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India's Net Neutrality Campaign Picks Up Steam, Sites Withdraw From Internet.org
First time accepted submitter arvin (916235) writes The Huffington Post reports on prominent Indian websites withdrawing from Facebook's internet.org initiative. The net neutrality debate in the country has focused on zero-rating, where ISPs offer a free data plan which provides access to a set of websites that pay to be included. Internet.org provides free access to Facebook, Bing, Wikipedia and a few other websites. Another similar service, Airtel Zero, lost its flagship partner as e-commerce company Flipkart withdrew following a social media backlash.
Net neutrality activists believe that as these plans proliferate, access to the open internet will become extremely expensive or unavailable, innovation will slow as for startups are prevented from reaching the market, and the competitive consumer ISP market will be replaced with a cartel negotiating against internet companies. In a campaign similar to that in the US, over 630,000 Indians sent responses to their regulator through the website savetheinternet.in.
Net neutrality activists believe that as these plans proliferate, access to the open internet will become extremely expensive or unavailable, innovation will slow as for startups are prevented from reaching the market, and the competitive consumer ISP market will be replaced with a cartel negotiating against internet companies. In a campaign similar to that in the US, over 630,000 Indians sent responses to their regulator through the website savetheinternet.in.
can't be the problem.
a free room in a spacious jail with lots of useful amenities.
On the plus side, I can see how it would be appealing to people without a lot of money who only care about the services offered.
On the minus side, it's still a jail.
There are lots of people in India too poor to pay for internet, that this system could link them in.
Is it really worse for them to have a gated internet than no internet at all?
So what if "normal" internet becomes a little more expensive, that's fine when anyone can get limited access to the internet for free.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
... where this question will be decided. If the f***books of the world succeed there they will know they can get away with it, and will double down their efforts.
TMobile provides free streaming to websites such as Pandora without counting that data as part of your data plan (see. This is being done for almost a year and no one is protesting.
The problem with the "paid-by-advertising" model is the advertisers only want people with money. People who can't pay for internet access are "not in their demographic".
Anyone who prefers to view the internet as a wealth-enabling resource rather than a wealth-draining private hunting ground can see through this facade in an instant.
Bent, folded, spindled, and mutilated.
I'm obviously a grouchy old man, but if all these damn companies want to recreate the days of CompuServe and AOL, that's fine by me. At least back then the cost to access acted like an idiot filter -- not a perfect one, but better than nothing. In these days of September never ending, the idiots rule the roost, and the net is only good for confirming that humanity deserves to be exterminated.
If we actually had a competitive ISP market, where I could choose between, say, a hundred different providers at my residential address, then perhaps allowing the ISPs to compete in such a manner as you describe would make sense. As it is, we have 1-2 ISPs, and generally poor competition. Once one of the ISPs decides to pull prioritization shenanigans, then we the consumer is powerless to do anything about it. The only vote we have with our wallet is to forego an internet connection completely.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make it dissolve.
Isn't this the same as the now dead AOL? Didn't it fail because there was not enough demand for white-listed Internet?
There's not much to worry about here for first-worlders, but it could certainly further the gap between haves and have nots on a global scale.
Net Neutrality may have a very different effect on the consumer in a country that charges consumers for bandwidth used rather than bandwidth available. In the US consumers pay once for internet and then have access to all non-private services with no added cost. If you are charging consumers based on bandwidth actually used, there is probably a better argument for some variation in costs based on how much each slice of bandwidth costs.
Don't gimme that liberal political crap. They can always sell a kidney or their liver.
Please stop linking to huffpo around here.
If my memory still serves me correctly, the domain 'internet.org' used to belong to an independent organization which had nothing to do with fb
Take a look at archive.org copy of internet.org - https://web.archive.org/web/19...
The fact that the domain has been taken over by fb and is being used by fb to co-op (and con) people whom still without stable connection to the Net is that fb has proven itself to be a not-so-nice entity
No internet is more censorship than some internet, no matter how you gate it. And people will always figure out some way to get to what they want even on a "limited" network connection...
In the ACTUAL example here, Facebook is part of this and you can find any viewpoint you like on Facebook.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Advertisers value people, period. Even those with very little money... it's a different demographic, is all. The thing is people using free internet connections are not going to have that much money period so it simply does not match with your thought the advertisers on such a service will be expecting rich people on a limited free service.
Anyone who prefers to view the internet as a wealth-enabling resource
I do, which is why I'd prefer as many people to have internet access as possible - not hold it back from the poor in some ideologically misguied desire to "protect" them.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I really like their mention of /.
You want the latest news that matters go to Slashdot. Good marketers can only hope for a favorable mention. Unfavorable may literally put you out
No Apple device restricts which websites a user can visit.
Perhaps that depends on what you mean by "visit". Even if you exclude sites that rely on SWF or JAR components, it took until iOS 6 for Safari to support <input type="file">, and it took until iOS 8 for Safari to support WebGL outside vetted iAd modules. Until then, Apple was restricting users from visiting web sites that rely on those web platform features by restricting browsers on iOS from implementing them. And I'm under the impression that support for <input type="file"> is still woefully incomplete.
Which jail is that? I'm writing this on a Mac
Unlike Macs, iPhones ship with cellular radios. From the article: "Internet.org is a partnership the partnership between Facebook and seven mobile phone companies" (my emphasis). This makes me think Anonymous Coward had iOS in mind, not OS X. And unlike OS X, iOS has a jail.
I think we both want the same thing but are making different presumptions. Here are mine:
The internet is a (social) failure unless everyone can use it.
Corporations only care about targeting high-value customers.
If the only form of $free internet access is corporate-advertising-backed, low-$ people will be left out.
In other words, we need a form of internet access that does not depend on corporations. Sounds rather like a utility. Not completely $free but with mandatory free outlets.
Bent, folded, spindled, and mutilated.
The suggestion that it takes anyone but the WMF to provide free access is a fallacy. Wikipedia Zero is free for any ISP who cares to provide it.
I fail to see how is having no internet better than free access to internet with priority traffic.
There is a difference between user pay for internet than business pay for your internet. If I pay for internet I expect my traffic to obey net neutrality. What incentive do business have help build expensive internet structure if they don't get profitable return?
And I'd rather pay $20/month for 1Gb/s. What? If we're making up totally unrealistic markets then I can have the one that I want too!
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
In the US consumers pay once for internet and then have access to all non-private services with no added cost.
Comcast (cable) caps at 300 GB per month. Exede (satellite) caps at 10 GB per month. Cellular Internet caps even lower. If you read the article, you'll discover that it is about cellular Internet.
<input type="file"> is an HTML standard that has been around longer than the iPhone.
but you can install other browsers on an iphone
Technically correct, but not helpfully correct. Browsers other than Safari are wrappers around WebKit for iOS, and they share the same limitations as Safari. Porting any rendering engine other than WebKit for iOS is both forbidden by the App Store Review Guidelines and technically blocked by the strict W^X policy of the iOS executable loader.
The sites can choose to have ugly html fallbacks
If you have created a document in an app, how do you upload a document to an "ugly HTML fallback" when the only approved HTML rendering engine refuses to provide an upload control that's been around since the HTML 3.2 days?
The Huffington Post reports on prominent Indian websites withdrawing from Facebook's internet.org initiative.
Isn't this the same as the now dead AOL?
Yes. AOL owns The Huffington Post.
The fact is that the connection from the ISP to "the internet" is dirt cheap, it's the connection from you to the ISP that you're paying $40 for. Getting that connection to 40mbps is going to cost you that money whether your ISP forbids you to use it sometimes or not.
What we wanted our net neutrality to do, is to prevent ISPs from telling Netflix that their customers can't access their site unless they pay hundreds of thousands of dollars in protection fees, despite their customers paying for a "general connection to the internet" and despite Netflix paying for their connection to the internet.
If I have been able to see further than others, it is because I bought a pair of binoculars.
There are lots of porn stars on Facebook.
And if you think you can't find racism on Facebook, you are an idiot.
Facebook does sensor SOME things, but not all the things. Like I said you can find any ideology on there you like.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
Facebook's internet.org seeks to provide privileged access to select applications while making the rest of the internet access based on cost. This is a fundamental breach in net neutrality and there is no telling how big companies like facebook can extend such costs and restrictions on access in the future if there is a breach in Net Neutrality now.
If Mark Zuckerberg wished to connect billions of people onto the internet then he could have simply invested in networking infrastructure with his fortune so that the cost and ease of access is improved but he did not do this and he is not that selfless.
Under the false pretense of philanthropy, Facebook is manipulating the definition of the internet with its selective offering of apps called internet.org then claiming that it does not breach net neutrality (which it absolutely does). The end result of this is that new generations will have priority access to facebook and their information will be sold to companies and personal information remitted to the governments, the next generation will also grow up believing that facebook is the internet and become addicted to it without having access to the open web for their own intellectual development as we have enjoyed in the developed world.
Here is some proof of their evil strategy:
http://qz.com/5180/facebooks-plan-to-find-its-next-billion-users-convince-them-the-internet-and-facebook-are-the-same/
(old article^)
And unfortunately, it is working:
http://qz.com/333313/milliions-of-facebook-users-have-no-idea-theyre-using-the-internet/
Facebook has basically set out to destroy the internet for billions of people before the people even know how it works for themselves. Developing countries are poverty stricken and are in need of access to the complete web for educational techniques and sovereign development. If the internet is taken away from them and facebook is given priority as a gate keeper, how does it help billions of poor people develop themselves out of their ignorance? By liking comments on Facebook alone?
An awareness that has recently emerged within India is basically this:
http://www.hindustantimes.com/technology-topstories/mr-zuckerberg-facebook-is-not-and-should-not-be-the-internet/article1-1337944.aspx
Facebook's internet.org is evil. If net neutrality is breached now, then a terrible example will be set towards the future since internet.org is set to release itself within other developing countries like Brazil and even Europe. This must not be allowed to happen since the whole of the internet is at stake for billions of people around the world.
At reddit India we are attempting to combat this because if we fail today, then the future may fail all of us when we seek the internet and her diverse knowledge.
https://www.reddit.com/r/india
https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/32rf9f/lets_take_the_netneutrality_debate_forward/
I hope more people can step forward to combat this evil now because future generations will thank us for it.
https://imgur.com/gallery/xtaW7WF