Pond-jumping
On April 18, 2006, I was in Oxford (thanks to Jonathan Zittrain) giving a talk at the Oxford Internet Institute that Google Desktop tells me was titled “Seeing the Net: Recent FCC Developments.” The slides I talked through had to do with Bellhead/Nethead differences and the new laws, new institutions, and new asymmetries of information that the telco-incumbent-persuaded FCC was forwarding. Because it was Oxford I wrote out my notes in some detail, and I can see that I talked about net neutrality at length.
I tried to convey the idea that allowing network access providers to discriminate was bad policy - it advances the interests of autonomous actors (the network providers) without sufficient regard for the overall social good. I’m confident I talked about sidewalks, substrates, and openness.
Well, I distinctly remember being told by some Ofcom representatives who were there (this was 18 months ago, so I feel I’m not violating any confidentiality now) that neutrality was always going to be a solely American issue. They were extremely confident. Their arms were folded, and they told me what was what, and neutrality was simply not on the table. “You’re assuming the presence of a network,” they told me. “Of course prioritization is necessary for broadband access - otherwise the providers won’t be able to recoup their expenses.”
Yesterday CNET reported that there’s a professor in the UK (Nigel Shadbolt) that thinks it’s time for the UK and Europe to get into the neutrality tussle. According to Shadbolt:
[The Web is] ‘all about making content visibly available to anybody who chooses to take it and not have intrinsically built in a system of ways of applying explicit filtering.’
He’s convinced this issue will be relevant for the U.K.:
‘We can’t not have the discussion,’ added Shadbolt. ‘It’s not as if it’s of no relevance to us. What happens in the U.S. will make its way here.”
It makes me glad to see Nigel Shadbolt suggesting that net neutrality isn’t just American. I’m sure he’s getting the same chilly reception I did, but at least he has the right accent - “Nigel Shadbolt” clearly is a native.