Regarding the news from Chile, the QZ article is pretty misleading regarding the decision taken by the Subtel. I've been talking with some people that have been more involved in net neutrality discussions in Chile and they say that the decision doesn't forbid zero-rated programs in general. It just says that the current promotions were illegal, considering certain social networks got preferential access (namely, Twitter, Facebook and WhatsApp) over other services, breaking net neutrality and free market rules. The decree says specifically that arbitrary discrimination between services of "similar nature" is forbidden.
Technically, Wikipedia Zero can still be applied in Chile (if mobile providers agree), but there shouldn't be a preferential treatment compared to those platform "of similar nature". Certainly, it would be interesting to know what might be considered as the competition of Wikipedia and the rest of the market (is there a competing website? can we consider all educational resources as competition?). As far as I know, there were some internet pre-paid plans in the past that had several educational websites available for free, including Wikipedia, but I'm not sure if they are still available.
The full decree (in Spanish) is available here: http://www.subtel.gob.cl/transparencia/Perfiles/Transparencia20285/Normativa...
2014-06-01 3:57 GMT-04:00 Yana Welinder ywelinder@wikimedia.org:
As the Quartz article from Jens's email discusses, the decision in Chile is very unfortunate.[1] It's an example of when net neutrality — which is an important principle for the free and open internet — is poorly implemented to prevent free dissemination of knowledge. Although Wikipedia Zero is not yet available in Chile, it is a country of interest for the program, so we are thinking about what options are available in light of this decision.
That said, I would like to clarify a couple of points about the implementation of Wikipedia Zero that were raised in this thread:
- The newer Wikipedia Zero partnerships have provided the full Wikipedia
sites (m.wikipedia) free of data charges for some time now and we are phasing out the reduced version (zero.wikipedia) from the older partnerships.
- While earlier Wikipedia Zero partnerships only zero-rated Wikipedia, we
are working on getting carriers to zero-rate all the Wikimedia projects.
- We are also working on getting editing functions zero-rated, though
there are some technical hurdles for that right now. But, eventually, Wikipedia Zero will not only make knowledge more accessible, but also empower more people in the Global South to contribute to the projects.
- Finally, WMF does *not* pay carriers to zero-rate Wikipedia under
Wikipedia Zero. Carriers zero-rate the sites because they want to make a commitment to access to knowledge as a corporate social responsibility.[2] I believe this question has already been answered in this thread since Scott raised it earlier, but I just wanted to confirm that Wikipedia Zero does not involve payments.
Hope this is helpful!
Best, Yana
[1]
http://qz.com/215064/when-net-neutrality-backfires-chile-just-killed-free-ac... [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corporate_social_responsibility
-- Yana Welinder Legal Counsel Wikimedia Foundation 415.839.6885 ext. 6867 @yanatweets https://twitter.com/yanatweets
NOTICE: As an attorney for the Wikimedia Foundation, for legal/ethical reasons I cannot give legal advice to, or serve as a lawyer for, community members, volunteers, or staff members in their personal capacity. For more on what this means, please see our legal disclaimer https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Legal_Disclaimer.
On Sat, May 31, 2014 at 5:52 AM, Jens Best jens.best@wikimedia.de wrote:
News from Chile
Chile’s Subsecretaria de Telecomunicaciones just decided that zero-rating is a promotion tool which is against net neutrality. Therefore all zero-rated-related marketing deals have to stop at the 1st of June. According to a WMF-list in Chile no provider has been offering Wikipedia Zero. Also I'm not sure if this dismissal reflects only on zero-rated offers where payment of money is done by the content provider. So it
still
needs to be checked how/if this decision is influencing our intent to spread Wikipedia Zero.
All in all it shows that we have to improve our arguments in a broader scale if we don't want to get caught by promoting Free Knowledge" but in fact 'only' pushing the use of a reduced version of one (very well known and superb) website which stand exemplary for this idea. We are caught
in a
dilemma which imho only can be solved when reaching out to more partners which stand for Free Knowledge and Free Education. Not sure how this
could
work, but fortunately that never was a reason to stop.
News from Chile:
http://qz.com/215064/when-net-neutrality-backfires-chile-just-killed-free-ac...
http://www.subtel.gob.cl/noticias/138-neutralidad-red/5311-ley-de-neutralida...
Overview Wikipedia Zero:
https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Mobile_partnerships
2014-05-30 6:59 GMT+02:00 rupert THURNER rupert.thurner@gmail.com:
participation is another aspect. wp zero allows free reading. it does not allow free participation. write emails, search for references, download and adjust code. just as a side note, the oxford university stated: until 2012, europe, i.e. 10% of the worlds population, produced 50%+ of wikipedias geotagged contents [1].
imo it is not necessary to terminate wikipedia zero, it "just" needs to be negotiated differently: if a telco wants to support our case, give every person 200mb free internet access. unrestricted. or, if we need to break some law like now or be in the grey area, we could support additionally a viral model, like: if somebody is a wikipedia contributor (as defined in election criteria, or like in ghana, 3 edits per week), give them 2 GB free internet traffic for free, unrestricted.
if the WMF legal department would be able to negotiate _this_ e.g. in nigeria or india, i would have _big_ respect for them, and with pleasure say in future: you guys are worth every cent of the 5 million we pay you a year.
[1]
http://geography.oii.ox.ac.uk/?page=the-geographically-uneven-coverage-of-wi...
On Fri, May 30, 2014 at 12:43 AM, Jens Best jens.best@wikimedia.de wrote:
"Giving access to educational resources" isn't the same statement as "zero-rating wikipedia" - If the mobile providers are willing to give
more
open educational ressources (incl. video) a zero-rated access to the
people
THEN you can say "giving access to educational ressources for free" -
right
now it 'only' means "giving free access to wikipedia" (which is great
and
awesome for the wikipedia and the people).
Let's not be naive on the point that mobile providers have different motivations for zero-rating services as the movement has for fighting
for
free knowledge around the globe.
In the beginning it was mainly zero.wikipedia (text-only), now more
and
more providers giving access to m.wikipedia (some-pictures), but
where
are
their restrictions and what will these restrictions mean for further development on free knowledge and free education? - And above that
what
will be our argument when other free knowledge/free education
organisations
don't get zero-rated? When it becomes clear that the marketing scoop
of
giving "free wikipedia" wasn't at all meant as the start of giving
free
access to free knowledge around the world?
I'm all in to make all open knowledge and all open educational
ressources
zero-rated available around the globe - but I'm also quite sure that
this
is not the deal the mobile providers are looking forward to. I prefer
to
stay critical and not giving up an important principle like net
neutrality
just because some mobile providers made a nice marketing deal with us
which
seemed to serve our own goals in short-term, but isn't reflected
enough
on
its deeper implications on a free web and its liberated use.
best regards
Jens Best
2014-05-29 23:31 GMT+02:00 Marc A. Pelletier marc@uberbox.org:
On 05/29/2014 05:24 PM, Jens Best wrote:
A noble cause doesn't necessarily make breaking an important principle
unproblematic.
In my opinion, if the definition of the principle makes the
obviously
perverse conclusion that a beneficial thing like giving access to educational resources for free to the world's least economically fortunate people "a bad thing", then the definition is obviously
broken.
It could be the time to start talking globally about an in-the-future exit strategy on the surely noble initiative e.g. when certain milestones are reached in
participating
countries/regions.
So you're telling me that there is a point where we can say "Oh, you can't afford access? Too bad." and it's not a bad thing because
some
/other/ metric has been reached?
-- Marc
-- Jens Best Präsidium Wikimedia Deutschland e.V. web: http://www.wikimedia.de mail: jens.best http://goog_17221883@wikimedia.de
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