internet… says:

    August 12th, 2010 at 2:15 am (#)

    [...] As Jonathan Zittrain says about the U.S. market: “And that’s the real danger: when each ISP can, in effect, speak on behalf of its unwitting subscribers, serving as the troll under the bridge offering up different conditions for access to them, the economics of the net will start to favor the consolidated, the well-connected, the well-heeled.” [...]

  6. Google Verizon Courtship Recap | Lawful Content says:

    August 12th, 2010 at 8:13 am (#)

    [...] Jonathan Zittrain focuses on Internet startups of the future that might become unable to compete: “Google might well be able to pay — and then leave poorer content providers behind.  The next two guys who want to start, say, ShmouTube won’t be able to do it if they’ve got to negotiate business development deals with one ISP after another in order to reach those ISPs’ subscribers.  And that’s the real danger: when each ISP can, in effect, speak on behalf of its unwitting subscribers, serving as the troll under the bridge offering up different conditions for access to them, the economics of the Net will start to favor the consolidated, the well-connected, the well-heeled.” [...]

  7. David Weinberger says:

    August 14th, 2010 at 7:58 am (#)

    Wonderfully clear and compelling, as usual, JZ.

    So, where does this leave you on discriminating among packets when the provider is not getting paid by a vendor to do so? Should, say, Verizon be allowed to decide that _any_ packet it can recognize as containing high def video info should take priority over, say, online game packets or voice telephony packets…so long as Verizon treats everyone’s high def packets equally? (This, as you know, is Google’s new position.)

  8. Keith Girvan says:

    August 15th, 2010 at 8:56 pm (#)

    Since the FCC has backed away, or seemlingly so, isn’t this the realm of ICANN, or some other semi-regulatory agency, since there seems to be none. I happen to subscribe to comcast and pay for their “speed boost up to 20 mbps.” I have a degree in economics, and understand information asymmetry. I thought the “wild west” of the aol days and the “old” internet would evolve into compromise between regulators and innovators. New, wireless notwithstanding, I have had enough of the bleeding edge. What has happened?

  9. jz says:

    August 15th, 2010 at 10:09 pm (#)

    DavidW — I’m actually OK with consistent discrimination for some types of traffic, although that traffic can be difficult to identify since it may run cloaked. The idea is supposed to be that providers don’t care what a packet’s for. But I acknowledge that reality can be rightfully different.

    KeithG — ICANN wouldn’t, and couldn’t, touch this with a ten foot pole! Actually, since it involves carriers who have national identities — subscribers generally exist *somewhere* even when they’re in cyberspace; they have to get a signal to their devices — it’s amenable to national regulation. (Not that regulation is necessarily a good idea …) …JZ

  10. Eric Karstens – How Internet structure affects content pluralism says:

    August 17th, 2010 at 7:13 am (#)

    [...] Jonathan Zittrain, What Matters in Net Neutrality (The Future of the Internet and How to Stop it) [...]

  11. Does Net Neutrality Promote Competition? - Hit & Run : Reason Magazine says:

    August 17th, 2010 at 12:17 pm (#)

    [...] The topic of discussion for the segment was the Internet policy framework proposed jointly by Google and Verizon last week, and at the end of the discussion, Zittrain—who, I think it’s fair to say, holds a much more favorable view of Net neutrality than I do—raised the possibility that the enhanced services that would be allowed under the proposal could impede smaller competitors. So what if, say, Google can afford to pay for faster delivery for content served by YouTube (which Google owns)? Doesn’t that make it more difficult for smaller entities to enter the market? It’s a version of the case he made on his blog last week:  [...]

  12. Bookmarks for August 11th through August 18th | DavePress says:

    August 17th, 2010 at 9:02 pm (#)

    [...] What matters in net neutrality – Jonathan Zittrain's take on the Google/Verizon net neutrality kerfuffle. [...]

  13. Jonathan Zittrain zu Verizon/Google : netzpolitik.org says:

    August 18th, 2010 at 7:19 am (#)

    [...] (.pdf) setzt sich in einem erneuten Blogpost mit der Verizon/Google-Thematik auseinander (auch den Beitrag davor hatten wir schon empfohlen). In dem als Version 1.0 zur Aktualisierung bezeichneten Artikel setzt [...]

  14. Andrew says:

    August 21st, 2010 at 12:22 am (#)

    Meanwhile as we argue over this, other countries are crushing us in bandwidth available to regular consumers and small businesses.

Blog

  • The Future of the Internet: Five Years Later
  • In 2008, The Future of the Internet called attention to a “sea change” in the way consumer devices interact with the Internet. “The future is not one of generative PCs attached to a generative network,” the book warns; “it is instead one of sterile appliances tethered to a network of control.” In response to the security threats posed by malicious third-party code, increasing numbers of users will likely gravitate towards gadgets “tethered” by continuous communication between product and vendor. And this proliferation of tethered computing—the “appliancization” of PCs—will deal a serious blow to the principles of generativity and free expression that drove the early Internet.

    Since the publication of The Future of the Internet, the ethos of strict appliancization has taken a new turn. In 2011, Professor Zittrain wrote an update on the book’s message: “at the time of the book’s drafting, the alternatives seemed stark: the “sterile” iPhone that ran only Apple’s software on the one hand, and the chaotic PC that ran anything ending in .exe on the other. The iPhone’s openness to outside code beginning in ’08 changed all that. It became what I call “contingently generative” — it runs outside code after approval (and then until it doesn’t).” This trend towards contingently generative models continues into the present day, and represents a shift similar in many respects to the one The Future of the Internet predicted.

    Jon Brodkin and Peter Bright’s Ars Technica op-ed on the Microsoft Metro app store offers some valuable commentary on a big development in this “sea change.” The article recognizes that “Microsoft is imitating Apple in one very bad way, by limiting the distribution of Metro applications to a Microsoft-controlled app store… by bringing Windows to tablets, Microsoft could strike a blow for openness in a market dominated by a closed system. Instead, Microsoft is bringing the same restrictions found on iPads to both Windows tablets and PCs.” As forecasted by The Future of the Internet, devices that only run approved code are gaining popularity. Metro, the curated user interface that has found its way onto Microsoft’s tablets and PCs (in the case of the PCs, alongside a fully-functional desktop mode capable of side-loading non-Windows Store applications), won’t run applications from outside the Windows Store. Moreover, the apps available through the Store are subject to a bevy of restrictions on content. With these restrictions on installable applications come the restrictions on generativity that The Future of the Internet anticipated: “lock down the device, and network censorship and control can be extraordinarily reinforced.” And, as the Ars Technica piece observes, the Windows Store’s rules would exclude critically-acclaimed content like the video game Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, simply for its PEGI 18/ESRB M rating. It isn’t hard to extrapolate, as Brodkin and Bright do, that these rules could give rise to debacles similar to Apple’s (repealed) ban of a satire app developed by a Pulitzer Prize winner.

    Though the Windows Store’s restrictions resemble Apple’s policies in many ways, there is a crucial difference: Metro-running Windows 8 products are designed as PC replacements, rather than sui generis devices like the iPad. And since Windows desktops have long been preferred gaming platforms, the theoretical exclusion of content like Skyrim from the Windows Store makes Windows 8’s emphasis on the Metro interface particularly jarring.

    With Metro, Microsoft has made a decisive move towards contingent generativity. Brodkin and Bright note that “there are security benefits to a closed app store model, particularly for less tech-savvy users who may not understand all the dangers on the Web. There are also, arguably, convenience benefits; end-users can be reasonably confident that the apps they download will work correctly and be at least marginally useful…But while these security and convenience benefits might be enough to justify the existence of a curated app store, they don’t justify the decision to make that store the only option for all users. Informed users should be allowed to install applications from wherever they want.” Brodkin and Bright prefer a system like Gatekeeper, a fixture in newer versions of Apple’s OS X, from Mountain Lion forward. Gatekeeper gives users the choice to restrict their operating system to App Store apps and outside apps that have been signed with Apple-issued Developer IDs, or open up the device to all programs, whether or not they’ve been vetted by Apple. The “Future of the Internet” Blog is fairly enthusiastic about Gatekeeper: about a year ago, a post here suggested that “the middle ground of allowing non-App Store signed code may represent the best of both worlds.” But we were quick to warn that Gatekeeper strikes a tenuous balance: “one small tweak — lose that Control-click for sideloading — and OS X could fully merge with iOS, both in functionality and in security methods.” Metro’s riff on content control could be just that sort of tweak—especially given recent speculation that Microsoft may dump desktop mode in Windows 9, leaving only Metro.

    Moreover, a contingently generative business model like the Windows Store’s carries some ethical implications that, while not damning, are certainly worth examining. Distribution systems like the Windows Store, Apple’s App Store, and the Android Market receive 30% of the sales revenue from applications sold in their stores (in the Windows Store, this cut drops to 20% after an app reaches $25,000 USD in revenue). Further restrictions on side-loading in new operating systems would drive a great deal of business towards big companies’ proprietary marketplaces—and with that traffic would come big payouts. With the uptick in store traffic that tighter gatekeeping would engender, it’s easy to imagine the equilibrium of Mac’s OS X Gatekeeper being forsaken for more restrictive, and more lucrative, operating systems. To analogize, a la The Future of the Internet: when the company that makes your computer requires you to install programs through their official store, it isn’t so different from the company that makes your toaster forcing you to buy from their bakery—and taking a cut out of every bread purchase you make.

    Even though Windows 8 PC users can still make use of a fully-functioning desktop operating system, Microsoft’s failure to include a side-loading option for the heavily-emphasized Metro interface—particularly in devices marketed as PC replacements—is a step in the wrong direction. It’s also an indication that the seas are changing in the way The Future of the Internet predicted. Given that Android’s more open approach to outside applications[1] still leaves the Android Market increasingly economically viable, Ars Technica is right to voice its disappointment in xenophobic operating systems like iOS and Metro.

    - Ben Sobel, Kendra Albert, and JZ

    [1] Though the Google Play approach to openness is far from perfect! Ad-Blocking apps were recently pulled from the Play Store, in a move that will come to illustrate just how viable it is to distribute a side-loaded Android app without any help from the Play Store.

  • Rock star RA wanted
  • I’m seeking a full-time one-year rock star research associate to engage with a variety of projects and classes, with a broad opportunity to immerse in cyberlaw and Internet topics.   Blurb below, with more information on how to apply at <http://cyber.law.harvard.edu/getinvolved/jzra>.  …JZ

    –

    Professor Jonathan Zittrain of Harvard Law School, the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, and the Berkman Center for Internet & Society, seeks a full-time research associate in Cambridge, MA for a period of one year, beginning no sooner than June 1, 2013.

    This position requires the ability to absorb large amounts of written and other media materials from various sources (including but not restricted to: original sources, scholarly articles, news articles/blogs, interviews, databases) in a short amount of time, critically analyze that material and render it forward. This could take the form of prep materials for panels, conferences and presentations; article outlines; fact checking materials; original article or paper drafts; slide decks or other digested forms. The research assistant should be prepared to help prepare materials for class sessions and syllabi, lead discussions and work with project managers to accomplish research-related goals.

    Research is often self-directed with little outside guidance beyond broad outlines and themes (though occasional targeted research assignment for a specific fact or image can be expected, and feedback is provided), so the ability to quickly critically appraise sources and identify interesting, relevant and original paths is essential. Wide-ranging interests and the ability to work on almost any issue or topic that arises is a plus, as is an ability to ramp up quickly on unfamiliar fields or topic areas. Excellent writing and editorial skills with an attention to detail are also required.

    This job is an ideal opportunity for those interested in future graduate school or law school studies, whether currently admitted or still applying to such programs.

    Over the course of the year, a motivated individual will sharpen and focus his or her research agenda and make valuable contributions (in his or her own name) to the field of cyberlaw and beyond, while being exposed to interesting thinkers in academia, industry, and government. A research associate in this position will work very closely with Professor Jonathan Zittrain and his team, assisting in a variety of research areas, e.g. ubiquitous human computing, mesh networking, and cybersecurity, as well as on topics around access to knowledge and open scholarly publishing under the auspices of the Harvard Law School Library.

    The position will not start before June 1, 2013.  As with all Berkman staff positions, this is a term position, ending June 30, 2014.

  • F-T: Don’t sue over tweets
  • I just published a short piece in the F-T in the wake of legal threats against users who tweeted or retweeted a link to a BBC report of child abuse that turned out to be wrong.  Here’s the full text –

    Those who didn’t see the false child abuse accusations against Lord Alistair McAlpine on an ill-considered BBC documentary may have instead heard about them through social media. This week, London’s Metropolitan Police suggested they might file charges against those Twitter users who sullied the reputation of the retired Conservative politician by knowingly repeating the lie that he was a child abuser. But the police may be less fearsome to the average BBC-linking tweeter than Lord McAlpine himself. Read more »

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    Generativity hasn’t had a poster child — until now.

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About Jonathan Zittrain

jonathan zittrain

Jonathan Zittrain is Professor of Law at Harvard Law School and co-founder of the Berkman Center for Internet and Society at Harvard Law School

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