From Net Neutrality to ICT Neutrality

This book discusses the pros and cons of information and communication (ICT) neutrality. It tries to be as objective as possible from arguments of proponents and opponents, this way enabling readers to build their own opinion. It presents the history of the ongoing related debate, the various concepts it encompasses, and also some mathematical developments illustrating optimal strategies and potential counter-intuitive results. It thus touches issues related to history, economics, law, networking, and mathematics.After an introductory chapter on the history of the topic, chapter 2 surveys and compares the various laws in place worldwide and discusses some implications of heterogeneous rules in several regions. Next, chapter 3 details the pros and cons of neutrality and non-neutrality. Chapter 4 then presents how the impact of neutral or non-neutral behaviors can be analyzed mathematically, with sometimes counter-intuitive results, and emphasizes the interest of modeling to avoid bad decisions. Chapter 5 illustrates that the network neutrality debate is not always as simple as internet service providers (ISPs) opposing neutrality and content providers promoting it as there are situations where content providers may have an economic advantage with a non-neutral situation, e.g. when they are leaders on a market and create barriers to entry for competitors. Another related issue is covered in chapter 6, which discusses existing ways for ISPs to circumvent the packet-based rules and being non-neutral without breaking the written law including potential extensions how to prevent this. Chapter 7 gives more insight on the role and possible non-neutral behavior of search engines, leading to another debate called the search neutrality debate. Chapter 8 focuses on e-commerce platforms and social networks and investigates how they can influence users' actions and opinions. The issue is linked to the debate on transparency of algorithms which is active in Europe especially. Setting rules cannot be effective without monitoring the activity of ICT actors: how to sanction non-appropriate behaviors and be proactive against new conducts without measurements? Chapter 9 explains why this is challenging and what tools are currently available. Eventually, Chapter 10 briefly concludes and opens the debate, hoping that readers will have more insight and will be able to make their own opinion about what should be done or expected.