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Hillhacks

What Activists Don't Understand About Net Neutrality (Looking Network Economics & Human Rights)

A Talk by Pranesh Prakash, at Main Conference

Abstract

In this talk, Pranesh Prakash of CIS will explain what network economists see as the root causes of net neutrality issues, and why those who approach the issue simply from the perspective of “openness” of the Internet and “innovation” misdiagnose the problem. Further, he will show how complicated human rights analysis of the issue is by looking at past precedents at the Supreme Court.

Main Description

In this talk I will explain one can analyse of Net Neutrality using the following framework:

1. Causes 2. Conditions 3. Effects 4. Responses

In particular, I will focus on (1) and (4). When it comes to (3), I will focus especially on the human rights analysis.

Speaker

Pranesh Prakash is a Policy Director at — and was part of the founding team of — the Centre for Internet and Society, a Bangalore-based non-profit that engages in research and policy advocacy. He is also the Legal Lead at Creative Commons India, and was till recently an Access to Knowledge Fellow at the Yale Law School's Information Society Project, and on the Executive Committee of the NCUC at ICANN. In 2014 he was selected by Forbes India for its inaugural “30 under 30” list of young achievers, and in 2012 he was nominated as an Internet Freedom Fellow by the U.S. government.

His research interests converge at the intersections of technology, culture, economics and the law. His current work focusses on interrogating, promoting, and engaging with policymakers on the areas of access to knowledge (primarily copyright reform), 'openness' (including open government data, open standards, free/libre/open source software, and open access), freedom of expression, privacy and Internet governance. He is a prominent voice on these issues, with the newspaper Mint calling him “one of the clearest thinkers in this area”, and his research having been quoted in the Indian parliament. He regularly speaks at national and international conferences on these topics.

He has a degree in arts and law from the National Law School in Bangalore, and while there he helped found the Indian Journal of Law and Technology, and was part of its editorial board for two years.

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