try by new players with new ideas and
innovations.
This requires, I believe, a new commitment to transparency, openness,
and sharing of information as much
as possible. Network capacity should
be managed in a way that brings users
the benefits of differentiated services
but at the same time network providers
must be very transparent about:
˲ What consumers can expect with
regard to how their connection will
work and what services it normally
should be able to run; and
˲ Their traffic management practices and how those practices are likely to
affect consumers’ connections and the
applications they are running.
I also think network providers
should work together with those of us
who informally keep involved in the Internet’s workings to voluntarily develop
better information about the Internet’s
overall health including capacity constraints and bottlenecks, the impact
of a variety of applications on network
capacity, and congestion problems. I
think we can do this without violating
proprietary information restrictions.
I believe applications providers
should also be transparent about
how their offerings affect customers
and their network connections. They
should ensure customers know how
the use of their applications might
affect the speeds they have and the
speeds of the connections of those in
their neighborhood.
Finally, all participants in the broadband value chain—from the content
portals and search engines to the applications providers to the network
providers—should also embrace key
principles designed to ensure consumers have control over and full use of
their broadband connections to:
˲ Access any content on the Internet;
˲ Run any application they choose;
and
˲ Attach any devices to their broadband connection that do not harm the
network.
Government agencies should continue to actively monitor what is going on with the Internet. If allegations
emerge regarding actions that are alleged to be harmful and anticompetitive, companies and consumers should
be able to petition to government and
have the incident or practice investigated. Most importantly, all of us who care
about the Internet and how it works—
from those in the media, to academics,
to bloggers, to industry players—must
remain vigilant and ready to expose,
discuss, and publicly upbraid what we
feel are examples of “bad actors.”
No one would have predicted even
five or six years ago many of the advances and services we see today on the
Internet. Few even knew what a search
engine was, for example, or had used
Instant Messaging or viewed a video online. All of this happened in large part
because the Internet has not been subject to the slow, cumbersome regulatory processes of government. Inserting
government into questions around network management and the evolution of
the Internet’s underlying technologies
and applications will simply erode the
cooperative spirit that has driven its
evolution, substituting instead filings,
charges, and countercharges. I shudder to see this happen.
David Farber ( dave@farber.net) is distinguished career
Professor of computer science and Public Policy at
the school of computer science, heinz school, and
department of engineering and Public Policy at carnegie
Mellon University, Pittsburgh, Pa.
Rebuttal: Barbara van Schewick
DaviD faRbeR anD
to preserve users’ ability to
use the applications and content of their choice and the
Internet’s openness to inno-
I both want
vation. We differ in how to get there.
Farber appeals to network providers
“to embrace key principles” designed to
protect users’ ability to use the Internet
as they want and to disclose any limitations, including those resulting from
the network providers’ traffic management practices. To a limited degree, this
appeal would be backed up by the force
of law: The regulatory regime he envisages would prohibit only “
anticompetitive” practices (in the sense the term is
used in antitrust law). Consumers and
companies could petition the government to investigate (and presumably
ban) specific allegedly anticompetitive
conduct after the fact.
I don’t think these measures will be
sufficient to protect users’ ability to use
the Internet as they want and enable the
Internet to realize its economic, social,
and democratic potential. Appeals to
shared values may have worked in the
past, when most networks were operated by academic institutions. Today, networks are run by companies. Their goal
is to create value for their shareholders,
not to do what’s in the public interest.
To the extent commercial network providers do have an incentive to block or
slow down applications or content, appeals won’t be able to stop them.
I agree with Farber that network providers should disclose any limitations
on users’ ability to use the Internet.
As disclosure may expose competitive
weaknesses compared to rival providers, network providers may need regulatory pressure to engage in it. While
disclosure will support competition
by helping consumers make more informed choices, it will not be sufficient
to prevent discrimination: Disclosure
removes only one of the obstacles (
incomplete information) highlighted in
my statement that prevent competition in the broadband services market
from being effective in disciplining
providers.
If appeals and disclosure alone
are not sufficient to restrict network
providers’ incentives to block or slow
down applications, the scope of the
regulatory regime determines whether
network providers can act on their incentives. In this respect, Farber’s regime would only capture a subset of
the cases in which network providers
have an incentive to exclude applications.
First, discrimination designed to
exclude unwanted content or manage
bandwidth on a network may often
lack an anticompetitive motivation.
In the examples of content-based
discrimination described in my statement, none of the content providers
whose content was blocked was com-
36 CommunICatIons of the aCm | feBRuaRY 2009 | vol. 52 | No. 2