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An essay on Network Neutrality

Axel Spies, a friend and a brilliant Washington-based high-tech lawyer just sent me this paper on Net Neutrality in the US. A must reading.

Net neutrality continues to be fiercely debated in the United States. The new Democratic FCC leadership has committed to expanding and enhancing existing net neutrality restrictions. The current FCC Chairman, Julius Genachowski, recently announced that he will initiate a rulemaking to codify the FCC’s existing network neutrality principles. Those principles, originally set forth in a 2005 “Internet Policy Statement,” declared that to “encourage broadband deployment and preserve and promote the open and interconnected nature of the public Internet, consumers are entitled to:”

* access the lawful Internet content of their choice.
* run applications and use services of their choice (subject to the needs of law enforcement).
* connect their choice of legal devices that do not harm the network.
* competition among network providers, application and service providers, and content providers.

The Chairman has publicly stated that he plans to propose a fifth nondiscrimination principle that would prohibit broadband providers from discriminating against particular Internet content or applications. However, providers would be able to offer “managed services” in some limited contexts. A sixth principle of “transparency” is also debated to require broadband Internet access providers to disclose network management practices.

The FCC’s informal announcement stirred the ongoing debate over the extent to which broadband and other network providers will maintain control over their networks, free from government restrictions, to “manage” their networks, including the ability to block or slow certain traffic, for the benefit of all users. Proponents of a “neutral” network, including Google, Yahoo!, eBay, consumer rights, free speech advocacy groups, and generally the three Democratic FCC commissioners (Chairman Genachowski, Copps and Clyburn), are concerned that without government rules, service providers will act anticompetitively by restricting content, sites, or platforms, on the kinds of equipment that may be attached to the network, and on the modes of communication allowed. In contrast, Internet Service Providers (ISPs), incumbent local exchange carriers (ILECs), including AT&T and Verizon, some cable providers, such as Comcast, free market advocacy groups and generally the two Republican FCC Commissioners (McDowell and Baker) oppose net neutrality obligations.

Earlier legal rulings regarding net neutrality fell short of setting forth a comprehensive policy. The FCC embedded some net neutrality policies in conditions placed on the Verizon/MCI and SBC/AT&T merger approvals. In 2008, the FCC, then led by Republican Kevin Martin, sought to enforce the Internet Policy Statement principles on cable TV provider Comcast when allegations arose that Comcast had blocked consumers from using several peer-to-peer applications. That decision is currently being debated in a federal court appeal. In addition, the FCC principles are currently being imposed on recipients of broadband stimulus funds. “

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More on the Snow Leopard Heat Issue…

Kidding apart, the Snow Leopard oddities (laptop heat issue, printer and application incompatibility and so on) raise a still unanswered question: can a software house – and in particular an operating system manufacturer – be free to sell a not well enough tested and not fully usable application?

This is not the rant of a discontented user but a precise legal question. Is it conceivable to let a producer of critical assets – as software surely is – to deliberately mass market unreliable products? Time has come when software manufacturer can’t be anymore allowed to “go crappy” treating users as a bunch of sheep and just “selling a roadmap”.

I don’t know if somebody ever did an assessment of the additional expenses caused by this marketing strategy (or, at least, I don’t know if this assessment has been made available to the public.) The fact is that software manufacturers should bear the legal consequences of their choice. But as Mark Minasi and Alan Cooper pointed out, software houses succeeded in convincing users that things must go that (wrong) way.

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Apple’s Snow Leopard’s mismatched name…

Well, it seems that this time Apple marketing guys have slipped on a wet surface. Snow Leopard, the latest MacOS X version, causes serious heat problems to laptops such as the Mac Book Air (mine is literally burning.) A quick look at users’ forums on the Internet shows that this is a widespread problem and that Apple is doing almost nothing to fix it. Sure, a patch will come, but when? In the meantime, it is very hard to use a Snow Leopard equipped laptop.

Apple is more and more posing as Microsoft, and I wonder how the Cupertino-based company could possbily still run its commercial by claiming that OSX works out of the box, with no big legal copies for each advertising statement. But above all, can we still trust Apple?

Somebody might think that this is an exaggerated criticism for a very common event in the computing market (i.e. a new software that is – at least partially – a ? crap one) but that’s the point. I start asking myself whether Apples really are the computers for the rest of us.

Snow Leopard… they’d better call it Firefox, oh, sorry, its taken. Why not Firebird, then?

p.s. I switched back to 10.5.8

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More on the Italian Antitrust investigation upon Google News

The strongest claim supporting the Italian Antitrust investigation upon Google News is the alleged Google “dominant position” that would make Italian publishers poorer (better, less rich) by not getting advertising revenues from their online contents.

There is some doubt, nevertheless, that ? Google’s market role could be defined as a “dominant position”. 1

Although it is undeniable that Google is the users’ preferred choice, and that Google has created from scratch a new business model attracting a huge quantity of customers, its legal status can hardly be defined as “dominant” in the Antitrust meaning. A characteristic of “dominant position” is the customer’s “locked-in syndrome”. Once you buy a product (or a service), its technological, purposely created oddities – such as non-standard file format etc. – make it almost impossible to switch to another similar, competing product. The most blatant example is the operating system market, where Microsoft was able to secure its market quota through its dominant position.

In Google’s case, au contraire, users are not “locked-in”: they can buy advertising services wherever they like, and use other search-engines at their will. Furthermore, Google can’t do anything to force its users to use its services, except by improving efficiency and quality. This means, in other words, that Google might lose its business power on the snap of finger. To put it short, cannot rest on its laurels.

As for the specific claims of the Italian publishers, there is neither a contract with them, nor a broader legal obligation falling on Google’s shoulders, to force the search engine to actually find “everything” on the Internet. 2 If they don’t like Google’s “banning attitude” (that still has to be demonstrated, by the way) they can simply find different agreement with Google’s competitors, thus forcing users to change their search engine of choice. Provided – of course – that Internet users find those contents of some value, but this is a horse of a different colour.

  1. “Dominant position” is a concept belonging to the Antitrust law and depicts a situation where a company stays in its market in a much stronger position than its competitors, thus setting the rules for competition. ↩
  2. Oddly enough, this is the first time, at least in Italy, where Google is “charged” with not making contents available, while in the past its management has been accused of not removing “disturbing contents” from its indexes ↩