An Introduction to Internet Governance, 5th Edition

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The infrastructure and standardisation basket available at http://www.canlii.org/en/ca/scc/doc/2004/2004scc45/2004scc45.html [accessed 15 March 2012]. 61

‘SABAM (the Belgian collective society - Société belge des auteurs, compositeurs et éditeurs) wanted the ISP Scarlet to install a generalised filtering system for all incoming and outgoing electronic communications passing through its services and to block potentially unlawful communications. In First Instance, while refusing the liability of the ISP, the Brussels Court concluded that the SABAM’s claim was legitimate and that a filtering system had to be deployed. Scarlet appealed and the case was referred to the Court of Justice of the European Union. In its decision, the Court of Justice ruled that a filtering and blocking system for all its customers for an unlimited period, in abstracto and as preventive measure, violates fundamental rights, more particularly the right to privacy, freedom of communication and freedom of information. In addition, it breaches the freedom of ISPs to conduct business.’ For more information, see Scarlet v SABAM: a win for fundamental rights and Internet freedoms EDRi-gram newsletter No 9.23, 30 November 2011. Available at http://www.edri.org/edrigram/number9.23/scarlet-sabam-winfundamental-rights [accessed 15 March 2012].

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Williams F (2006) ISPs should be liable for spam, says UN report, Financial Times. Available at http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/09b837c0-ae02-11da-8ffb-0000779e2340. html#axzz1l2VhnlN0 [accessed 30 January 2012].

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Shannon V (2006) The end user: Junk payout in spam case - Technology - International Herald Tribune. Available at http://www.nytimes.com/2006/04/12/technology/12ihtPTEND13.1523942.html [accessed 15 March 2012].

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In computer networking, peering is a voluntary interconnection of administratively separate Internet networks for the purpose of exchanging traffic between the customers of each network. The pure definition of peering is settlement-free or ‘sender keeps all’, meaning that neither party pays the other for the exchanged traffic; instead, each derives revenue from its own customers. Peering requires physical interconnection of the networks, an exchange of routing information through the Border Gateway Protocol (BGP) routing protocol and is often accompanied by peering agreements of varying formality, from ‘handshake’ to thick contracts. (Source: Wikipedia)

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Tier 2 Internet Bandwidth Providers are usually called ICP (Internet connection points) or Internet gateways.

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Two related cases were mentioned in Spaink and Hardy (2002) Freedom of the internet, our new challenge. Available at http://www.spaink.net/english/osce_internetfreedom. html [accessed 15 March 2012]. In the first case, legal action was launched against a web page with questionable Nazi content hosted by Flashback in Sweden. The courts decided that the page did not violate Swedish anti-Nazi laws. Nevertheless, one committed antiNazi activist mounted a strong campaign against Flashback, thereby putting pressure on Flashback’s ISP, Air2Net, and the main backbone operator MCI/WorldCom. Under pressure from this campaign, MCI/WorldCom decided to disconnect Flashback in spite of a lack of any legal basis for doing so. Flashback’s attempts to find an alternative provider were unsuccessful, since most of them were also connected through the backbone operated by MCI/WorldCom. The second case took place in the Netherlands. A small Dutch ISP provider, Xtended Internet, was disconnected by its US-based upstream provider under pressure from the Scientology lobby.

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Andrew Odlyzko views the question of pricing and architecture on the Internet from a historical perspective. Identifying the thread in the pricing policy from the pricing of transportation systems in the ancient world, he links with the current Internet pricing policy. For more information, please consult: Odlyzko A (2004) Pricing and Architecture 81


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