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\"Chris Marsden argues for a 'middle way' on net neutrality, a problem of consumer and media policy without easy answers that cannot be left to self-regulated market actors. He looks at market developments and policy responses in Europe and the United States, draws conclusions and proposes regulatory recommendations. His holistic solution considers ISPs' roles in the round, including their 'three wise monkeys' legal liabilities for content filtering. Co-regulation is an awkward compromise between state and private regulation, with constitutionally uncertain protection for end-users and the appearance of a solution with only partial remedy for end-users against private censorship.\"--BOOK JACKET.

The “Internet,” as a global self-regulated and interconnected network of institutions driven by educational and subsequently commercial priorities, has evolved into an element within a broader “global information society.” Industry, treated benevolently by market-led governments, has created co- or self-regulatory institutions or compacts, but as consumers have eagerly embraced the broadband Internet the scheme of governance must embrace respect for the social and economic rights and responsibilities of consumers at national, European and global levels. This paper shows how existing divisions between public-sector, private-sector, and civil-society institutions and responsibilities have rapidly become eroded and it portrays the emerging agenda for “multistakeholder governance.” The involvement of the consumer on a more legitimised and consensual level than is permitted under industry-led regulation is as yet a novel approach, but this paper draws on case studies which demonstrate the salience of these issues to consumers as citizens, and it concludes by preparing an agenda for Information and Communications Technology (ICT) companies to adopt more sophisticated patterns of participatory co- and self-regulation.

\"Net neutrality is the most contested Internet access policy of our time. This book offers an in-depth explanation of the concept, addressing its history since 1999, its engineering, the policy challenges it represents and its legislation and regulation. Various case studies are presented, including Specialized Services and Content Delivery Networks for video over the Internet, and the book goes on to examine the future of net neutrality battles in Europe, the United States, and developing countries, as well as offering co-regulatory solutions based on FRAND and non-exclusivity\"--Publisher's website.

An outstanding line-up of contributors explore the regulation of the internet from an interdisciplinary perspective. In-depth coverage of this controversial area such as international political economy, law, politics, economics, sociology and internet regulation. Regulating the Global Information Society covers the differences between both US and UK approaches to regulation and establishes where policy is being made that will influence the future direction of the global information society, from commercial, democratic and middle-ground perspectives. 1. Introduction:Information and communications technologies, globalisation and regulation Part 1: Theoretical Perspectives 2. The Role of the Public Sphere in the Information Society 3. In Search of the Self: Charting the course of self-regulation on the Internet in a global environment 4. Will Electronic Commerce Change the Law?: Towards a regulatory perspective based on competition, information and learning skills Part 2: The Limits of Telecommunications Regulation 5. How Far Can Deregulation of Telecommunications Go? 6. Realising Social Goals in Connectivity and Content: The challenge of convergence 7. Commentary: When to regulate in the GIS? A public policy perspective 8. The Rise and Decline of the International Telecommunications Regime 9. After Seattle: Trade negotiations and the new economy Comment on Jonathon D. Aronson , `After Seattle: Trade negotiations and the new economy' Part 3: International Self-regulation and Standard Setting 10. Locating Internet Governance: Lessons from the standards process 11. Semi-private International Rulemaking: Lessons learned from the WIPO domain name process Part 4: Standard Setting and Competition Policy 12. Will the Internet Remake Antitrust Law? 13. The Problems of the Third Way: A Java case study Part 5: The Limits of Government Regulation 14. China's Impact on the Global Information Society 15. Freedom Versus Access Rights in a European Context 16. Pluralism, Guidance and the New Media 17. Five Challenges for Regulating the Global Information Society

This paper examines the potential uses of information and communications technologies (ICTs) to create a new, multi-faceted phase of globalization. It goes beyond traditional explanations of ICTs and globalization, which concentrate on the cultural imperialism of mass communications or technology management. It is argued here that the \"any-to-any\" architecture of the Internet creates a hugely unstable political landscape, in which social, economic and political alliances become both more global and more local, but always more specialized. The paper concludes by asking how states might choose to strike a balance between the benefits to individual freedom brought about by the Internet and the diminished intermediary role for state, religious and other national cultural institutions.

The paper aims to analyze the key structural changes required for an effective competitive new media market via digital transmission. It also aims to explain the institutional obstacles to achievement of broadband deployment in Western nations by reference to East Asians success. The paper identifies major trends and demonstrates evolving competition principles in the European Union media sector by discussing cases and literature in the deployment of broadband content and carriage. The paper finds primarily that institutional barriers to reform of competition in both broadband and copyright fields create bottlenecks in any policy reform process. It goes on to consider models that have succeeded, in peer-to-peer content, cable and satellite television content, mobile telecommunications and East Asia, concluding that reform in fixed broadband is unlikely in the near-term. Policy discussion in copyright and telecommunications needs to be broadened to consider structural flaws in the institutions that govern these regimes. The paper takes a broad Northian view of institutions to encompass governance via markets, state and society in order to provide this view.

The current European consensus on competition in communications is based on a shared vision of contemporary market and technological developments. Roughly stated, the position, outlined in the 1994 Bangemann Report and the 1997 European Green Paper on Convergence (Marsden and Verhulst 1999, Blackman, 1998), claims the following: B Due to the ''end of spectrum scarcity'' and the convergence between telecommunications, computing and broadcasting, much of the sector specific regulation that encumbers the communications sector can be gradually removed. B Where previous technological constraints made some forms of natural monopoly and market failure inevitable, both in telecommunications and broadcasting, state ownership and regulation will become less necessary. B In the complex markets that emerge, individual and producer choices articulated through market mechanisms will deliver the widest and most efficient choices, optimum social welfare and increase overall communications sector innovation towards computing levels. This went with the ideological grain and the technological and economic exuberance of the period. No such consensus existed in the detailed discussion of broadcasting and media policy in 1997/1998, which was deliberately excluded from the 1999 Communication that led to the Electronic Communications Services (ECS) Directives of 2001. The papers in this issue of Info explore the fissures eight years after the Green Paper and four years after the Directives were passed. When it comes to the framework for commercial broadcasting and the position of publicly funded broadcasters, and various forms of state aid, some posit a future of deregulation in which communications are eventually treated as markets like any other, while others argue that many of the public policy objectives in the sector will require permanent sector specific regulation, and even that the competition framework currently being implemented should be subordinated to citizen not consumer interests.They are based on a series of seminars given in January-March 2005 at Oxford University's Programme in Comparative Media Law and Policy[1]. The basic question each contributor was asked to address was: ''What's wrong with competition policy in the media?''. The responses interpreted the question in two main ways: 1. Why is competition policy not working effectively in terms of the key aims of promoting choice, market entry and dealing with abuse of dominance? A point of consensus is that competition policy is facing huge challenges in implementing competition in the media. Cave and Marsden give accounts of media competition policy that may give rise to some pessimistic reflection three years into the process of implementation of the 2001 Directive package: Cave outlines the failure to deal with the problems with bundling of the most valuable live football rights, and similar difficulties in conditional access and other markets. Marsden places the problem of competition in the context of the behaviour of market dominant players in hindering infrastructure competition and development. Until these problems are resolved, he argues, we will not arrive at a multi-channel utopia of choice. 2. Another interpretation of our question is to ask whether competition policy is appropriate in the media sector at all. Is competition policy actually the most suitable response to regulatory questions involving media and especially broadcasting? Woods and Gibbons challenge the economic policy orthodoxy that competition is the most appropriate tool to regulate European media, and examine some of its implications in recent regulatory policy. Woods, on a practical and insightful reading of the ECS Directives, and Gibbons, in a political analysis of OfCom's intentions and philosophy, question why economic analysis of the media should be the predominant theme, when democratic pluralism and cultural heritage are rival themes which do not necessarily complement competition analysis. Marsden challenges the potential of competition when the industry needs radical structural reshaping of existing monopolies before any effective competition policy can be introduced at the micro-level. Those that stress the fundamental shift to competition regulation tend to stress connectivity: Herbert Ungerer in this volume outlines the shift from analogue - the ''Hertzian age'' - to the ''age of nearly unlimited channel capacity''. The content problems on the other hand such as the key role that premium content plays in this world, and the enduring economies of scale in key quality production sectors including news, will in this vision be dealt with by the competition and access framework. Ungerer's view is that the rise not only of markets, but also of highly complex vertically integrated markets in broadcasting makes this new role for competition a necessity. Others, such as Gibbons and Woods in this volume, raise questions not only about the performance of competition policy in the service of narrow aims of increasing competition and promoting market entry. They also raise questions about the broader social welfare associated with broadcasting. Both these papers highlight the problems encountered where competition objectives, methods and terminologies come into play alongside other regulatory tools. The ECS Directives should have been implemented in most EU member states by mid-2003 with a process of market review based on those Directives implemented by national regulators by January 2005[2]. The Directives aimed not only to harmonise competition frameworks, but also with a nod to public service broadcasters, to ''promote the citizen interest''. The ''public value'' of broadcasting, a term used by the BBC and Ofcom, is referred to by Herbert Ungerer in this volume. When he argues that PSB will be ''indispensable for the transition'' this may suggest that the assumption beyond the transition is that it might not. However, exercising proper caution, he argues that regulation will be needed ''for some time to come''. Although the focus of these papers is the UK market, which has fallen behind in fixed line telecommunications development but still leads in the transition to digital terrestrial broadcasting (at least among larger European media ecologies), the lessons from the contributors are applicable to overall European policy. Ofcom is trying to regain the regulatory initiative with its strategic reviews into both public service broadcasting and fixed line telecommunications in 2004/2005, which will conclude in the late summer. How European media and competition policy responds to the changes in this highly strategic networked sector will be crucial to its emergence as an Information Society, and its response to the challenges of achieving the Lisbon agenda of i2010 and some parity with more advanced North American and East Asian information economies. Whether it can achieve this and maintain the European socio-cultural model depends in large part on its response to the enduring policy questions our contributors analyse. Previously published in: INFO, Volume 7, Number 5, 2005.

Forthcoming in Martin Moore & Damian Tambini (eds.) Dealing with Digital Dominance (OUP 2021) This chapter elaborates on challenges and emerging best practices for state regulation of electoral disinformation throughout the electoral cycle. It is based on research for three studies during 2018-20: into election cybersecurity for the Commonwealth (Brown et al. 2020); on the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) to regulate disinformation for the European Parliament (Marsden & Meyer 2019a; Meyer et al. 2020); and for UNESCO, the United Nations body responsible for education (Kalina et al. 2020). The research covers more than half the world’s nations, and substantially more than half that population, and in 2019 the two largest democratic elections in history: India’s general election and the European Parliamentary elections.

\"Net Neutrality\" is a very heated and contested US policy principle regarding access for content providers to the Internet end-user and potential discrimination in that access where the end-user's ISP blocks that access in part or whole. The classic regulatory action to prevent blocking of access was the decision by the US Federal Communications Commission to enforce non-discrimination against a small ISP that had been blocking Voice over Internet protocol service. The European Commission has proposed a more sophisticated approach in its review of the Regulatory Framework, adding interoperability and minimal service quality requirements to the interconnection requirements. Blocking and other forms of traffic shaping are controversial because, under current network management tools, it is a blunt tool. Regulatory monitoring of potential abuses, including strengthening investigatory capacity and transparency for end-users, is a solution that maintains maximum flexibility and policy choice, while ensuring that any abuses can be quickly detected and dealt with appropriately.