[Advocacy Advisors] Wikipedia Zero and net neutrality

[Nathan]

On Thu, Aug 14, 2014 at 2:28 AM, John Mark Vandenberg <jayvdb at gmail.com>
wrote:

> On Wed, Aug 13, 2014 at 4:35 AM, Nathan <nawrich at gmail.com> wrote:
>
> > I think that would be great. But how do we make it work in a world where
> > most network infrastructure is owned by corporate entities? We have to
> work
> > within the paradigm that exists, and we must consider the knock-on
> effects
> > of our actions (such as promoting zero-rated content, or effectively a
> free
> > "slow lane" on the net) within this paradigm. But...
> >
> > Our mission is to provide a public service (a source for knowledge) to as
> > many people as possible; the Wikimedia movement is not dedicated to open
> > source content,
>
> err .. what?
>
> The mission of the WMF is almost solely dedicated to open source content!
> Or, as written "educational content under a free license or in the
> public domain".
> Which links to
> https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Free_content
>
>
>

I should have written open source software, true. But again, I think these
are great goals that are secondary for us, and we use them as tools in
achieving the primary goal. My point is that Wikimedia is not an advocacy
organization on behalf of net neutrality or many of these other worthy
goals, and we don't need to be out on the frontlines here or zealous in our
adherence to principles secondary to our actual mission.

That doesn't mean we should actively harm efforts that we generally agree
with, but I haven't seen much evidence that WP0 is actually being used to
undercut net neutrality. If that's happening, and the concern isn't purely
theoretical, I'd like to read about it and would appreciate any links.
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