Law Commons^™

Internet Governance And Democratic Legitimacy, Olivier Sylvain

Faculty Scholarship

Even as the Internet goes pop, federal policymakers continue to surrender their statutory obligation to regulate communications in the first instance to extralegal nongovernmental organizations comprised of technical experts. The Federal Communications Commission’s conclusion that a major broadband service provider's network management practices were unreasonable is a case in point. There, in the absence of any decisive legislative or even regulatory guidance, the FCC turned principally to the engineering principles on which the Internet Engineering Task Force bases transmission standards: to wit, (1) decentralization, (2) interoperability, and (3) user empowerment. This impulse to defer as a matter of course to …

Wireless Carterfone, Tim Wu

Faculty Scholarship

Over the next decade, regulators will spend increasing time on conflicts between the private interests of the wireless industry and the public’s interest in the best uses of its spectrum. This report examines the practices of the wireless industry with an eye toward understanding their influence on innovation and consumer welfare.

In many respects, the mobile wireless market is and remains a wonder. Thanks to both policy and technological innovations, devices that were science fiction 30 years ago are now widely available. Over the last decade, wireless mobile has been an “infant industry,” attempting to achieve economies of scale. That …

A Brief History Of American Telecommunications Regulation, Tim Wu

Faculty Scholarship

While the history of governmental regulation of communication is at least as long as the history of censorship, the modern regulation of long-distance, or "tele," communications is relatively short and can be dated to the rise of the telegraph in the mid-19th century. The United States left the telegraph in private hands, unlike countries and as opposed to the U.S. postal system, and has done the same with most of the significant telecommunications facilities that have been developed since. The decision to allow private ownership of telecommunications infrastructure has led to a rather particularized regulation of these private owners of …

Network Neutrality: Competition, Innovation, And Nondiscriminatory Access, Tim Wu

Faculty Scholarship

The best proposals for network neutrality rules are simple. They ban abusive behavior like tollboothing and outright blocking and degradation. And they leave open legitimate network services that the Bells and Cable operators want to provide, such as offering cable television services and voice services along with a neutral internet offering. They are in line with a tradition of protecting consumer's rights on networks whose instinct is just this: let customers use the network as they please. No one wants to deny companies the right to charge for their services and charge consumers more if they use more. But what …

The Broadband Debate, A User's Guide, Tim Wu

Faculty Scholarship

Back in the 1990s, Internet communications policy was easier. It was easy to agree that the network's growth ought not be impended by excessive government regulation. It was easy to hope that the Internet would solve all of its own problems. Yet it turned out that the success of the network was hiding strong differences of opinion. Today, the euphoria is gone, and the divide in Internet communications policy has become clear and unmistakable. It most clearly a divide between two distinct groups: the self-proclaimed "Openists" and "Deregulationists."

This divide will do much to inform the reform of the Telecommunications …

Network Neutrality, Broadband Discrimination, Tim Wu

Faculty Scholarship

Communications regulators over the next decade will spend increasing time on conflicts between the private interests of broadband providers and the public's interest in a competitive innovation environment centered on the Internet. As the policy questions this conflict raises are basic to communications policy, they are likely to reappear in many different forms. So far, the first major appearance has come in the "open access" (or "multiple access") debate, over the desirability of allowing vertical integration between Internet Service Providers and cable operators. Proponents of open access see it as a structural remedy to guard against an erosion of the …