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-w…
On Fri, May 30, 2014 at 12:43 AM, Jens Best <jens.best(a)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(a)uberbox.org>rg>:
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