Two New Net Neutrality Resources
posted by Paul Ohm
I first wanted to thank Dan and the rest for allowing me to use a little of their space.
Among the many pleasures of teaching where I do is the opportunity to be on the sidelines for interesting debates about telecomm law and policy, thanks to the presence of scholars like Phil Weiser and Dale Hatfield (among many others). For example, for those of you who can’t get enough of the Net Neutrality debate, this weekend we’re offering two opportunities to hear more about it:
First, Micah Schwalb, a 3L and the EIC of the Journal on Telecomm and High Tech Law noticed that you could trace the history of the Net Neutrality debate by reading the Journal’s back issues and watching footage from our past Silicon Flatirons conferences. So he has put together a new website, neutralitylaw.com, that pulls all of these resources together. Here you’ll find videos of talks by Larry Lessig, Vint Cerf, and others (many of which have never been available online before now), and articles by Tim Wu, Chris Yoo, Barbara van Schewick, Phil, and more.
Second, on Sunday and Monday we are hosting our annual marquee Silicon Flatirons event, the Digital Broadband Migration conference. Every panel is stacked with interesting people, but none is as deep as the one I’m thrilled to moderate, entitled “Network Management: Beyond Net Neutrality.” The panelists include: Jerry Kang, Ed Felten, Howard Shelanski, Robert Pepper, Jim Speta, and Jon Nuechterlein. I know when I’m outclassed, so I’ll do my best to stay out of the way, but in honor of the blog, I may try to ask a question about the role of culture. If you’re anywhere near Boulder, please stop by and say hello.
And in case you can’t make it out, you’ll be able to find the video on neutralitylaw before too long. In the coming weeks, we’ll be adding many other videos from past conferences.
February 9, 2007 at 11:32 am
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Frank - February 13, 2007 at 9:15 pm
Thanks for highlighting those resources!
I’ve recently been thinking that one perspective on this issue is the idea of resisting vertical integration (e.g., business models that allow a company to “leverage synergies” by gaining control over some of the following:
1) consumer electronics
2) content
3) internet access (via broadband, telecom, satellite)
4) intermediary services (such as search engines)
I generally don’t like the idea of one company using dominance in 1, 3 or 4 to commodify salience in 2. On the other hand, if I knew that such a company used the revenues it generated to cross-subsidize access for those currently underserved, I wouldn’t be so worried. That’s one reason I’m reconciled to the commodification of salience via Google adwords–they use their profits to perform a number of valuable public services, like digitizing the world’s books.
In any case, I just hope all sides can agree on the idea of transparency–any decision to highlight/hide content, or speed/slow it, should be public. This article pushes in that direction:
http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=957373
and also provides a good historical perspective on the debate.
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