net neutrality by another name, oecd report
I thought some of you might find this interesting/useful. Internet traffic prioritisation: Internet traffic prioritisation is an increasingly important policy issue as bandwidth demands increase and Internet applications require higher levels of quality of service to function well. Debates about traffic prioritisation, particularly in the context of “network neutrality” discussions, have been divisive. The study provides background for national debates by examining the role of traffic prioritisation in networks and highlighting associated policy and regulatory issues. http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/43/63/38405781.pdf jeremy hunsinger Information Ethics Fellow, Center for Information Policy Research, School of Information Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (www.cipr.uwm.edu) wiki.tmttlt.com www.tmttlt.com () ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail /\ - against microsoft attachments http://www.stswiki.org/ sts wiki http://cfp.learning-inquiry.info/ Learning Inquiry-the journal http://transdisciplinarystudies.tmttlt.com/ Transdisciplinary Studies:the book series
This is very lucid, to say the least. In my perhaps mistaken perception, debates that focus only on the narrow part of the hourglass architecture to call this 'network neutrality' do not encompass but a limited perspective of neutrality (and of the network). For these debates ignore the complete ecology of games implicated in the other layers, they are not neutral at all (this not to question if neutrality can exist in any instance). Furthermore, are we neutral when we make evaluative choices, and, mostly, when from these choices we devise... principles? In other words, was the choice for the end-to-end principle any landmark of neutral political concern? Good news. MT OII On 4/29/07, Jeremy Hunsinger <jhuns@vt.edu> wrote:
I thought some of you might find this interesting/useful.
Internet traffic prioritisation: Internet traffic prioritisation is an increasingly important policy issue as bandwidth demands increase and Internet applications require higher levels of quality of service to function well. Debates about traffic prioritisation, particularly in the context of “network neutrality” discussions, have been divisive. The study provides background for national debates by examining the role of traffic prioritisation in networks and highlighting associated policy and regulatory issues.
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/43/63/38405781.pdf
jeremy hunsinger Information Ethics Fellow, Center for Information Policy Research, School of Information Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (www.cipr.uwm.edu)
wiki.tmttlt.com www.tmttlt.com
() ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail /\ - against microsoft attachments http://www.stswiki.org/ sts wiki http://cfp.learning-inquiry.info/ Learning Inquiry-the journal http://transdisciplinarystudies.tmttlt.com/ Transdisciplinary Studies:the book series
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Hi all, Yeah, look, I'm glad this one came to light because I found another example of the other day that seems to be being ignored ... Via discussion on the [musicthoughts] list, it came to my attention a couple of weeks back that database cacheing is having a similar effect as this in the music discovery space. It works like this: Large music databases, iTunes, CDBaby, Amazon, etc, use a cacheing device to improve the efficiency of their searches. This device makes the most popular search results more readily available than the rest, which works well for most searches (on a zipf curve distribution). However, it significantly disadvantages the less-popular artists/results - to the point of virtual exclusion - for example, on searches for versions of "The Lord's Prayer" in iTunes, in which the versions by the more popular artists drown the versions by less popular artists ... That may not be all bad, but it has gotten to the stage in iTunes that even searching for artists by name leads to a 0 result ... and that's a disaster for "Long Tail" artists. For example, last time I searched for my band, "Bun' Ber E", in iTunes, it took four efforts before I got a positive result ... now THAT is effective obliteration of the same kind as payola ... and it allows Apple to manipulate the market by including paying acts in the cache at the expense of popular but non-paying acts (I don't know that Apple is doing this, I'm just observing that it's technically possible to do so ...) This phenomenon efectively creates artificial scarcity and returns the market to pre-digital conditions, working to the strengths of the hegemony ... IMHO WDYR?? Cheers, Hughie ----- Original Message ----- From: "Marcelo Thompson Mello Guimaraes" <thompson.marcelo@gmail.com> To: <air-l@listserv.aoir.org> Sent: Sunday, April 29, 2007 11:40 PM Subject: Re: [Air-l] net neutrality by another name, oecd report
This is very lucid, to say the least. In my perhaps mistaken perception, debates that focus only on the narrow part of the hourglass architecture to call this 'network neutrality' do not encompass but a limited perspective of neutrality (and of the network). For these debates ignore the complete ecology of games implicated in the other layers, they are not neutral at all (this not to question if neutrality can exist in any instance). Furthermore, are we neutral when we make evaluative choices, and, mostly, when from these choices we devise... principles? In other words, was the choice for the end-to-end principle any landmark of neutral political concern?
Good news.
MT OII
On 4/29/07, Jeremy Hunsinger <jhuns@vt.edu> wrote:
I thought some of you might find this interesting/useful.
Internet traffic prioritisation: Internet traffic prioritisation is an increasingly important policy issue as bandwidth demands increase and Internet applications require higher levels of quality of service to function well. Debates about traffic prioritisation, particularly in the context of “network neutrality” discussions, have been divisive. The study provides background for national debates by examining the role of traffic prioritisation in networks and highlighting associated policy and regulatory issues.
http://www.oecd.org/dataoecd/43/63/38405781.pdf
jeremy hunsinger Information Ethics Fellow, Center for Information Policy Research, School of Information Studies, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (www.cipr.uwm.edu)
wiki.tmttlt.com www.tmttlt.com
() ascii ribbon campaign - against html mail /\ - against microsoft attachments http://www.stswiki.org/ sts wiki http://cfp.learning-inquiry.info/ Learning Inquiry-the journal http://transdisciplinarystudies.tmttlt.com/ Transdisciplinary Studies:the book series
_______________________________________________ The air-l@listserv.aoir.org mailing list is provided by the Association of Internet Researchers http://aoir.org Subscribe, change options or unsubscribe at: http://listserv.aoir.org/listinfo.cgi/air-l-aoir.org
Join the Association of Internet Researchers: http://www.aoir.org/
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Large music databases, iTunes, CDBaby, Amazon, etc, use a cacheing device to improve the efficiency of their searches. This device makes the most popular search results more readily available than the rest, which works well for most searches (on a zipf curve distribution). However, it significantly disadvantages the less-popular artists/results - to the point of virtual exclusion - for example, on searches for versions of "The Lord's Prayer" in iTunes, in which the versions by the more popular artists drown the versions by less popular artists ...
That's likely a bug in their particular software implementation, not a bug in the intellectual idea of database caches. What *should* happen, should your search not result in any hits in the cache, is that the site's software issues a hugely more expensive search against the whole dataset. If you're seeing a truncation due to a particular search term being less than popular, it seems likely that the site operators would appreciate the generation of a reproducible bug report. Several sites (livejournal, citeulike, etc) use memcached for this sort of database caching - and it doesn't seem to have the 'ill' mis-behavior that you're describing. --e
Sure ... and Apple have said they are investigating ways to avoid/avert this problem. It seems that the problem is, at least in part, driven by the compromise between fast searching service and deep searching service - in other words, they err on the side of timing out with no results from the cache rather than searching the deep database. There is no bug report, just a 0 result and this result was reproduced by several list members on searches for their own catalogues, which were known to be present in iTunes. I'm not sure the other sites you mention have the same priorities when they consider their design compromises. Or perhaps it's just that no-one notices :-) It nonetheless represents an opportunity for market manipulation by database owners, which is anathema to the notion of "search neutrality", which is a premise of the Long Tail theory and a cherished ideal among web activists. Even worse, the example of "The Lord's Prayer" demonstrates how, even when the search system is working technically correctly, this effect acts to the benefit of hegemons and the detriment of new entrants or niche artists. Cheers, Hughie ----- Original Message ----- From: <elw@stderr.org> To: <>; "Hugemusic" <hmusic@ozemail.com.au> Sent: Monday, April 30, 2007 11:12 AM Subject: Re: [Air-l] net neutrality by another name, oecd report
Large music databases, iTunes, CDBaby, Amazon, etc, use a cacheing device to improve the efficiency of their searches. This device makes the most popular search results more readily available than the rest, which works well for most searches (on a zipf curve distribution). However, it significantly disadvantages the less-popular artists/results - to the point of virtual exclusion - for example, on searches for versions of "The Lord's Prayer" in iTunes, in which the versions by the more popular artists drown the versions by less popular artists ...
That's likely a bug in their particular software implementation, not a bug in the intellectual idea of database caches.
What *should* happen, should your search not result in any hits in the cache, is that the site's software issues a hugely more expensive search against the whole dataset. If you're seeing a truncation due to a particular search term being less than popular, it seems likely that the site operators would appreciate the generation of a reproducible bug report.
Several sites (livejournal, citeulike, etc) use memcached for this sort of database caching - and it doesn't seem to have the 'ill' mis-behavior that you're describing.
--e
participants (4)
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elw＠stderr.org -
Hugemusic -
Jeremy Hunsinger -
Marcelo Thompson Mello Guimaraes