Hi mike,
That pipes are dumb is fundamental for having cheap Internet access. Most contracts for Wikipedia zero are done with telcos which either want to catch up in getting more reach in the population, or those which have a higher price for data. Not allowing them to use wikipedia to influence competition and justify higher prices is helping to bridge the digital divide. I do not find it fair that people in financially less favored countries have to pay more per gigabyte traffic in USD than people in rich countries. This gets even worse if one compares percentage of income spent for a gigabyte.
The only well balanced answer out of Wmf I saw up to now clearly showing the conflict this offering is in is the excellent WOP statement from gale.
it is easy to design a solution which is compliant to net neutrality: if a person is reading wikipedia 200 MB traffic are free, any content. I d consider it a fundamental failure of the wmf legal department, especially yana, that they are not capable or willing to negotiate such contracts.
Rupert On Dec 1, 2014 4:14 PM, "Mike Godwin" mnemonic@gmail.com wrote:
Tim Landscheidt writes:
I think on the contrary Wikipedia Zero illustrates nicely why net neutrality is so important: Wikipedia Zero favours solely Wikipedia (und sister projects), while contradicting or simply other opinions and resources bite the dust.
I'm not following your reasoning here. I don't see any sense in which Wikipedia Zero is contradicting other opinions or resulting in resources that "bite the dust." Wikipedia Zero is not rivalrous in any economic sense that I'm aware of.
This mainstreaming, forming a monopolistic cabal on all things information is why I am a strong proponent of net neutrality. The ease with which information can be shared nowadays should be used so that more people provide their views, not more people consume one view.
So, you'd rather have users pay by the bit for Wikipedia on their mobile devices? This does not serve Wikipedia or its users in the developing world. The chart I use here shows you what the cost of broadband access is in the developing world, which relies primarily on mobile platforms.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/article/20141201000351-209165-wikipedia-zero-...
And I have severe doubts that Wikipedia Zero fulfils actual needs from the perspective of sustainable development.
But you haven't said what those severe doubts are. Having spent the last couple of years working on access projects in the developing world, I haven't encountered an alternative model that doesn't result in higher prices for subscribers. As the chart I reproduce indicates, in some places in the developing world, the annual cost of broadband access exceeds the average per capita income. I do not see how it serves Wikipedia's mission to require individual users to pay so much for Wikipedia access.
--Mike
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