In the News
– Net Neutrality
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Sunday
November 13th,
2011Traffic jams, ISPs and net neutrality
In the net neutrality debate, Internet Service Providers like AT&T and Verizon, have said they need to charge content providers for prioritization so they can invest in improving infrastructure: faster internet service for all, they say.
But placing a price on prioritizing content creates an inherent disincentive to expand infrastructure. ISPs would profit from a congested Internet in which some content providers will be more than willing to pay an additional fee for faster delivery to users. Content providers like the New York Times and Google would have little choice but to fork it over to get their information to end users. But end users would be unlikely to see the promised upgrades in speed. Those are some of the results of research we conducted on the Internet market.
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Thursday
November 10th,
2011Rubio champions net neutrality repeal
A study released by the Institute for Policy Integrity in October describes how a weakening of the principle of network neutrality might impact the Web. Based on an analysis of Internet usage, it finds that Internet infrastructure and content work together to generate huge economic benefits for consumers—possibly as much as $5,686 per user, per year.
Eliminating network neutrality, as some have proposed, may reduce incentives to invest in Internet content and infrastructure.
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Friday
October 7th,
2011The Economic Benefits of an Open Internet
Corporate opponents of Net Neutrality have been arguing that rules protecting an open Internet will stifle innovation and economic growth. But a new study says that is just plain false.
New York University Law School’s nonpartisan Institute for Policy Integrity says the Internet generates huge economic benefits for consumers – as much as $5,600 per user, per year.
Executive director Mike Livermore explains that the infrastructure of the Net – the wires, cables and other hardware – and the content that flows through that hardware – combine
to create value for the user. Livermore says that without Net Neutrality rules to keep the Internet an open, level playing field for everyone who uses it, the value to users could diminish. -
Monday
October 3rd,
2011Net Neutrality and The Value of The Internet
A study by the Institute of Policy and Integrity at New York University has crunched some numbers and determined that the combination of network infrastructure and content that comprise the Internet offers significant economic value to consumers. The authors describe their methods below:
“The results suggest that the consumer surplus generated by the Internet is very large. The average survey respondent spent 114.5 minutes a day on the Internet recreationally. The benefits that use generates are equivalent to 5.2 percent to 7.1 percent of income. If we use the median income value of Pew’s survey, we find that individual consumers collect between $4,155 and $5,686 worth of value from the Internet per year. This estimate is big, but it is in the same neighborhood as those found by Goolsbe and Klenow. They found that the consumer benefits of the Internet were somewhere between 2 percent and 3 percent of total income. The amount of time consumers spend on the Internet suggests that they receive a great deal of benefit from access.”
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Monday
October 3rd,
2011The cost of Rolling back net neutrality
A new report from the Institute for Policy Integrity at the NYU School of Law finds that a weakening of net neutrality rules might actually “reduce incentives to invest in Internet content and infrastructure.”
In sum, the authors determined that Web users “collect between $4,155 and $5,686 worth of value from the Internet per year.” And the report notes an end to net neutrality rules — the FCC’s version of which the authors describe as “imperfect” — could shift investment from content creation into service provision, reducing the value of the Internet to its users.
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Monday
January 3rd,
2011FCC approves ‘Net Neutrality’ rules
The United States Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit ruled in April that the FCC did not have legal authority to stop Comcast, the nation’s largest cable provider, from blocking its customers’ access to a file-sharing service called BitTorrent. The decision limited the FCC’s power over web traffic under the current law and gave the ability for Internet service companies to block or slow specific sites. For example, they could decide to charge video sites like YouTube to deliver their content faster to users. “That’s the worst case scenario,” said Scott Holladay, an economics fellow at the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University. “The likelihood of that happening is very small.”
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Monday
December 27th,
2010What’s Next for the FCC and Net Neutrality?
Look for a court case to drag out for months and possibly end up before the U.S. Supreme Court, said Michael Livermore , executive director at the Institute for Policy Integrity at New York University School of Law. “This decision is on shaky legal ground so it is completely possible it would not be upheld,” he said. “But this is going to be the deal for at least 18 months to a couple years — a court challenge would take a while. As a result, for broadband, this compromise could just end up kicking the can down the road since there’s a good chance it gets overturned and we’ll have the larger net neutrality fight again in two years.”
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Wednesday
December 22nd,
2010Net Neutrality Opponents In Congress (Including Those Funded By AT&T) Promise Repeal Fight
To his credit, DeMint may have a point buried underneath all that silly rhetoric, and it has to down with how the FCC enacted Net Neutrality in the first place. The New York University School of Law’s Institute for Policy Integrity bemoaned [PDF] the fact that the FCC passed Net Neutrality not by “[invoking] it more robust regulating powers,” but that it “based the new rule on legal authority that was called into serious doubt by court decision earlier this year making the long term prospects for the rule quite poor.”
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Tuesday
December 21st,
2010Michael Livermore Talks Net Neutrality
Michael Livermore talks to the hosts of KGO’s Noon News about the FCC’s decision on net neutrality
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Tuesday
December 21st,
2010FCC Vote: Reactions Are Pouring In
It’s now official. At 1:05 pm Eastern Time today the Federal Communications Commission voted 3-2 to enact a controversial set of proposed rules on network neutrality, effectively getting the government into the business of regulating the Internet in ways it hasn’t done before. Congressional Republicans are already planning on holding hearings next year.
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