
Wikimedia doesn't support Net Neutrality - bifrost
https://www.accessnow.org/wikipedia-zero-and-net-neutrality-wikimedia-turns-its-back-on-the-open/
======
tzs
This needs a [2014] tag.

This is important because what the article actually says is that Wikimedia
supports zero rating Wikimedia content. The author of the article believes
that any zero rating is against net neutrality.

That is not universally agreed upon. In particular, the FCC in its 2015 Open
Internet Order did not ban zero rating.

This is important because the 2015 Open Internet Order is the current net
neutrality law in the US, which the Republicans are trying very hard to
repeal. That has been massively in the tech news, especially recently since
the FCC has now scheduled a vote on their repeal plan.

That means that anyone reading the headline but not reading the article is
going to think that it is saying Wikimedia does not support the current net
neutrality law. Maybe they do, maybe they don't...but you cannot infer
anything about that from their support of some zero rating.

~~~
hrasyid
in Wikipedia parlance, the article committed a WP:OR

------
hristov
This is a very misleading and inflammatory title. Furthermore, it is not the
linked article's title. The title makes it seem like Wikimedia's official
position is against net neutrality and that is not the case. Their official
position is in support of net neutrality.

If you want to make arguments that some of their actions do not jibe with
their official position, go ahead but make the title reflect that.

------
toomanybeersies
I'm not opposed to zero-rating. It's a different end of the net neutrality
debate I guess.

If we compare zero rating to traditional media, there's nothing stopping
someone from giving out free books/magazines/dvds/whatever, and I don't think
anyone here would be ideologically opposed to people giving out free print
media.

It's a very ideological and academic debate, not really grounded in reality.
In New Zealand, we had (possibly still do have) 0.facebook.com, which was free
to access on mobile devices over mobile data. The sky did not fall, people
didn't become indoctrinated zombies.

Now in New Zealand, you can also buy cheaper data plans, that only work for
certain websites, it's about half price, and you can only use the data for
Spotify, Snapchat, Facebook, and a couple of others. I don't really agree with
this, and think that it's breaking NN, however, I don't know the specifics of
how the deal works, does Spotify pay the mobile provider money for this? Or
does the provider just do it as a form of load balancing?

And even if you don't agree with this on an ideological level when it comes to
things such as free wikipedia access, I would argue that pragmatically, it is
still a good thing. Good and evil are not black and white, increased knowledge
is a good thing, decreased net neutrality (if you define free wikipedia as
this, which I would understand) is a bad thing. It's a dimensional axis
though, the good can outweigh the bad.

~~~
rgbrenner
So if I understand you correctly..

you have a plan that has access to certain websites (spotify, etc) that you
pay $X/month for.

That is violating NN, in your opinion.

But if X is $0, then it's not violating NN.

How does changing the price change the discrimination between websites? A
zero-rated plan is still a plan.

------
rgbrenner
reading wikipedia blog post: [https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/08/01/wikipedia-
zero-and-net...](https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/08/01/wikipedia-zero-and-net-
neutrality-protecting-the-internet/)

"We believe that free access to public interest resources can be provided in a
manner that keeps the playing field level and avoids net neutrality issues."

The program is partnering with carriers to give away access to Wikipedia
(although no money is exchanged between the carrier and Wikipedia). It doesn't
sound like it avoids NN issues. Giving away access to a certain website..
sounds exactly like an NN issue.

And I don't think Wikipedia's competitors would think this "keeps the playing
field level" either. How would they compete against Wikipedia, when their
users have to pay to access their service, but dont have to pay to access
wikipedia?

Wasn't this the same issue we had with Facebook's Zero program in India?

~~~
tzs
> The program is partnering with carriers to give away access to Wikipedia
> (although no money is exchanged between the carrier and Wikipedia). It
> doesn't sound like it avoids NN issues. Giving away access to a certain
> website.. sounds exactly like an NN issue.

> And I don't think Wikipedia's competitors would think this "keeps the
> playing field level" either. How would they compete against Wikipedia, when
> their users have to pay to access their service, but dont have to pay to
> access wikipedia?

I disagree for two reasons:

• First, as a matter of general principle I prefer to minimize overlap of
different regulatory frameworks. We have a general framework for dealing with
anticompetitive actions and practices--antitrust law. If for some reason
antitrust law cannot deal with competition issues that zero rating Wikipedia
cause, let's beef up antitrust law to deal with it.

Same goes for some other areas that are often included in net neutrality, such
as privacy and transparency. I don't want a separate law for these things for
each kind of business. They are general things that should be independent of
type of business.

(I'm open to arguments that it is politically impossible to get a good general
privacy law, for instance, passed and so we may have to settle for doing these
things on a type of business by type of businesses basis in things like net
neutrality regulations).

• Second, most of what an ISP could accomplish with zero rating could be
accomplished by other means that would be less efficient but not use the
internet (and so completely avoid any possibility of net neutrality issues),
but would have largely the same impact on consumers.

For example, suppose Comcast decided to offer a streaming music service of
their own, and decided to zero rate it. There are a couple ways they could do
this. Before listing them, though, a brief overview of how cable internet
works.

The cable that comes into your house has something like 2 GHz of bandwidth.
Comcast divides this into about 300 separate channels with 6 MHz of bandwidth
each. In the old days, these low level 6 MHz channels carried analog TV
signals, but nowadays they carry digital streams. Each of these digital
streams is divided into several sub-streams all multiplexed onto the low level
6 MHz stream. They build all their services on top of those streams and sub-
streams. Internet service is provided by combining several streams (enough to
support your download speed) and running IP on top of that, with another low
level stream used for upload.

The key point here is that Comcast has a bunch of data steams into and out of
your house that are running a lower level protocol than IP.

So how could Comcast offer a streaming music service, designed to be playable
on any device that you put on your home Comcast network?

1\. They could simply run it on the web, and users access it over the
internet.

2\. They could run it at a lower level, running it on a sub-channel of one of
their low level 6 MHz channels, with an app on their set-top boxes to
interface to it. The app could make the music and control interface available
on the LAN (wired and/or wifi) via a simple web server running on the set-top
box.

Note that with #2, there is no internet involved. The music starts on
Comcast's internal network, and is transported to your LAN over a layer that
is lower level than IP, where it is served on the LAN.

But note that from a user point of view, these two are pretty much the same.
In both cases to play Comcast streaming music on your home devices you go to a
website which streams them to you. In #1 that website happens to be off your
LAN, and in #2 it is on your LAN.

It makes no sense to me to say that in case #1 Comcast cannot provide the
service at no extra charge, but that in case #2 they can.

I think net neutrality should be simple:

• Your ISP must provide the speed and bandwidth promised, for the price
promised. You can use up to the promised bandwidth, for anything you see fit
and you will get the promised speed, without blocking or throttling, except if
the ISP is legally required.

That's pretty much it. Everything else should be covered by other more general
regulations (antitrust, consumer protection).

------
peterburkimsher
I have an offline copy of Wikipedia on my phone. It's only 10 GB. Storage is
cheap.

Instead of arguing to get free network access that support some companies
rather than others, why not promote offline apps?

Pay to get the latest updates (news, communications with friends). Store
things that don't change often (contacts, music, maps) offline and locally.

~~~
phil248
That's really common is some countries with limited or restricted internet
access.

There was also a company trying to deploy a series of satellites to provide
persistent, free (but low bandwidth) access to a small cross-section of the
internet, with a focus on education and information. I wish I could remember
that company's name.

~~~
peterburkimsher
Instead of satellites, why not keep a cache in the 3G base station?

Load times would be much faster, and the infrastructure is all there already.

There might be some copyright issues for Google Maps tiles, but I wonder if
the range is small enough to be within fair use.

------
cooper12
Wikimedia sees [0] zero rating as a temporary step to spread knowledge in
impoverished areas until costs can come down in those regions. They otherwise
[1] do support Net Neutrality:

> We support net neutrality, and believe it is crucial for a healthy, free,
> and open Internet.

They defend Wikipedia Zero by pointing out it's not a commercial program,

> These principles are designed to balance the social impact of the program
> with Wikimedia’s other values

...

> We believe that free access to public interest resources can be provided in
> a manner that keeps the playing field level and avoids net neutrality
> issues. The Internet has tremendous potential to bring education and
> services to people for free

The point is that adhering to net neutrality in impoverished areas would not
abide by their goal of bringing knowledge to all areas of the world, while
they can support it in more well off areas since it's an important aspect of
the internet.

[0]: [https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
switch/wp/2014/11/25...](https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/the-
switch/wp/2014/11/25/wikipedias-complicated-relationship-with-net-neutrality/)

[1]: [https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/08/01/wikipedia-zero-and-
net...](https://blog.wikimedia.org/2014/08/01/wikipedia-zero-and-net-
neutrality-protecting-the-internet/)

------
johnhenry
Prioritizing traffic based on ISP preference isn't necessarily a bad thing in
all cases; it's just particularly dangerous when ISPs have a monopoly.

~~~
kevin_thibedeau
> ... when ISPs have a monopoly.

Or they collude to keep fees artificially high. Witness the disparity between
American and European cellular plan rates. They all just happened to decide
that we can't have sub-$30 plans despite "competition".

~~~
dboreham
>Witness the disparity between American and European cellular plan rates.

I spend a fair bit of time in Europe and since I'm Scottish by birth I devote
an unreasonable amount of time trying to find the cheapest decent cell
service. Something about this didn't jive so I did a quick check:

Picking France as an example European country, Orange will sell you a
2G/Unlimited voice/SMS plan[1] for 25 Euro/mo. Meanwhile Verizon will charge
you $35/mo for a similar 2G/unlimited voice plan[2].

Current $/Euro exchange rage is 1.2 so the French service ($30) is a little
cheaper but not significantly.

Also in my experience service in Europe is generally less good in terms of
coverage and QoS than we experience in the US. YMMV of course.

[1] [https://boutique.orange.fr/mobile/forfaits-
orange](https://boutique.orange.fr/mobile/forfaits-orange)

[2] [https://www.verizonwireless.com/plans/verizon-
plan/](https://www.verizonwireless.com/plans/verizon-plan/)

------
matt123456
This is a great argument against NN. Why shouldn't Wikipedia be allowed to
give itself away for free? Why shouldn't users benefit from the magnanimity of
developing telcos? Yes, Wikipedia Zero may be, as the article states, a band
aid on the bullet wound of socioeconomic inequality- but if the alternative is
to allow the wound to bleed unabated, is this not the lesser of two evils?

~~~
soneil
It is a difficult question.

One example that always springs to mind, was Australian friends online in the
early 2000's who told me their ISP had linux mirrors - which was of great
value to them, because they were charged less (if at all) for data within
their ISP's networks. They were also much faster, since it meant the data
wasn't trans-oceanic. Later Steam came up as another example of the same idea.

They thought this was fantastic. It solved a lot of problems (and expense, and
speed) for them. But it's not particularly 'neutral' either, is it? Given the
choice between a distro that's on my ISP's mirror, and a distro where I have
to slug data from the other side of the planet, I'm going to make a choice
based on my ISP's preferences.

Putting a wikipedia cache/mirror within the ISP's network would, in this
example, render pretty much the same results as "wikipedia zero". Same
benefits, same concerns.

I'm not really arguing this one way or the other. Just that it does muddy the
water when we have examples that benefit the enduser, to counter the scarier
examples we see elsewhere.

------
syphilis2
It's very strange, why does Wikimedia believe its information should be
accessed free of charge while other information should not? Why would any ISP
believe the same thing? A megabyte is a megabyte, why dictate where it should
come from? I see self interested answers. Everyone playing the game is a
winner (Wiki gets users, ISPs gets visibility, users get wiki access), and
everyone with a small website gets left behind.

------
wyldfire
We don't have to be arbitrary with our regulations. If we agree that zero
rating makes sense for use cases like this one, maybe we create exceptions to
net neutrality policy for the sake of zero-rating content offered by non-
profit organizations. If that opens up a loophole for things like PACs and the
like, then perhaps we create specific requirements there.

------
phil248
It's four years later, we should have some new information. If someone wrote a
follow-up article on this topic I could see that being a worthy news item.

