Law Commons^™

Network Nepotism And The Market For Content Delivery, Tejas N. Narechania

Tejas N. Narechania

Novel Neutrality Claims Against Internet Platforms: A Reasonable Framework For Initial Scrutiny , Jeffrey Jarosch

Cleveland State Law Review

This Article examines a recent trend in which the Federal Trade Commission and other enforcement agencies investigate Internet platforms for behavior that is insufficiently “neutral” towards users or third parties that interact with the platform. For example, Google faces a formal FTC investigation based on allegations that it has tinkered with search results rather than presenting users with a “neutral” result. Twitter faces a formal investigation after the social media service restricted the ways in which third party developers could interact with Twitter through its application programming interface (“API”). These investigations represent a new attempt to shift the network neutrality …

The Next Frontier For Network Neutrality, Philip J. Weiser

Publications

The challenge for policymakers evaluating calls to institute some form of network neutrality regulation is to bring reasoned analysis to bear on a topic that continues to generate more heat than light and that many telecommunications companies appear to believe will just fade away. Over the fall of 2007, the hopes of broadband providers that broadband networks could escape any form of regulatory oversight were dealt a blow when it was revealed that Comcast had degraded the experience of some users of Bittorent (a peer-to-peer application) and engaged in an undisclosed form of network management. This incident, as well as …

Internet 3.0: Identifying Problems And Solutions To The Network Neutrality Debate , Robert M. Frieden

ExpressO

What Internet Service Providers (“ISPs”) can and cannot do to diversify services lies at the core of the debate over network neutrality. In prior generations ISPs had little incentive or technological capability to deviate from plain vanilla best efforts routing for content providers and from standard “all you can eat” subscription terms for consumer access to the World Wide Web. The next generation Internet has the technological capability and ISPs have the commercial motivation to offer “better than best efforts” routing and premium services for both content providers and consumers seeking higher quality of service and more reliable traffic delivery. …

Network Neutrality Or Bias?--Handicapping The Odds For A Tiered And Branded Internet, Robert M. Frieden

ExpressO

Recent double digit billion dollar mergers of telecommunications firms consolidate both market share and market leadership by incumbent operators such as Verizon. These companies seek to exploit technological and market convergence by offering a triple play package of wired and wireless telephone service, video and Internet access. As well they need to develop new profit centers to compensate for declining revenues and market shares in traditional services such as wireline telephony.

While incumbent telecommunications operators have pursued new market opportunities, these ventures have not abandoned core management philosophies, operating assumptions and business strategies. Longstanding strategies for recovering investments, using a …