After limited protest/outrage in communities like /r/india, the news finally hit big when a comedy group AIB decided to make a video explaining what Net Neutrality is: https://youtu.be/mfY1NKrzqi0 and then it finally hit mainstream media. Amid pressure from everywhere, Flipkart finally withdrew from the Airtel Zero deal which would have been a blow to Net Neutrality in India.
Of course, next step was Internet.org and similar initiatives, which on paper sound like a fantastic idea until you look deeper and begin to see the NN violation problem. This is welcome news indeed. Btw, this was Zuckerburg's response when posed this question: https://i.imgur.com/PAwf6e3.png "Some connectivity is better than no connectivity, hence the violation of NN is justified"
Last few days have been a mixture of anxiousness and excitement. :)
Bullshit. Facebook cannot become AOL (which is what all the platforms desperately want to become) unless they can vertically integrate with the network.
They cannot currently do that in the US and most of the global north because of antitrust and the growing support and knowledge of net neutrality (thanks, Tim[1]).
But maybe they can get away with it in the global south ... plenty of market share there ...
Lots of factors at play here. Till a few months ago, India didn't even have a competition commission. We have no anti-trust laws.
You also have to understand the history of telecom in India, especially the Value-Added-Services on mobile. They killed startups ( http://rashmiranjanpadhy.com/2015/04/12/airtel-kills-startup... ), they activated services without users' consent and so on. Can you imagine how big this fraud was in India where 40% of the people are not even literate? It was plain and simple fraud.
Everyone and his uncle learned to curse the telcos in that era. Now they're coming for the web, disparagingly calling it "Over-The-Top services".
> Facebook cannot become AOL (which is what all the platforms desperately want to become) unless they can vertically integrate with the network.
Maybe you could also interpret the backlash against Zero/AOL as an indication that customers do not want corporations regulating their access to information. So perhaps network carriers should think twice about aiming for a captive audience with "vertical integration".
This is their plan exactly. However, we have been able to get 6 out of 39 brands to pull their support back. Hopefully, tomorrow we will see even better support!
> Btw, this was Zuckerburg's response when posed this question: https://i.imgur.com/PAwf6e3.png "Some connectivity is better than no connectivity, hence the violation of NN is justified"
That is not a literal quote. Here is the actual quote from that image -
"For people who are not on the internet though, having some connectivity and some ability to share is always much better than no ability to connect and share at all. That's why programs like Internet.org are important and can co-exist with net neutrality regulations."
That video is wonderful. Anyone know of a video that outlines the importance of net neutrality as it pertains to America? This video covers the core idea excellently, but some of the details are very specific to India and their struggle with neutrality. I'd love to have something to show people that think Neutrality is some government overstep. But I feel like they'd be too distracted by the fact that it's not specifically discussing the new American laws (which is stupid, I know).
actually the problem comes from the profit seeking companies. The original intention was provide help to the poor people who can't afford it. I remember wikipedia and some other non profit companies were initially interested in providing this for free. As far as I know aircel still provides it for free. It not just in India though many countries like Russia Indonesia also offer something. The situation changes when you have profit seeking companies trying utilise the situation. Cleartrip response exposes this perfectly.
The precedent already exists, at least here in Australia. Luckily it hasn't caused too many problems thus far, but whether that is merely an outlier remains to be seen.
Popular support for net neutrality rallied at the last minute by comedians, eh? Comments sent en masse to a regulatory body? Sounds familiar! Hopefully the result will be the same.
In some ways I agree with Zuckerburg here, except that I don't think Facebook (or any other privately held company) should be the one to do it. An initiative to bring the Internet to people who cannot afford it or are so remote they are out-of-touch with modern economies should be done by the public sector and/or charities.
Besides, I fail to see how this sort of thing would even be technically feasible. If you can provide some connection to the Internet, you can provide connections to all of the Internet, yes?
I was against this zero movement from the start. I'm really happy to see that it is started to be seen as anti-NN. Wishing for Turkey Operators to pull out too.
Today was phenomenal. The campaign has sent more than 620,000 email to TRAI (Indian equivalent of FCC) who wanted public opinion on whether Internet (or as they say, "Over-the-top services") should be regulated or not.
Cleartrip showed courage in being the first one to opt out of Internet.org. A few more soon followed.
One thing to note is that there's no EFF like organisation and this is mostly done by volunteers [1].
This has also been largest response to any consultation by Indian government having received 600K+ responses through campaign sites[2][3]. Previous highest was 20000 mails in 1999.
[1]: Disclaimer: I am associated and helping the group.
The original consultation paper also had similar figures. I don't remember correctly but telcos are expected to lose $400 billion from call and SMS decline by 2020. However, they are expected to earn $1.2 trillion from data growth.
Having no organization like EFF is something that needs to be fixed. Depending on volunteers for such activity may not always be feasible in long term fights like this. #Sec66A fight took 3 years of dedication by many individuals to reach some conclusion and we can be sure many such fights will come in future. https://wethegoondas.in/ is such issue which still hasnt got enough attraction. Are there efforts in forming a non-profit organization which will work on such issues on long term basis. Crowd funding for the same when the issue in limelight seems to be the best thing if we have committed people coming forward to work and lead the organization.
> Having no organization like EFF is something that needs to be fixed.
I think the closest organization to EFF that India has is the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS). Though, the aim of CIS isn't about digital civil rights like EFF. It is more to study Internet related policy with respect to India. Many times, CIS does take similar stands to that of EFF would given the situation.
In long term, yes this needs to be fixed. However, this time, the voluteers kept most of the stuff low profile. As of now, I am not aware of any non-profit organization like this. Maybe this is something that can be done after this debate settles down.
I'd say Facebook's moves here are more sinister than Microsoft's (or Apple's - they do the same thing). In the MS/Apple cases, it's simply about pushing product. In FB's case it's about pulling up the ladder after they've climbed it (balkanized Internet means dominant services like FB stay dominant).
After the fwd.us debacle and now this, why should anyone trust Zuck and Facebook in terms of "philanthropy"?
It really isn't surprising for anyone who has read his history that he is not a very moral person.
He made the precursor to Facebook by hacking servers and stealing people's pictures.
Then he lied to the Winklevoss twins that he would build their website for them to stall them for as long as he could so he could release Facebook before them.
What is the difference between this service and the free busses at the airport that only take you to a certain hotel or car rental offices or say cheap chartered air flights sponsored by a casino and of course packaged with the casino stay? I consider myself 100% pro-NN but I'm having a hard time resolving these analogies.
Internet.org is offering a free service to people who would otherwise have no access to the Internet. Net neutrality on a free service in a developing country is an entirely different issue than net neutrality in developed countries with high Internet access rates.
I see similarities between this and GMO in developing countries, where rich, well fed people in developed countries oppose gmo in countries that can't feed themselves because "corporations evil".
People for whom Internet access is a normal part of society are in an ivory tower on this issue.
If internet.org was really about providing internet access to people who otherwise can't access it, what is stopping Facebook from making it open? In current form lets say internet.org allows access to 100+ websites. I assume speed will be slow anyways. So make it open. Speed and data cap will be a deterrent for people wanting to abuse the platform (and things like torrent etc can be blocked anyways)
But I guess that will not serve facebook's interests. As an Indian, I actually prefer no internet at all compared to a moderated list that I am allowed to access. The way things are moving - Govt. has to act to provide internet in India for the last mile consumers anyways. With curated access there is a danger of wanting to maintain status quo because that kind of access - checks a tickbox.
I believe the price is stopping it. Getting a telco to give you massively reduced rates on a few domains is drastically different than paying for internet access for everybody. Also, please correct me if I am mistaken, but I.org doesn't prevent you actually paying for full internet access?
You should read Cleartrip's statement when they exited internet.org today. Especially, this bit: "So while our original intent was noble, it is impossible to pretend there is no conflict of interest (both real and perceived) in our decision to be a participant in Internet.org."
The protests are not against free data at all. Internet.org could have very well given 100megabytes/month free. They could support it with ads, which is perfectly neutral, if they wanted.
Saying that "the poor don't/can't make the right choice for themselves so let us chose for them" - now, THAT IS ivory tower thinking.
I am happy that the service providers in India will continue forth expanding into poor and under-serviced areas without a large subsidy to free them of cost-benefit decisions.
I'm sure they will operate in the best interest of the public.
While I think open access to the Internet probably should probably be considered a human right, it's not on the same tier in Maslow's pyramid as the right to not starve.
As for opposing GMOs -- one needs to consider why certain countries "can't feed themselves", and if maybe food cartels might have something to do with it.
For the record, I'm deeply sceptical to GMOs for two reasons: 1) I don't think allowing patent on life/genes to be a good idea -- and find the idea that you're not allowed to plant crops you buy (eg: not being legally allowed to plant a potato, because you didn't buy it "with intent to plant", but paid the "lower" price for "intent to consume") -- or not being able to because of second generation being sterile -- 2) I worry about the pesticides, the interplay between evolution (super bugs), monoculture etc.
[ed: To add: I think the choice between starve like now, and be forever beholden to foreign corporations and their patents is a false choice. Similarly, I think no Internet like now, and be beholden to Facebook is a false choice too.
Setting up local (eg: village-size) mesh-nets, allowing intranets to form, and then slowly connecting those to the bigger Internet, should be entirely viable. Allow for free text (xmpp), voice (sip etc) as well as browsing (maybe initially favouring usenet groups, as that is resilient and works well on low bandwidth links) -- and allow it to grow organically. No need to try and bootstrap straight to the first-world, balkanized Internet of lobotomized, centralized, content-silo-oriented services...]
I think you're going on an irrelevant tangent with GMOs; the OP simply used the argument as a comparison not to prop up a soapbox for you to recite your GMO views.
The Indian regulator's egregiously biased consultation paper (which sparked this protest) has been exposed on reddit as being written by the telecom industry's lobbyist:
Apparently they even doctored an alleged quote from The Economist, inserting text that was not in the original article, to make it more biased towards operators.
Can someone give me a good argument as to why no internet is better than free limited internet with facebook + google search + wikipedia?
If Facebook will provide free limited internet (and as always, you can pay regularly to get full internet access) for a lot of basic service, it only seems reasonable they will package their facebook and messenger apps as well.
On the whole, do you think internet.org is a bad, negative effort?
Because it's the opposite of net neutrality. It's picking winners and losers. If Facebook is free, but you have to pay for local home grown Indian social networking sites, well then how will those businesses ever compete?
Personally, I'm torn. I'm all for free access to Wikipedia. The problem is, not all of the world's knowledge exists there, so you therefor are only giving people a taste of knowledge.
With Facebook and Google, you are choosing the silos for people, and making it very very difficult for competitors. And without competition, localized monopolies tend to stagnate, which ultimately hurts consumers.
I see the argument for competition, but I don't think that freedom is as important as the freedom of communication and education.
Imagine someone in the slums of India (there are tens of millions in these conditions) wanting to learn more about irrigation. Is it more important that they have no limited internet for the sake for competition, or limited internet?
Funny thing is, people could probably use Wikipedia to fulfil all the functions that Facebook fulfils for users (not the function it fulfils for Facebook/advertisers).
I could see pages used as public group walls, profile pages as personal walls, "discuss"-pages as discussion. Only thing missing is "private" chat/pages -- but a browser-plugin with support for OTR/GPG (encrypt to many recipients...) could fix that, and be way more secure/private than Facebook...
This is not a black and white scenario as you have characterized or how Mark Z has characterized.
As more and more people come out of poverty, they will be able to access basic services such as water, electricity and data plans. There is no reason why data plans is the only service among the three services that needs to be free. If it is free, it is the government that should provide it rather than private corporations whose single interest is profit.
Now, people who are super poor may not be able to pay for electricity let alone will access free internet.
Either way, FB and bunch of other companies want to profit out of the people who are uninformed and these people may end up buying only services and products from those limited free websites that they get from free internet.
It also looks like the telecom services might take advantage of this and partner with some companies provide selective access to some websites and the biggest losers of this kind of partnership could be companies that dont have enough capital to pay each of the telecom providers to be in their "basic package"
Actually, if they only provide Facebook services, one might argue that they are not providing Internet connectivity at all; they're providing Facebook.
The only reason why Mark Zuckerberg is bold enough to make irrational statements about the benevolence of Internet.org is the lack of such strong opposition. I hope India becomes a model for the world in this issue.
Readit News
Of course, next step was Internet.org and similar initiatives, which on paper sound like a fantastic idea until you look deeper and begin to see the NN violation problem. This is welcome news indeed. Btw, this was Zuckerburg's response when posed this question: https://i.imgur.com/PAwf6e3.png "Some connectivity is better than no connectivity, hence the violation of NN is justified"
Last few days have been a mixture of anxiousness and excitement. :)
Bullshit. Facebook cannot become AOL (which is what all the platforms desperately want to become) unless they can vertically integrate with the network.
They cannot currently do that in the US and most of the global north because of antitrust and the growing support and knowledge of net neutrality (thanks, Tim[1]).
But maybe they can get away with it in the global south ... plenty of market share there ...
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Wu#The_Master_Switch
You also have to understand the history of telecom in India, especially the Value-Added-Services on mobile. They killed startups ( http://rashmiranjanpadhy.com/2015/04/12/airtel-kills-startup... ), they activated services without users' consent and so on. Can you imagine how big this fraud was in India where 40% of the people are not even literate? It was plain and simple fraud.
Everyone and his uncle learned to curse the telcos in that era. Now they're coming for the web, disparagingly calling it "Over-The-Top services".
Maybe you could also interpret the backlash against Zero/AOL as an indication that customers do not want corporations regulating their access to information. So perhaps network carriers should think twice about aiming for a captive audience with "vertical integration".
That is not a literal quote. Here is the actual quote from that image -
"For people who are not on the internet though, having some connectivity and some ability to share is always much better than no ability to connect and share at all. That's why programs like Internet.org are important and can co-exist with net neutrality regulations."
http://www.theopeninter.net
Does he really not see the enormous liability that a precedent like this can create?
Zuckerberg is providing free internet to millions.
Besides, I fail to see how this sort of thing would even be technically feasible. If you can provide some connection to the Internet, you can provide connections to all of the Internet, yes?
Cleartrip showed courage in being the first one to opt out of Internet.org. A few more soon followed.
Tomorrow could be amazing!
Edit: Very similar to US, comedians played a pivotal role in popularizing this issue. Here is the video that went viral: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfY1NKrzqi0
This has also been largest response to any consultation by Indian government having received 600K+ responses through campaign sites[2][3]. Previous highest was 20000 mails in 1999.
[1]: Disclaimer: I am associated and helping the group.
[2]: http://savetheinternet.in/ People can submit response here.
[3]: http://netneutrality.in/ Info site.
Edit: Corrected URL #3.
I think the closest organization to EFF that India has is the Centre for Internet & Society (CIS). Though, the aim of CIS isn't about digital civil rights like EFF. It is more to study Internet related policy with respect to India. Many times, CIS does take similar stands to that of EFF would given the situation.
http://cis-india.org
internet.org isn't about the internet at all - it's more a proprietary network similar to Compuserve or AOL.
It's the same brand of philanthropy that Microsoft practices when it offers discounted Windows and Office to schools.
After the fwd.us debacle and now this, why should anyone trust Zuck and Facebook in terms of "philanthropy"?
He made the precursor to Facebook by hacking servers and stealing people's pictures.
Then he lied to the Winklevoss twins that he would build their website for them to stall them for as long as he could so he could release Facebook before them.
I see similarities between this and GMO in developing countries, where rich, well fed people in developed countries oppose gmo in countries that can't feed themselves because "corporations evil".
People for whom Internet access is a normal part of society are in an ivory tower on this issue.
But I guess that will not serve facebook's interests. As an Indian, I actually prefer no internet at all compared to a moderated list that I am allowed to access. The way things are moving - Govt. has to act to provide internet in India for the last mile consumers anyways. With curated access there is a danger of wanting to maintain status quo because that kind of access - checks a tickbox.
The protests are not against free data at all. Internet.org could have very well given 100megabytes/month free. They could support it with ads, which is perfectly neutral, if they wanted.
Saying that "the poor don't/can't make the right choice for themselves so let us chose for them" - now, THAT IS ivory tower thinking.
I'm sure they will operate in the best interest of the public.
As for opposing GMOs -- one needs to consider why certain countries "can't feed themselves", and if maybe food cartels might have something to do with it.
For the record, I'm deeply sceptical to GMOs for two reasons: 1) I don't think allowing patent on life/genes to be a good idea -- and find the idea that you're not allowed to plant crops you buy (eg: not being legally allowed to plant a potato, because you didn't buy it "with intent to plant", but paid the "lower" price for "intent to consume") -- or not being able to because of second generation being sterile -- 2) I worry about the pesticides, the interplay between evolution (super bugs), monoculture etc.
[ed: To add: I think the choice between starve like now, and be forever beholden to foreign corporations and their patents is a false choice. Similarly, I think no Internet like now, and be beholden to Facebook is a false choice too.
Setting up local (eg: village-size) mesh-nets, allowing intranets to form, and then slowly connecting those to the bigger Internet, should be entirely viable. Allow for free text (xmpp), voice (sip etc) as well as browsing (maybe initially favouring usenet groups, as that is resilient and works well on low bandwidth links) -- and allow it to grow organically. No need to try and bootstrap straight to the first-world, balkanized Internet of lobotomized, centralized, content-silo-oriented services...]
GMOs are not giving a curated list of seeds away for free to make the farmers dependent on them.
GMOs sell their product like every body else in the free market.
https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/32o00z/proof_the_tra...
Apparently they even doctored an alleged quote from The Economist, inserting text that was not in the original article, to make it more biased towards operators.
If Facebook will provide free limited internet (and as always, you can pay regularly to get full internet access) for a lot of basic service, it only seems reasonable they will package their facebook and messenger apps as well.
On the whole, do you think internet.org is a bad, negative effort?
Personally, I'm torn. I'm all for free access to Wikipedia. The problem is, not all of the world's knowledge exists there, so you therefor are only giving people a taste of knowledge.
With Facebook and Google, you are choosing the silos for people, and making it very very difficult for competitors. And without competition, localized monopolies tend to stagnate, which ultimately hurts consumers.
Imagine someone in the slums of India (there are tens of millions in these conditions) wanting to learn more about irrigation. Is it more important that they have no limited internet for the sake for competition, or limited internet?
I could see pages used as public group walls, profile pages as personal walls, "discuss"-pages as discussion. Only thing missing is "private" chat/pages -- but a browser-plugin with support for OTR/GPG (encrypt to many recipients...) could fix that, and be way more secure/private than Facebook...
As more and more people come out of poverty, they will be able to access basic services such as water, electricity and data plans. There is no reason why data plans is the only service among the three services that needs to be free. If it is free, it is the government that should provide it rather than private corporations whose single interest is profit.
Now, people who are super poor may not be able to pay for electricity let alone will access free internet.
Either way, FB and bunch of other companies want to profit out of the people who are uninformed and these people may end up buying only services and products from those limited free websites that they get from free internet.
It also looks like the telecom services might take advantage of this and partner with some companies provide selective access to some websites and the biggest losers of this kind of partnership could be companies that dont have enough capital to pay each of the telecom providers to be in their "basic package"
I don't know, but I can conceive of it as a possibility that Internet.org would hinder the propagation of NN "real internet" providers.
Eventually these companies will work towards making internet difficult to access so their own sites can have the monopoly.
Internet isn't impossible to provide eventually every one will have access. But to do it this way will create problems which takes decades to solve.
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