Net Neutrality: Delivering Internet Data

1. General questions
 - What is the point of the Web? Why do we use the Web?
 - What value do we expect the Web to provide us?
 - What value do we deliver to the Web?
 - How is the Web sustainable?

2. Web Participants
 : people, governments, private companies, communities
 - The Web is a data exchanging space
 - Information has contextual value upon time, space, place and recipient

3. The internet as public good
 - Public goods: non-rivalrous commons, which are resources available for public benefit, but individual rivalry may deplete the resource, depriving others benefits
 - The internet is an impure global public good (UNDP, 1999)
  * Human-made global commons
  * Subject to non-rival consumption, meaning that additional individuals benefit at zero marginal (production) cost
 - The internet is a club good (World Development Report, 2016)
  * Excludable
  * Non-rivalrous
  * Enormous positive externalities

4. Net Neutrality
 : should Internet Providers be able to influence what kind of material can appear on the Internet?
 - Open Internet
  * In the open internet, all traffic will be treated equally
  * Subject to public internet exceptions - child porn, cyber security, malware
  * Compromise for fast lane

 - FOR
  * open, distributed network: The web is an open, public system that is made up of many privately owned components
  * Internet needs protection: ISPs should not become gatekeepers of what works well in the Internet and what doesn't
  * protection for industry and consumers

 - AGAINST
  * someone has to pay: The internet is not free, someone has to pay for it
  * Companies work in the public good e.g. Silicon Valley
  * Government Interference: tight regulation can kill competition / we cannot treat all data equally

https://www.publicknowledge.org/issues/net-neutrality

https://www.theguardian.com/technology/net-neutrality