It was not rhetorical, but you missed the point.
Net neutrality is an issue because service providers (can / may / often do)
become a local monopoly of sorts. Monopilies are not necessarily bad (how
many water and natural gas line providers can you choose from? how many
road networks?) but are generally felt to be bad if they enable the
monopolist to leverage themselves into other markets.
With regards to network neutrality, the problem is if the provider uses
their network monopoly to encourage the customers to use their (or their
preferred, with some sort of mutual advantage) search engine, email
service, etc., or discourage use of an alternative streaming media service,
and issues of the like.
Again: with Wikipedia, we do not have particular mutually beneficial
relationships which this would be encouraging, and the service provider
isn't really in a position to damage a Wikipedia competitor by doing this,
as far as I can see.
One can argue that even a free (to use, contribute, participate),
functionally monopolized, public service organization could benefit somehow
and the ISP could benefit somehow, and that the strict terms of the
particular law in question might come into play.
However, from a moral stance, the underlying goal of network neutrality
seems unharmed by this, in any realistic or reasonable manner. Your
interpretation seems excessively legalistic rather than factually or
morally based; while it may be that we should avoid even trivial legalistic
issues, we do not as a project make special efforts to comply with 180+
countries laws (other than copyright issues, and "free" definitions for
Commons, that I can see).
If you can explain a manner in which the underlying monopoly / advantage
issue IS a problem here, please point it out. If there is one that I do
not see then that forms a valid reason to reconsider.
On Mon, Aug 26, 2013 at 11:04 AM, Martijn Hoekstra <
martijnhoekstra(a)gmail.com> wrote:
On Aug 26, 2013 7:53 PM, "George William
Herbert" <
george.herbert(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
On Aug 26, 2013, at 10:42 AM, JP Béland <lebo.beland(a)gmail.com> wrote:
> 2013/8/26, Martijn Hoekstra <martijnhoekstra(a)gmail.com>om>:
>> On Aug 26, 2013 6:30 PM, "JP Béland" <lebo.beland(a)gmail.com>
wrote:
>>>
>>> "And if it is illegal or borderline according to, say,
>>> netherlands, swiss, or german law, is it appropriate to do it in
>>> countries where the law is less developed? "
>>>
>>> As said Kevin, it is impossible to respect the law of all countries
in
>>> every country (Wikipedia already
fails at that in its current state
by
>>> the way, with or without Wikipedia
Zero). So no we cannot "just
>>> abstain from any
>>> activity which might be perceived as illegal somewhere". After that,
>>> are you suggesting we should apply the laws of some "developed"
>>> countries to all countries and just ignore the others, this is way
>>> more morally wrong in my opinion.
>>>
>>> That being said, the law on net neutrality you cited applies to ISP,
>>> which Wikipedia Zero or the WMF isn't, so it doesn't apply to it.
>>>
>>> But of course, we as a community and the WMF should still keep high
>>> ethical and moral standards.
>>>
>>> JP Beland
>>> aka Amqui
>>
>> I do think there is some merit in the net neutrality argument, at
least
>> sufficiently so to be open to discussion
on whether or not offering
>> Wikipedia Zero is a good thing. It comes down to the question if we
believe
>> that having a walled garden variety of
internet consisting only of
>> Wikipedia for free, and with that undermining the market position for
a
>> paid, open internet is a net positive.
I'm inclined to say it is, but
the
opposite position, though counter-intuitive, is pretty
defensible.
-Martijn
"Imagine a world in which every single human being can freely share in
the sum of all knowledge. That's our commitment."
(
http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Vision)
I agree with you that it is good to discuss about it. The real
question we have to ask is what between Wikipedia Zero giving free
access to Wikipedia or avoiding that for net neutrality and not
undermining the market position for a paid open internet is getting us
closer to our vision.
JP Béland
aka Amqui
I believe a nonstandard interpretation of net neutrality is being used
here.
It's intended - as originally posed - to prevent a service provider from
advantaging their own bundled services and disadvantage independent
services via tariff structure.
What competitors for Wikipedia exist?
And to the extent there are such, are we associated with this provider in
some way
that causes us to be their service in some preferred way to their
or our benefit? What benefit do we get?
We get a wider readership, at least in the short term. Why else would we be
doing this? Or was the question rhetorical, as the answer was rather
obvious to me. If it was, I don't understand the point you were trying to
make with it.
Sent from Kangphone
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