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Wikipedia's "Complicated" Relationship With Net Neutrality
HughPickens.com writes Brian Fung writes in the Washington Post that Wikipedia has been a little hesitant to weigh in on net neutrality, the idea that all Web traffic should be treated equally by Internet service providers such as Comcast or Time Warner Cable. That's because the folks behind Wikipedia actually see a non-neutral Internet as one way to spread information cheaply to users in developing countries. With Wikipedia Zero, users in places like Pakistan and Malaysia can browse the site without it counting against the data caps on their cellphones or tablets. This preferential treatment for Wikipedia's site helps those who can't afford to pay for pricey data — but it sets the precedent for deals that cut against the net neutrality principle. "We believe in net neutrality in America," says Gayle Karen Young, adding that Wikipedia Zero requires a different perspective elsewhere. "Partnering with telecom companies in the near term, it blurs the net neutrality line in those areas. It fulfills our overall mission, though, which is providing free knowledge."
Facebook and Google also operate programs internationally that are exempted from users' data caps — a tactic known somewhat cryptically as "zero rating". Facebook in particular has made "Facebook Zero" not just a sales pitch in developing markets but also part of an Internet.org initiative to expand access "to the two thirds of the world's population that doesn't have it." But a surprising decision in Chile shows what happens when policies of neutrality are applied without nuance. Chile recently put an end to the practice, widespread in developing countries, of big companies "zero-rating" access to their services. "That might seem perverse," says Glyn Moody, "since it means that Chilean mobile users must now pay to access those services, but it is nonetheless exactly what governments that have mandated net neutrality need to do."
Facebook and Google also operate programs internationally that are exempted from users' data caps — a tactic known somewhat cryptically as "zero rating". Facebook in particular has made "Facebook Zero" not just a sales pitch in developing markets but also part of an Internet.org initiative to expand access "to the two thirds of the world's population that doesn't have it." But a surprising decision in Chile shows what happens when policies of neutrality are applied without nuance. Chile recently put an end to the practice, widespread in developing countries, of big companies "zero-rating" access to their services. "That might seem perverse," says Glyn Moody, "since it means that Chilean mobile users must now pay to access those services, but it is nonetheless exactly what governments that have mandated net neutrality need to do."
Is "data against cap" the same as net neutrality? I don't see the relationship.
I come here for the love
As long as you do it in a non-discriminatory manner (all non-profits (schools, libraries,etc) )
It seems like in this way wikipedia is partnering with the ISP to reduce the cost for the user.
What net neutrality is trying to prevent (as I understand it) is that Google has to pay extra for it's content to be delivered to a customer, while the customer is already paying for that data to be delivered to him.
Essentially, here wikipedia is subsidizing the users internet connection when connecting to wikipedia.
Whereas net neutrality is about not charging companies extra for delivering data to users who already paid.
And what if some competitor of Wikipedia comes in. What if they believe that Wikipedia has some huge bias and are spreading propaganda, and all they want to do is set teh record straight. Well they can't do that very effectively when Wikipedia has already made deals with the Internet companies.
Free information for all is great and all, but Wikipedia does not have a monopoly on that and making their service free ups hurts all other sources of information.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
Exactly. But they don't.
The problem is that what FB, Google are currently presenting as "aid" or "development" for underprivileged regions is 1) restricted to their own services and 2) likely to be shut down in the near future on their whim.
If they are serious about development, that's great, but it seems to me there are far less self-interested avenues for them to do so.
Meanwhile these zero-rate programs are just another attempt at re-defining The Internet to be what they have on offer, and probably end up getting in the way of more general availability of the web.
Gosh, thanks. That must be why the other ships call me Meatfucker -- GCU Grey Area (Eccentric)
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No it is not fine with net-neutrality. Setting up one class of users (non-profits) as opposed to other sets of users is violating the core idea of it. Sorry you cant have it both ways. Either all packets are equal (which is frankly stupid given that people want QoS) or some packets are privileged for X reason. Then we have debates about reasons.
If you want to spread internet access to developing countries, how about making internet for free for poor people?
Instead Wiki, Google and Facebook went on the narcistic train and think that those services are more important then any other service.
I personally agree that Wikipedia should be free to access to everyone, but I can recognize that other people might disagree and other people think other services are more important. How about somebody in China makes a competing Wikipedia, or have Wikipedia now the monopoly on online knowledge.
but it is nonetheless exactly what governments that have mandated net neutrality need to do."
Yeah, ensuring the same playing field for all, that what governments *should* do. How about Wiki petition the Chile government to make a free internet for all, and for all services?
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To me, this is an excellent example of what goes wrong without Net Neutrality. Wikipedia: I can understand and agree with paying to float data caps to share their information. However, Facebook and Google (and any other company using "zero rating") are abusing their power. If a true Facebook or Google competitor could be built within these countries natively, they would be at a severe disadvantage because of the superpowers they're going up against.
I don't think that is disputable. The trouble is how to vet the "Wikipedias" that the public could greatly benefit from and the "Facebooks and Googles" that are using their money to have an unfair advantage over competition?
It is just as bad as any tiered internet.
Just suppose only CNN could afford to offer a Zero-cap and Fox News couldn't find a sponsor for the same, so much humour would be lost on these poor conservatives with a cap!
I am convinced that Internet should be treated as a utility similar to roads, you pay for the infrastructure and there can be a % charge on your data use but all are treated equal.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
It's easy to see how much more valuable access to Wiki is to the average dotter (probably not so much for the Facebook-addicted) and every government would have a differing perspective what was good for their citizens.
Happiness in intelligent people is the rarest thing I know.
Ernest Hemingway
Every good law has counterpoints. Traffic signals prevent me from driving through the intersection even when there are no other cars there. Assault laws mean you can't punch someone who talks on their phone at the movies. The right to a trial means we can't just execute people we know are guilty.
One of the other examples I've been hearing lately is about Citizen's United. They say overturning it or passing contradictory legislation could hamper Steven Colbert, or limit the ACLU or EFF. Well, yes, it might. But that would be better, overall, than what we have now.
The goal is not to have laws that capture every nuance. Government is a blunt weapon that must operate in a non-discriminatory fashion. Special cases exist that show the friction in every law. The objective is not for every special case to be efficient, but for the law overall to be efficient.
Last mile providers colluding with incumbents to provide preferential access to consumers harms competition in content. Competition is good in the long run, even for the things we like that may appear to be harmed in the short run. There are natural limitations to competition on carriage, we should not extend those competition limitations to making discriminatory deals with content providers.
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Yeah, but nobody talking about net neutrality wants all packets to be equal. They want all destinations to be equal, i.e. they want traffic from Netflix to have roughly the same likelihood of reaching its destination as traffic from the cable company's VOD service.
Subsidizing traffic doesn't violate net neutrality, because it doesn't affect the delivery of data, only the cost to the end user. Even if the Internet were regulated in precisely the same way as telephone, subsidized traffic would still be allowed, because it is fundamentally no different than a 1-800 number or a collect call.
So using that as an excuse to argue against net neutrality represents a very fundamental misunderstanding about what net neutrality is about. It isn't about preventing content delivery companies from using the tools at their disposal to deliver content better and faster; it's primarily about preventing content delivery companies who also own last-mile infrastructure from having an unfair competitive advantage over content delivery companies that don't.
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We are not going to get 'net neutrality' in every country, even if it was federally regulated (or passed by congress) There are always going to be some limitations in other parts of the world, just by the distances and bottlenecks in the structure.
(well maybe we could get the new congress and senate to repeal the speed of light limit, along with the laws of thermodynamics.)
It's hard to say, imagine a world where your data cap is zero, overage is $100/meg, and certain sites don't count. How is that not the same problem as one where providers are being extorted for money if they want people to see their data? And why does it become any different if the data cap is now 500 meg instead of zero? or the overage is $5/meg instead of $100? Adjust the numbers any which way you want, but the whole idea that one company can pay to get access to the customer while another may not be able to afford the same access is where the problem lies, and allowing this paves the way to a future more like cable TV than like a free internet.
... a petition to demand Wikipedia sign on to Net Neutrality. You heard it on Slashdot first.
Do they?
I, for one, would rather have net neutrality than QoS.
And I guess most people do not want QoS, they want enough bandwith and low enough latency in general so QoS does not even come into play.
Real life is overrated.
Part of me agrees with you, but then I think about how much real-world useful information is available on wikipedia - stuff that can make a significant difference to the life of an intelligent person for whom even a $30 monthly internet bill would represent a large slice of their income. Or how valuable, in a business sense, social networking services such as Facebook can be for impoverished community trying to pull themselves up by their bootstraps. And I think that maybe the humanitarian benefits in such a situation outweigh the damage done by anti-competitive business practices. In certain situations. For now.
--- Most topics have many sides worth arguing, allow me to take one opposite you.
Maybe I'm not understanding the full picture, but data caps seems like a farce to me; at least in the U.S. They put the data caps in place, claiming their networks cannot handle the load, then make some of the most data-hogging apps such as streaming music exempt from them? What am I missing here?
Is "data against cap" the same as net neutrality? I don't see the relationship.
I live in one of the two countries where a pilot program from Internet.org was tested, namely, that traffic to and from Facebook (later also extended to WhatsApp) doesn't add to your data cap. The way it works is that the mobile operator inspects the traffic (nothing too deep, just checks whether the connected endpoint IPs belong to a whitelist) and if the traffic comes from FB or WhatsApp, it's "free" (as it does not use your quota). This is of course discrimination by origin, and it goes against net neutrality. I myself was always FOR net neutrality, but I'm aware this kind of initiatives (which by the way is mandated by the ISP regulation in my country) would suffer if N.N. is fully enforced.
I don't have a sig.
and promotes more total and more entrenched network-effect monopolies.
If you came up with a way better peer to peer movie sharing site that had better quality and paid the actors and director directly through a tip jar which also funded their next productions (just throw the business process patent my way now, I won't even bother applying :-), you woudn't have a fair chance to compete, because the Flixazon competitor's product would be free for the users and you couldn't get into the market.
And because their's was free to end users, network bandwidth would be swamped with use of their service, leaving only low quality fits and starts of movie streaming for you.
Where are we going and why are we in a handbasket?
I want my games and voip to be low latency, but not necessarily high bandwidth. I want my streaming content to be very high bandwidth but I don't care if it's got even a multi-second latency.
Paying taxes to buy civilization is like paying a hooker to buy love.
Net Neutrality, just like freedom of speech, or any other broad principle, has some downsides. But ultimately the good vastly outweighs the bad.
Yeah, but nobody talking about net neutrality wants all packets to be equal. They want all destinations to be equal.
If travelling to one destination does not count against your data cap, then that destination is not on equal footing.
Subsidizing traffic doesn't violate net neutrality, because it doesn't affect the delivery of data, only the cost to the end user.
It does violate net neutrality, because it affects the cost of delivery of data to and from the end user.
What Wikipedia is doing here is a good thing by itself, but if the practice were to become commonplace, it's something that would be very bad.
It's not an ideal. It's not even optimal. There are arguments for imbalance. Net neutrality is a solution to a problem in the US- that of a small cartel having undue control over the internet.
There are reasons you might want to have a two tier internet, and even if there aren't it's not impossible that we might want them in the future. Most countries there's enough competition for this to self regulate to a degree.
That is
The worst haiku I have ever seen in my life
Winter
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
You can't expect them to make a decision one way or the other. Have you never heard of WP:NPOV?
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
"We have a complicated relationship to it. We believe in net neutrality in America," said Gayle Karen Young, chief culture and talent officer at the Wikimedia Foundation. But, Young added, offering Wikipedia Zero requires a different perspective elsewhere. "Partnering with telecom companies in the near term, it blurs the net neutrality line in those areas. It fulfills our overall mission, though, which is providing free knowledge."
Let me state things clearly. These {facebook|wikipedia|whatever}.zero campaigns are a direct and unequivocal attack on Net Neutrality. They are the brainchild of some very smart, cynical people who know exactly how insidious the whole idea is, and whose job it is to set Open Data people against Open Networks people.
This is not an unintended consequence. This is the consequence.
My part of the world consists pretty much entirely of developing nations, and when we discussed these zero initiatives, we pretty quickly came to the conclusion that having offline versions of wikipedia (commonly available) was a more desirable thing than having a zero-cost version of it mediated by our friendly neighbourhood telco.
And Facebook zero was scoffed at when it was touted as a social Good.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
Well sure but that world of effectively infinite bandwidth with low latency is not going to happen at least not soon. Latency has for many routes been going up slightly as traffic increases. For the next decade or two QoS matters.
What does QoS on the router do for you? The main source of latency is the middle miles. Your router doesn't even get you through all of the last mile.
Which is precisely the same thing as saying that traffic priority should not be dependent upon endpoint—i.e. that all destinations are treated equally—but with about forty-two extra words.
Network operators are a pipe to content providers, so any definition of net neutrality that ignores the content providers is fundamentally missing the whole point of the network. The purpose of net neutrality is to ensure that your link provider cannot artificially distort traffic in a way that makes it impractical to use arbitrary services, forcing you to the services of their choosing. Manipulating network link pricing is just one mechanism for distorting traffic, and is quite possibly the least interesting, least effective way to do so.
Your argument is illogical. There is no difference between a content provider paying for the user's data usage and lowering the price of the content provider's service by enough money that the user can pay for a connection with a higher data cap on his or her own. Thus, paying for the user's usage does not violate any fundamentally sound concept of net neutrality in any meaningful way. Admittedly, in the case of Wikipedia, they're taking it one step farther and charging a negative fee for their service, which is a little odd, but if that's the way they want to spend their donations, so be it.
Now taken to the extreme—unusably low data caps combined with provider-paid exceptions—could potentially be a net neutrality issue, if only because it would be harmful to free content providers. However, that scenario is pretty darn unlikely. There are too many dozens of free, moderately high-traffic content providers for that to happen in the foreseeable future. If that changes—if all the world's websites consolidated themselves into just a handful of server farms—then it would make sense to reevaluate things. Unless and until that happens, however, it makes little sense to create laws in an attempt to prevent problems that are purely hypothetical. Doing so adds extra regulatory burden without solving actual problems, and worse, gives businesses more time to look for ways around those regulations, ensuring that by the time they are actually needed, they don't work.
And more importantly, none of the proposed solutions for net neutrality that I've seen would prevent this sort of "collect calling" anyway.
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If every other website on the Internet besides Netflix and Amazon pays a fee to be included in that "premium" quota, then yes, it is consistent with Net Neutrality. It is also about as likely as Santa Claus getting the Tooth Fairy pregnant.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
But it doesn't. The cost is still the same, regardless of who is paying it. What it does is shift the burden, at the request of one of the parties. That's not the same as shifting the burden at the request of someone who isn't a party to the communication (your ISP). And changing the cost of the communication isn't really any different from changing the cost of the content. If Apple (for example) chooses to pay your bandwidth bill for downloading a movie, they could lower the cost of the movie by a few bucks and it would have exactly the same effect on the customer in practice. In fact, they would probably be better served by lowering the price, because customers see the price of the movie, and probably pay for their bandwidth bill using auto-debit. :-)
Either way, the TCP/IP equivalent of toll-free calling certainly isn't in the same category of wrongness as your ISP limiting the rate of traffic in a way that makes your communication impossible or impractical, and the reason most of us want net neutrality is to prevent that sort of abuse, not to prevent any slight distortion of pricing.
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
I can't speak to Facebook, et. al., but please don't lump Wikipedia Zero into your attack above, it's a very different animal. WP Zero is the brainchild of some very smart, idealistic people whose primary mission in life is to spread as much free information around the globe as possible, and that in turn is just a facet of a deeper ideal that information is empowering, and lack of information is oppressive.
Whose brainchild, specifically? I'm very interested in knowing. Because I think you'll find that the idea did not originate in Wikipedia, but that it was presented to them by others.
I know some of the individuals involved in the WP Zero movement from the get-go. These are the in-the-trenches activists. They physically went to these developing nations to examine the situation because they saw a disturbing trend in their own analytical data: the most oppressed people on the planet, who had the most to gain from free information, were not taking advantage of Wikipedia's free information as much as expected.
I hope you'll forgive my cynicism, but 'physically going' to the developing world teaches very little indeed about the broader truths of living in poverty. I say this having lived the last 11 years in a Least Developed Country, and having worked for half a generation with a parade of well-intended people who, to put it bluntly, haven't got a fucking clue, but who suck up all the oxygen in the room, making it impossible to get real, meaningful work done.
Do I sound bitter? Yes. I believe I've earned that right. Does that diminish my determination to work on real issues? Not one iota.
What they found on the ground was that in many of these developing nations, school-aged children and young adults had access to cell phones (but usually not tablets or home computers), and these cell phones had browsers and data capabilities, but the carriers are charging an arm and a leg for bytes of data over the cellular network, and that's why they're not surfing Wikipedia (or anything else much either).
Yes, and instead of helping to fight this phenomenon through better policy and changed attitudes among the global institutions, what we get instead is people perpetuating the problem by empowering the very telcos who prey on those children.
Let's be perfectly clear about this: asking telcos to make a special exception for one or two services is probably the worst possible response to the situation. It's short-sighted, it generates little real benefit, and worst of all, it creates the impression that people are actually doing something, when they're doing less than the minimum needed to move the development markers.
You can defend these people all you like. I still maintain that:
a) They were misguided and wrong; and
b) The basic idea was inspired and promoted by a number of very cynical individuals to a bunch of very naïve (if well-intentioned) people with little meaningful experience in actual development work.
Crumb's Corollary: Never bring a knife to a bun fight.
Wikipedia like The Koch brothers understand that to enforce net neutrality is to be marxist.
What are you talking about. If I connect a user in New York city to a server outside Los Angeles there is 3000 miles of physical distance. All of that has to be covered, copper or fiber.
Yes. They can't sustain a variable 50% link utilization without jitter.
Which means the network middle miles you are on are under provisioned. That will change. You ain't paying what that costs to provide.