On Dec 1, 2014 8:26 AM, "Mark" <delirium(a)hackish.org> wrote:
On 12/1/14, 7:11 AM, Milos Rancic wrote:
>
> There are some items -- abused or not for marketing purposes of the
> entities used for achieving interests of their shareholders -- which
belong
> to the corpus of common good. Like air and free
knowledge are, for
example.
If an ISP wanted to make *all* online free-knowledge resources exempt
from per-MB
data charges, that would be a much more interesting proposal.
It's the differential pricing between different sources of knowledge that I
find more troubling: why should a user pay more to access the Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy than Wikipedia? That's already attempting to
shape, via differential pricing, where online users get their information.
I agree that we should coordinate with the participants of the broader free
knowledge and free software movement and include their sites while
negotiating with mobile carries.
In the meantime this is what we have. Some corporations find that it's
clever PR idea not to charge for oxygen. That's not fully useful, but it's
quite essential. The next target is nitrogen, then we should take care of
other gases to make air completely free.
Counting the tendency initiated by WMF, net neutrality should move to
exclusively commercial or market terrain. I agree with that, but it's not
about us. Free content is common good and we are fortunate that mobile
providers will be soon forced to recognize that. (First it's about clever
PR, then it becomes the norm.)