Discrimination, liberty, and innovation

The Internet has been a loose federation of networks allowing a variety of local discriminations to persist, in order to set off the conceptual problems of moving vital networking functions into the end hosts. And yet, those discriminations have been largely without a loss of generality at the narrow common ground of the IP layer. Discriminations have been ranging from simple access restrictions, to legal usage restrictions, to more or less elaborate application and location discrimination. Today's equilibrium of is tilted towards the latter category, and this has prompted concerns about potentially adverse effects on second-order properties of the internet --- most notably innovation. We argue with reference to von Hayek (Rules and Order, volume 1 of: Law, Legislation and Liberty, 1973) that a narrow conception of innovation has been well compatible with the market and technical non-neutral realities of the internet. Rather that fighting or prohibiting discrimination patterns, we should focus on furthering fairness and efficiency of the Internet --- and thus its rules of just conduct.