Mark <delirium@...> writes:
I don't see a distinction here, unless you're extremely naive about economics. Discriminatory pricing in any market can be done in two ways:
- have a "standard" rate and add a surcharge to certain disfavored
uses; or 2. have a "standard" rate and give a discount to certain favored uses. Most things done with #1 could be reconfigured to be done with #2 or vice-versa; it ends up as mainly a rhetorical and administrative difference. In either case, applied to data, it's varying pricing packet pricing based on whether the source of the packets is favored or disfavored by the ISP (in this case, Wikipedia is favored), which is precisely what net neutrality wishes to prohibit.
While a fine and principled view this is, its strict nature harms those we're most interested in reaching.
We really need to consider what we're after when talking about net neutrality. Offering free access to services to subscribers who don't have data plans (most likely because they can't afford them) is a much different thing than tiered levels of access for people who are paying for data. Assuming there's no conflict of interest from the telecoms themselves this is not actively harmful.
Note that for your points, neither 1 nor 2 is true, since there's no standard rate.
- Ryan