scholarly journals A Net Neutrality Perspective for Content Down-Streaming over the Internet

Author(s):  
Alexandre Reiffers-Masson ◽  
Yezekael Hayel ◽  
Eitan Altman ◽  
Tania Jimenez
Keyword(s):  
Author(s):  
Matthew Hindman

The Internet was supposed to fragment audiences and make media monopolies impossible. Instead, behemoths like Google and Facebook now dominate the time we spend online—and grab all the profits from the attention economy. This book explains how this happened. It sheds light on the stunning rise of the digital giants and the online struggles of nearly everyone else—and reveals what small players can do to survive in a game that is rigged against them. The book shows how seemingly tiny advantages in attracting users can snowball over time. The Internet has not reduced the cost of reaching audiences—it has merely shifted who pays and how. Challenging some of the most enduring myths of digital life, the book explains why the Internet is not the postindustrial technology that has been sold to the public, how it has become mathematically impossible for grad students in a garage to beat Google, and why net neutrality alone is no guarantee of an open Internet. It also explains why the challenges for local digital news outlets and other small players are worse than they appear and demonstrates what it really takes to grow a digital audience and stay alive in today's online economy. The book shows why, even on the Internet, there is still no such thing as a free audience.


2018 ◽  
Vol 2018 ◽  
pp. 1-9
Author(s):  
Elissar Khloussy ◽  
Yuming Jiang

The net neutrality principle states that users should have equal access to all Internet content and that Internet Service Providers (ISPs) should not practice differentiated treatment on any of the Internet traffic. While net neutrality aims to restrain any kind of discrimination, it also grants exemption to a certain category of traffic known as specialized services (SS), by allowing the ISP to dedicate part of the resources for the latter. In this work, we consider a heterogeneous LTE/WiFi wireless network and we investigate revenue-maximizing Radio Access Technology (RAT) selection strategies that are net neutrality-compliant, with exemption granted to SS traffic. Our objective is to find out how the bandwidth reservation for SS traffic would be made in a way that allows maximizing the revenue while being in compliance with net neutrality and how the choice of the ratio of reserved bandwidth would affect the revenue. The results show that reserving bandwidth for SS traffic in one RAT (LTE) can achieve higher revenue. On the other hand, when the capacity is reserved across both LTE and WiFi, higher social benefit in terms of number of admitted users can be realized, as well as lower blocking probability for the Internet access traffic.


2021 ◽  
Vol 6 ◽  
pp. 102-113
Author(s):  
Alexey Gaivoronski ◽  
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Vasily Gorbachuk ◽  
Maxim Dunaievskiy ◽  
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...  

As computing and Internet connections become general-purpose technologies and services aimed at broad global markets, questions arise about the effectiveness of such markets in terms of public welfare, the participation of differentiated service providers and end-users. Motorola’s Iridium Global Communications project was completed in the 1990s due to similar issues, reaching the goal of technological connectivity for the first time. As Internet services are characterized by high innovation, differentiation and dynamism, they can use well-known models of differentiated products. However, the demand functions in such models are hyperbolic rather than linear. In addition, such models are stochastic and include providers with different ways of competing. In the Internet ecosystem, the links between Internet service providers (ISPs) as telecommunications operators and content service providers are important, especially high-bandwidth video content providers. As increasing bandwidth requires new investments in network capacity, both video content providers and ISPs need to be motivated to do so. In order to analyze the relationships between Internet service providers and content providers in the Internet ecosystem, computable models, based on the construction of payoff functions for all the participants in the ecosystem, are suggested. The introduction of paid content browsing will motivate Internet service providers to invest in increasing the capacity of the global network, which has a trend of exponential growth. At the same time, such a browsing will violate the principles of net neutrality, which provides grounds for the development of new tasks to minimize the violations of net neutrality and maximize the social welfare of the Internet ecosystem. The models point to the importance of the efficiency of Internet service providers, the predictability of demand and the high price elasticity of innovative services.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sonja Lučić ◽  

In Case C-807/18 the Court of Justice of the EU had the opportunity to interpret Regulation 2015/2120, which contains the principle of Internet Neutrality, for the first time. On this occasion, the Court took position that Internet providers must not favor certain applications and services for providing and using data on the Internet to the detriment of others. The principle of net neutrality existed even before the adoption of Regulation 2015/2120. This Regulation establishes measures concerning open access to the Internet. Namely, the Regulation sets rules aimed at ensuring equality and nondiscriminatory treatement of traffic, as well as protection of the rights of end users. The principle of net neutrality implies that all providers of internet access services will treat all traffic equally without discrimination, restriction or interference and regardless of the sender and recipient, the content accessed or distributed,


Author(s):  
Robert van Wessel ◽  
Henk J. de Vries

We all take the ubiquity of the Internet for granted: anyone, anywhere, anytime, any device, any connection, any app…but for how long? Is the future of the Internet really at stake? Discussions about control of the Internet, its architecture and of the applications running on it started more than a decade ago (Blumenthal & Clark, 2001). This topic is becoming more and more important for citizens, businesses, and governments across the world. In its original set-up, the architecture of the Internet did not favor one application over another and was based on the net neutrality principle (Wu, 2003). However, architectures should be understood an “alternative way of influencing economic systems” (Van Schewick, 2010), but they should not be a substitute for politics (Agre, 2003). The architecture is laid down in standards and therefore discussions about the future of the Internet should also address the role of standards. This is what this chapter aims to do.


Author(s):  
Valérie Schafer ◽  
Francesca Musiani ◽  
Hervé Le Crosnier

Beyond the likes of a purely technical issue, situated at the heart of the transport layer of the TCP/IP protocol, net neutrality takes the form of a complex political debate. This chapter's endeavour is to study the set of dimensions that make it possible for net neutrality to be read as a global political issue. The chapter follows the constantly evolving notion of net neutrality as it interrogates the Internet as a laboratory of governance, the actors and dynamics involved in the establishment of a “technical democracy” and the dialectic between the Internet's universal, egalitarian ideal and the techno-political measures shaping the “network of networks.”


2020 ◽  
Vol 45 (4) ◽  
pp. 1093-1112
Author(s):  
Jeffrey Omari

This article explores the ideals of open Internet governance in Brazil. I examine Brazil’s Internet law, the Marco Civil da Internet (MCI), which promotes the right to Internet access, online privacy, and net neutrality. The MCI’s ideals of a free and open Internet are challenged by Internet companies, such as Facebook, which offer “zero-rating” promotions that provide limited, free mobile data to low-income subscribers. I juxtapose the ideals of openness embodied in the regulatory sphere of the MCI with those of Brazil’s cultura livre (free culture) movement to show the ascendance of open values in Brazilian governance and culture. Accordingly, I employ the rhetorical question, “Is Facebook the Internet?” to demonstrate the ways in which commitments to open Internet governance, expressed in both the cultural and regulatory realms, run counter to the more proprietary ideals of the transnational tech community.


Author(s):  
Maria Löblich

Internet neutrality—usually net(work) neutrality—encompasses the idea that all data packets that circulate on the Internet should be treated equally, without discriminating between users, types of content, platforms, sites, applications, equipment, or modes of communication. The debate about this normative principle revolves around the Internet as a set of distribution channels and how and by whom these channels can be used to control communication. The controversy was spurred by advancements in technology, the increased usage of bandwidth-intensive services, and changing economic interests of Internet service providers. Internet service providers are not only important technical but also central economic actors in the management of the Internet’s architecture. They seek to increase revenue, to recover sizable infrastructure upgrades, and expand their business model. This has consequences for the net neutrality principle, for individual users and corporate content providers. In the case of Internet service providers becoming content providers themselves, net neutrality proponents fear that providers may exclude competitor content, distribute it poorly and more slowly, and require competitors to pay for using high-speed networks. Net neutrality is not only a debate on infrastructure business models that is carried out in economic expert circles. On the contrary, and despite its technical character, it has become an issue in the public debate and an issue that is framed not only in economic but also in political and social terms. The main dividing line in the debate is whether net neutrality regulation is necessary or not and what scope net neutrality obligations should have. The Federal Communications Commission (FCC) in the United States passed new net neutrality rules in 2015 and strengthened its legal underpinning regarding the regulation of Internet service providers (ISPs). With the Telecoms Single Market Regulation, for the first time there will be a European Union–wide legislation for net neutrality, but not recent dilution of requirements. From a communication studies perspective, Internet neutrality is an issue because it relates to a number of topics addressed in communication research, including communication rights, diversity of media ownership, media distribution, user control, and consumer protection. The connection between legal and economic bodies of research, dominating net neutrality literature, and communication studies is largely underexplored. The study of net neutrality would benefit from such a linkage.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lorenz W. Jarass

As product differentiations, privileges on the internet (such as "zero rating" or "specialised services") are a result of the competitive market economy. However, in the discourse on net neutrality, in the sense of indiscriminate treatment of data, there are calls for regulation as the existing legal framework is considered as inadequate. Based on the conceptual, technical, legal, political and economic foundations, the thesis nevertheless shows that general competition law, in particular Article 102 TFEU, p is a suitable and adequate legal framework. Even after the adoption of Regulation 2015/2120/EU ("Open Internet"), this finding has not lost its relevance. Rather, the thesis describes how both regimes interact, and for which cases a recourse to general competition law is indicated.


2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Felix Francke

In this study, Felix Francke examines the controversial topic of net neutrality from its technical basics to the measurement of interventions and thereby develops a modular system for the precisely targeted protection of the open Internet. His use of concrete measures avoids the normative prepositioning of previous studies and lays the foundations for a methodologically innovative comparison of different regulatory approaches in Europe. At the same time, his profound analysis provides a competent introduction on how the Internet functions for political scientists. Felix Francke conducts research on the area at which the Internet and society intersect and develops potential ideas for digitisation in the field of civic responsibility at ‘Stiftung Zukunft’ in Berlin.


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