Mark <delirium@...> writes: While a fine and principled view this is, its strict nature harms those we're most interested in reaching. We really need to consider what we're after when talking about net neutrality. Offering free access to services to subscribers who don't have data plans (most likely because they can't afford them) is a much different thing than tiered levels of access for people who are paying for data. Assuming there's no conflict of interest from the telecoms themselves this is not actively harmful. Note that for your points, neither 1 nor 2 is true, since there's no standard rate. - Ryan

On 12/1/14, 7:11 AM, Milos Rancic wrote: 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. -Mark

On Sun, Nov 30, 2014 at 9:49 AM, Ryan Lane &lt;rlane32(a)gmail.com&gt; wrote: i find this article very good. and also gale gives a quite balanced and reasonable statement. ryan, the sentence from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality is: "... should treat all data on the Internet equally..." if you could elaborate a little how paying for one source, and not paying for another is "equal"? rupert

On 11/30/2014 11:08 AM, MZMcBride wrote: That's perfectly true, but because the traditional definition of "net neutrality" (and, by extension, the definition of what violates it) is by and large overly simplistic and unrealistic. Factors that should be taken into account but aren't include the nature of the preferential treatment, its exclusivity (or lack thereof), conflict of interest, and competitive landscape. One would be hard pressed to argue that giving non-exclusive free access to a public good to a population in need is harmful (beyond slippery slope arguments), just as it would be clear that a media conglomerate giving exclusive free access from an ISP they own to their media is clearly wrong. What makes Wikipedia Zero clearly okay, IMO, is that *any* provider is welcome to approach us and set it up; and we require nor demand any sort of exclusivity. Whether they chose to do so is obviously driven by their business objectives (publicity, competitive advantage, and so on) -- but their business decision affects them and only them. They cannot hinder their competition from doing so or not as they will, nor gain an advantage they cannot get as well. So it's clearly neutral in the "equally available" sense of the term. And it remains neutral in the "competition" sense of the term since they are welcome to zero-rate any other service they wish alongside ours. And, finally, it's also neutral from a conflict-of-interest point of view. The Wikimedia Foundation (and movement, for that matter) has no stake in the competitive landscape of telco providers, and and they have no interest in Free online encyclopedias. They gain nothing by favoring us over other educational resources, and we favor no provider over another (albeit our immediate efforts do seem directed mostly at those where the population would benefit the most - which is reasonable). So yeah, this is probably not "net neutrality" as it is generally defined - but I would argue it means that the definition itself is inadequate. -- Marc

2-3 short remarks to your arguments, Marc: First it's kind of interesting that net neutrality which is very clear in its definition becomes "overly simplistic and unrealistic" and "inadequate" the moment it collides with an organisations own interests. Isn't that quite an coincidence? ;) Principles of a free and open web are to be acknowledged by Websites with good causes the same way they are to be respected by Websites with more commercial causes. Wikipedia Zero is a brand product, in its last consequence it belongs to the WMF, it is not public good. Second, well, of course all providers are happy to use Wikipedia (Zero) as a door opener to get the customer used to different treatment of data (which is a clear violation of net neutrality). Why? Well, they all know, that they are selling "dump pipes" and the "dump pipe"-Business (incl. mobile) needs to develop new way of making money out of it. So therefore, they have to establish a world where different data can be treated differently (money-wise) - and here Wikipedia comes in well-handy. It's an established brand with maximum of "positive karma", run by the people, for the people - it's a wet dream for every marketing executive of any provider. Using Wikipedia Zero isn't primarily for making a different against the competition, but to get people used to unequal handling of data. Therefore Wikipedia Zero, apart from all the good intentions it was started with, was to reconsidered. Net neutrality is under attack globally. Every country where net neutrality will be already diminished in an early state of broad (mobile) use is lost for a really free and open web. This shouldn't be something supported by the movement. Of course, we have to think about good and practical ideas how to spread free knowledge, but we shouldn't put our cause in collision with a much more deeper principle of a web where the rules of the market aren't superior to everything. best regards Jens Best 2014-11-30 18:14 GMT+01:00 Marc A. Pelletier &lt;marc(a)uberbox.org&gt;rg>:

On 01/12/14 06:10, Todd Allen wrote: But the pipes are fundamentally not dumb -- there is a complex arrangement of transit prices and peering, and the companies that built transoceanic links want to recoup their investment. What you are saying is that you want the ISPs to provide the necessary cross-subsidies so that the pipes will appear to be dumb, to the end user. The question for any regulated cross-subsidy should be: what is its social benefit? If certain telcos are allowed to choose, it will be cheaper to access Wikipedia than cheezburger.com. Is that appropriate? What social benefits will it provide if we regulate to ensure that they are the same price? Vertical integration between content providers and ISPs is probably harmful to competition. The obvious way to deal with that is to split those companies. But even in a competitive marketplace, from a cost perspective, it totally makes sense that certain content providers will continue to be cheaper and/or faster, just because of geography. Wikipedia is naturally slow and expensive for many ISPs, because we don't use a big CDN. If ISPs sold services on a cost-plus basis, you would expect websites delivered via CDN to be cheaper than websites that are located at a single site, geographically distant from their users. -- Tim Starling

On 01/12/14 15:24, svetlana wrote: That may be part of it. Also, we have unusual technical requirements for freshness of content and prompt removal (revision deletion etc.), and an ops team with a desire for independence. -- Tim Starling

This comparison is quite useful and got rather popular: «For all the arcana in telecommunications law, there is a really simple way of thinking of the debate over net neutrality: Is access to the Internet more like access to electricity, or more like cable television service?». http://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/11/upshot/a-super-simple-way-to-understand-t… Tim Starling, 01/12/2014 05:21: I doubt the worldwide internet backbone is (significantly) more complex or expensive than the electricity grid. Opinions on this vary. Historically, for instance, electricity grids have been rather fragmented and have been unified only with strong regulations or nationalisations. Only now regulators are seriously taking care of supranational grids. Certainly we don't want to go backwards, because it usually takes decades to progress. Nemo

On 11/30/2014 01:12 PM, Jens Best wrote: At least for me, it is not: I have always been opposed to statements of the form "All X is good/bad" because such statements are always, by definition, overly simplistic and unrealistic. "Net neutrality" sounds like a good idea at first glance because it superficially resembles the ill-defined and subtle desirable objective of "prevent the oligarchies that owns the communication media from effectively controlling and/or affecting what can be accessed/done in order to further their interests at the detriment of people". "Net neutrality" as currently defined is an alluring concept because - as Westerners - we percieve its putative effect as "make everything uniformly inexpensive to level the playing field for users and content providers". /We/ don't care that Wikipedia is as expensive to use as Facebook because the cost to either is marginally neglectable. -- Marc

I'm finding this highly principled conversation fascinating to read - I'm genuinely learning a lot about the different arguments (both philosophical and practical) used to support or critique Wikipedia Zero. What a diverse and highly informed group of people this list contains! :-) 'net neutrality' in the way that it is described in the US and, with appropriate competition and regulation this is not been a problem. e.g.: "Net neutrality is an honourable aspiration, but the Australian internet While I genuinely support the idealism of the net-neutrality debate, and it makes sense in certain jurisdictional contexts (notably the USA), I am won-over by the arguments that have been made here about how WikipediaZero is non-rivalrous. As Marc P. put it earlier: When looking at the practical reality of a high-school in a poorer district of South Africa specifically asking for greater access to WP from their local telecom company[1], it's hard to remain stuck on purely-principled debates. That is a *real world* group of of people that is *specifically* asked for easer access to Wikipedia - *of course *we should support that. This is *not *to discount the importance of principles - and a lot of good ones have been mentioned here - but I'm not going to argue against a school-group in a poorer country wanting "free-access to the sum of human knowledge" on their mobile phones because of a political fight in richer countries about heavy-data usage on high-speed broadband. -Liam [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3j-ktiYTTds

Hi all, As Gayle mentioned in her email, the article in the Washington Post did not represent an official position on net neutrality from the Wikimedia Foundation, or how we understand Wikipedia Zero. I wanted to provide some background that does. Wikipedia Zero is designed to empower people who cannot afford to access information to get basic access to knowledge and participate in the creation of knowledge. It’s widely understood that barriers like poverty and limited internet connectivity are two major blockers preventing people around the world from full access to knowledge, and there are a number of groups working to address these issues as part of the broader Access to Knowledge (A2K) movement. Wikipedia Zero is a powerful tool for accessing knowledge, but it is not the solution to the whole problem. It’s one tool in a toolbox. Real change needs to address issues such as cost barriers, literacy, and access to infrastructure. That’s why we’re also developing a more coordinated effort within a broader A2K coalition to collectively address the systemic challenges. While Wikipedia Zero serves broader A2K objectives, we are mindful that zero-rating can be a challenging issue for net neutrality advocacy. In response, we’ve developed ten operating principles <https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Zero_Operating_Principles> to make sure that the initiative remains a free knowledge base with operations that are transparent to users.[1] They are intended to deter Wikipedia Zero from being used to introduce other zero-rating initiatives that don't follow the operating principles. We developed these principles after extensive consultation with net neutrality advocates about their concerns regarding commercial zero-rating arrangements, and believe they are strong and useful guidance for advocates to distinguish free access to Wikipedia from other zero-rating programs. We’ll continue working with policymakers on net neutrality and welcome your constructive suggestions in this regard. We believe the vision of Wikimedia — the sum of all knowledge, available to all — and the values of an open internet are entirely consistent and in the global public interest. We’re also learning from your comments and welcome more input on how the Wikimedia community can support the A2K movement. Best, Yana [1] https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Zero_Operating_Principles -- Yana Welinder Senior 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. In other words, IANYL <https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IANAL>. For more on what this means, please see our legal disclaimer <https://meta.wikimedia.org/wiki/Wikimedia_Legal_Disclaimer>.

Hi Kim, Ofcos I see there are many reasons which prompted them to make this move. Firstly and majorly been that they have lost their earning in calls and traditional SMSes because of VoIP and messaging applications like whatsapp. ​Not sure for now if they will end up charging additionally for Wikipedia, ​ as it in now way impacts their business. Regards from Mumbai, Karthik Nadar. On Sat, Dec 27, 2014 at 2:46 PM, Kim Bruning &lt;kim(a)bruning.xs4all.nl&gt; wrote:

* Kim Bruning wrote: Quoting, Facebook, Twitter, WhatsApp and Wikipedia become “the Internet” for the users of mobile data supported by “zero rating” plans, because accessing these services doesn’t cause users to hit the data caps applied by the carriers, and in many cases the plans don’t require the user to sign up for mobile data at all. http://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Wikipedia_Zero_Operating_Principles Wikipedia Zero cannot be sold as part of a bundle. Access to the Wikimedia sites through Wikipedia Zero cannot be sold through limited service bundles. It seems pretty clear to me that users of Wikipedia Zero must pay a non-trivial amount for "mobile data" above and beyond normal telephony services, even if they only access "zero-rated services", otherwise it is a limited service bundle which we are lead to believe is forbidden. (It is also possible the intent of the requirement above is that it is entirely okay to "sell Wikipedia Zero" through limited service bundles so long as an operator does not offer even more limited services; in that case the phrasing is grossly misleading.) I assume the Foundation closely monitors offerings of operators it has made an agreement with to ensure access to Wikipedia Zero is never sold as part of a limited service bundle. Could the relevant records please be released? -- Björn Höhrmann · mailto:bjoern@hoehrmann.de · http://bjoern.hoehrmann.de D-10243 Berlin · PGP Pub. KeyID: 0xA4357E78 · http://www.bjoernsworld.de Available for hire in Berlin (early 2015) · http://www.websitedev.de/