Slovak Court Orders an ISP to Stop Breaching Net Neutrality

Huťko´s Technology Law Blog: The Slovak Court Orders an ISP to Stop Breaching the Net Neutrality: Note that this is a competition dispute not a specific net neutrality law or regulation being violated. It's what you might call Madison River writ large...
 "The action of Antik puts forward our B2B arguments, namely that blockage or degradation within this competitive relationship contradicts general clause of unfair competition set in Section 44(1) of the Commercial Code. §44 Fundamental Provisions (1) Unfair competition shall be such competitive conduct that is contrary to the standard practices of competition and that may be detrimental to other competitors or consumers. Unfair competition is prohibited. The District Court in Bratislava I. now granted an injunction (8 Ncb/90/2013-321) against UPC prohibiting it from blocking or degrading the IPTV service on its infrastructure for its consumers of Internet access." 'via Blog this'

Who, and Why Are They Trying to Control the Korean Internet?

South Korean Human Rights Monitor | Net Neutrality: Who, and Why Are They Trying to Control the Internet? - South Korean Human Rights Monitor: "carriers blocking the mVoIp service have a more serious implication. If the carriers have power to block the mVoIP service arbitrarily, it is also likely that they can arbitrarily block other internet contents or services. In February 2012, KT had blocked Samsung Electronic’s Smart TV service for 5 days. They didn’t block all Smart TV traffics. They only blocked traffics for Samsung Smart TV service. KT also announced a plan to block peer-to-peer (P2P) traffics. Carriers blocking or arbitrarily slowing the transmission of particular Web traffic is a violation to net neutrality." 'via Blog this'

Presentation on net neutrality at Internet Governance Forum

Here's the PPT - well received introduction to the policy area for governments. I also discovered that [a] Chile has never implemented or at least enforced its law in this area; [b] Netherlands has also not taken a case yet; [c] South Korea has a consumer complaint based on KCC Guidelines, but it hangs on the impossible-to-prove collective dominance of major mobile ISPs. So much ado about nothing yet?

BITAG - reasonable traffic management report

BITAG: "If application-based criteria are used by a network operator, they should be tested prior to deployment and on an ongoing basis.  Application-based classification by network operators (e.g., using deep packet inspection) can sometimes be erroneous. If network operators choose to use application-based criteria for congestion management, the accuracy of the classifier should be tested before deployment.
ASPs and CDNs should implement efficient and adaptive network resource management practices. ASPs and CDNs should match use of network resources to the performance requirements of the application. Applications should be designed to efficiently and adaptively use network resources, to the extent feasible given the application’s requirements." 'via Blog this'

European Commission proposal may stifle innovation, argues Marietje Schaake MEP

Excellent summary of the potential problems in Connected Continent, by a Dutch MEP who really knows what she's talking about. She is not confident that specialized services are tightly defined, and thinks Kroes "missed the window of opportunity" and proposal will be delayed for years.

Net neutrality research and analysis: new paper

No posts for 2 weeks - simply because I attended 5 international conferences and gave papers - including this one on net neutrality. It features some of my analysis of the new EC package and a particularly close look at what 'specialized services' mean in the EU and US:
Marsden, Christopher, Net Neutrality Law: Past Policy, Present Proposals, Future Regulation? (October 3, 2013). Proceedings of the United Nations Internet Governance Forum: Dynamic Coalition on Network Neutrality, Nusa Dua Bali, Indonesia, 25 October 2013. Available at SSRN