On Mon, Aug 26, 2013 at 10:13 PM, George Herbert george.herbert@gmail.comwrote:
It was not rhetorical, but you missed the point.
Net neutrality is an issue because service providers (can / may / often do) become a local monopoly of sorts. Monopilies are not necessarily bad (how many water and natural gas line providers can you choose from? how many road networks?) but are generally felt to be bad if they enable the monopolist to leverage themselves into other markets.
Of course there is a desire to leverage the Foundation into other markets. Wikivoyage is one example, Wikidata is another. The latter in particular is envisaged to play a central role as a global information hub.
The other day, Jimmy Wales said, "We are a start-up in stealth mode."[1]
With regards to network neutrality, the problem is if the provider uses their network monopoly to encourage the customers to use their (or their preferred, with some sort of mutual advantage) search engine, email service, etc., or discourage use of an alternative streaming media service, and issues of the like.
How is this not happening when one service is free and the others are not? Wikipedia is well known (and quite highly regarded, rightly so) for providing up-to-the-minute coverage of breaking news. When something like the Japan earthquake happens, or someone like Michael Jackson dies, many people check Wikipedia to see the latest update. That means they do not go to, say, CNN. Wikipedia may *cite* CNN, but it inevitably takes away some of CNN's page views.
Again, IIRC, Jimbo proudly said at Wikimania that Wikipedia gets more page views than the world's top-20 or so newspapers together. And he suggested that he might like to set up a semi-crowdsourced journalism project to compete against traditional news outlets.
Again: with Wikipedia, we do not have particular mutually beneficial relationships which this would be encouraging, and the service provider isn't really in a position to damage a Wikipedia competitor by doing this, as far as I can see.
See above.
One can argue that even a free (to use, contribute, participate), functionally monopolized, public service organization could benefit somehow and the ISP could benefit somehow, and that the strict terms of the particular law in question might come into play.
However, from a moral stance, the underlying goal of network neutrality seems unharmed by this, in any realistic or reasonable manner. Your interpretation seems excessively legalistic rather than factually or morally based; while it may be that we should avoid even trivial legalistic issues, we do not as a project make special efforts to comply with 180+ countries laws (other than copyright issues, and "free" definitions for Commons, that I can see).
The question is whether monopolisation of information is desirable. I prefer pluralism. Monopolies sooner or later end up not being in the public's best interest.
If you can explain a manner in which the underlying monopoly / advantage
issue IS a problem here, please point it out. If there is one that I do not see then that forms a valid reason to reconsider.
Here is one that makes me uneasy: Wikimedia projects are particularly vulnerable to manipulation – look at how long Qworty was allowed to do what he did,[2] look at the plastic surgery (and likely sockpuppeting) case presently at AN/I,[3] the Arnie Draiman story,[4] the Klee Irwin[5] or Monsanto[6] articles, or indeed any of a good number of arbitration cases commenting on neutrality, BLP violations etc.
In light of that vulnerability, the idea of making crowdsourced Wikimedia projects stewards of the world's information, to the detriment of professionally published and edited news and reference sources, seems to have some obvious drawbacks. And the higher the stakes are, the more concerted efforts at manipulation will be. In Wikimedia's case, such efforts can be made anonymously.
News reporting and information providers have always been biased. But it is good to be able to read both The Guardian and The Telegraph. Monopolisation means that you get only one or the other. And while we know the biases of The Guardian or The Telegraph, and can compensate for them, with Wikimedia information the consumer never knows the bias of the person who last edited a page or data record.
Andreas
[1] http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/wikipedia-wants-you...
[2] http://www.salon.com/2013/05/17/revenge_ego_and_the_corruption_of_wikipedia/
[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Wikipedia:Administrators%27_notice...
[4] http://www.haaretz.com/news/features/.premium-1.530285
[5] http://wikipediocracy.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Klee-Irwin.gif
[6] http://wikipediocracy.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/monsanto.gif
On Mon, Aug 26, 2013 at 11:04 AM, Martijn Hoekstra <
martijnhoekstra@gmail.com> wrote:
On Aug 26, 2013 7:53 PM, "George William Herbert" < george.herbert@gmail.com> wrote:
On Aug 26, 2013, at 10:42 AM, JP Béland lebo.beland@gmail.com wrote:
2013/8/26, Martijn Hoekstra martijnhoekstra@gmail.com:
On Aug 26, 2013 6:30 PM, "JP Béland" lebo.beland@gmail.com wrote:
"And if it is illegal or borderline according to, say, netherlands, swiss, or german law, is it appropriate to do it in countries where the law is less developed? "
As said Kevin, it is impossible to respect the law of all countries
in
every country (Wikipedia already fails at that in its current state
by
the way, with or without Wikipedia Zero). So no we cannot "just abstain from any activity which might be perceived as illegal somewhere". After
that,
are you suggesting we should apply the laws of some "developed" countries to all countries and just ignore the others, this is way more morally wrong in my opinion.
That being said, the law on net neutrality you cited applies to
ISP,
which Wikipedia Zero or the WMF isn't, so it doesn't apply to it.
But of course, we as a community and the WMF should still keep high ethical and moral standards.
JP Beland aka Amqui
I do think there is some merit in the net neutrality argument, at
least
sufficiently so to be open to discussion on whether or not offering Wikipedia Zero is a good thing. It comes down to the question if we
believe
that having a walled garden variety of internet consisting only of Wikipedia for free, and with that undermining the market position
for
a
paid, open internet is a net positive. I'm inclined to say it is,
but
the
opposite position, though counter-intuitive, is pretty defensible.
-Martijn
"Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share
in
the sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment." (http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Vision)
I agree with you that it is good to discuss about it. The real question we have to ask is what between Wikipedia Zero giving free access to Wikipedia or avoiding that for net neutrality and not undermining the market position for a paid open internet is getting
us
closer to our vision.
JP Béland aka Amqui
I believe a nonstandard interpretation of net neutrality is being used
here.
It's intended - as originally posed - to prevent a service provider
from
advantaging their own bundled services and disadvantage independent services via tariff structure.
What competitors for Wikipedia exist?
And to the extent there are such, are we associated with this provider
in
some way that causes us to be their service in some preferred way to
their
or our benefit? What benefit do we get?
We get a wider readership, at least in the short term. Why else would we
be
doing this? Or was the question rhetorical, as the answer was rather obvious to me. If it was, I don't understand the point you were trying to make with it.
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