

Net neutrality principles being broken in India - monsterix
http://scroll.in/article/717663/Double-standards:-Facebook-and-Google-are-happy-to-support-net-neutrality-in-US-but-violate-it-in-India

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sathishvj
I think the author has net neutrality backwards. When Facebook works with
Reliance Telecom to give free access to its app, Facebook is spending its own
money to promote the usage of its app. That would be promotional marketing,
like if Coke gave out free cans or sold it at a discounted price at your
neighborhood Walmart. Violating net neutrality would be if Reliance Telecom
demands extra money from Facebook for allowing subscribers to use the Facebook
app at all. By the author's logic, all free and freemium models of apps should
be banned because it is unjust to paid apps.

btw, yaay Net Neutraity! If you really want to help with it, go here
[http://netneutrality.in/](http://netneutrality.in/) and sign the petitions
and write to the government.

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Manishearth
Actually no, zero rating[1] isn't something that is absolutely on either side
of net neutrality. The author has it correct; so do you. The term is
sufficiently vague and debated to be ambiguous about zero rating -- it's the
job of the lawmakers to decide whether or not net neutrality includes it.

That being said, India really _does_ have a net neutrality problem, so even if
this may or may not be an instance of net neutrality violation, it's still
something that needs fixing.

[1]: [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-
rating](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Zero-rating)

~~~
amazon_not
Regardless of whether zero rating is a violation of network neutrality in a
legal sense or not, it is in any case discriminatory.

There are over 800 telcos in the world. Even if zero rating was free to the
app/service provider, just negotiating with each and every telco would be a
huge burden.

Zero rating is, however, neither free nor available to all app/service
providers. Thus zero rating creates both a toll booth and a gatekeeper who
gets to discriminate against app/service providers and pick winners and
loosers.

Zero rating is a pox upon the Internet and should be killed with fire,
regardless of any perceived short term benefit to some end users. In the long
term zero rating is always toxic.

~~~
Manishearth
That's the thing; while it is discriminatory, it has been (and can be) used
for subjectively good reasons, like Wikipedia Zero.

There are many who argue that zero rating is not a part of net neutrality and
should be allowed. That's what I meant by saying that it's on both sides. I
personally have mixed views, mostly leaning on the zero-rating-is-bad side,
though I do feel that it may be possible to come up with a way to restrict
what is allowed that helps boost accessibility of internet resources like
Wikipedia without giving a competition boost.

Anyway, my point wasn't to argue for or against zero rating. I merely wanted
to point out that zero rating was not objectively a part of the net neutrality
debate.

~~~
amazon_not
Fair enough on the point about zero rating and net neutrality.

However, I have a hard time thinking of a scheme where allowing zero rating
does not discriminate.

To not put too fine a point on it, what makes Wikipedia so special that only
they should get zero rated? There are lots of other useful and educational
sites out there that should also be zero rated by any criteria that Wikipedia
meets.

Sure, you can try to minimize the discrimination, but you can never remove it
totally. Zero rating is by definition discriminatory. There is allowed content
and here is banned content and the ISP as the gatekeeper gets to decide which
is which.

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dksidana
[http://www.medianama.com/2015/01/223-how-indian-telecom-
oper...](http://www.medianama.com/2015/01/223-how-indian-telecom-operators-
defend-their-attack-on-net-neutrality/) is legendary article on this front.

