On 11/30/14, 9:49 AM, Ryan Lane wrote:
Providing free access to Wikipedia doesn't violate
the
concept of net neutrality. Access to Wikimedia is being subsidized by the
mobile companies. Access to other sources of information isn't being slowed.
There's no extra charge to access other sources of information.
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:
1. 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.
-Mark