Hi Marc,
your "arguments" aren't really factual, but rather emotional. But that's fair enough.
"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@uberbox.org:
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
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