
Blow to Internet.org as Indian Internet Companies Begin to Withdraw - nileshtrivedi
http://www.huffingtonpost.in/2015/04/15/internetorg-withdrawal_n_7071532.html?utm_hp_ref=india
======
manish_gill
After limited protest/outrage in communities like /r/india, the news finally
hit big when a comedy group AIB decided to make a video explaining what Net
Neutrality is: [https://youtu.be/mfY1NKrzqi0](https://youtu.be/mfY1NKrzqi0)
and then it finally hit mainstream media. Amid pressure from everywhere,
Flipkart finally withdrew from the Airtel Zero deal which would have been a
blow to Net Neutrality in India.

Of course, next step was Internet.org and similar initiatives, which on paper
sound like a fantastic idea until you look deeper and begin to see the NN
violation problem. This is welcome news indeed. Btw, this was Zuckerburg's
response when posed this question:
[https://i.imgur.com/PAwf6e3.png](https://i.imgur.com/PAwf6e3.png) "Some
connectivity is better than no connectivity, hence the violation of NN is
justified"

Last few days have been a mixture of anxiousness and excitement. :)

~~~
rsync
"Btw, this was Zuckerburg's response when posed this question:
[https://i.imgur.com/PAwf6e3.png"](https://i.imgur.com/PAwf6e3.png")

Bullshit. Facebook cannot become AOL (which is what all the platforms
desperately want to become) unless they can vertically integrate with the
network.

They cannot currently do that in the US and most of the global north because
of antitrust and the growing support and knowledge of net neutrality (thanks,
Tim[1]).

But maybe they can get away with it in the global south ... plenty of market
share there ...

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Wu#The_Master_Switch](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tim_Wu#The_Master_Switch)

~~~
nileshtrivedi
Lots of factors at play here. Till a few months ago, India didn't even have a
competition commission. We have no anti-trust laws.

You also have to understand the history of telecom in India, especially the
Value-Added-Services on mobile. They killed startups (
[http://rashmiranjanpadhy.com/2015/04/12/airtel-kills-
startup...](http://rashmiranjanpadhy.com/2015/04/12/airtel-kills-startups-and-
innovation-a-real-story/) ), they activated services without users' consent
and so on. Can you imagine how big this fraud was in India where 40% of the
people are not even literate? It was plain and simple fraud.

Everyone and his uncle learned to curse the telcos in that era. Now they're
coming for the web, disparagingly calling it "Over-The-Top services".

~~~
denzil_correa
India has a Competition Commission since 2002.

[http://www.cci.gov.in/index.php?option=com_content&task=view...](http://www.cci.gov.in/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=12)

~~~
kamikazi
Denzil - we have bodies and committees for every thing but no action takes
place. Our CCI is a joke. There is no anti-trust. And less said about our
courts & justice system the better.

Just a small eg: Satyam chief, Ramalingam Raju, picked up the phone and gave
himself in to SEBI (US version of SEC) confessing to financial fraud of INR
4000 crores+ massive job losses, massive losses/harakiri in pension/taxes owed
to the govt (due to inflated employee #) to the extent of he had one of the
big4 auditors in his pocket who signed over falsified bank balance statements.
This resulted in govt having to take over the co and auctioning it out to
TechMahindra. At the time Satyam was the #3 Software services company in India
by sheer revenue and employee size. Raju gave detailed proofs of each of his
wrongdoings ("when he could not ride this tiger anymore") and yet it took our
courts 7 years + to impose a rap-on-knuckles 7 years of imprisonment and 5
crores of fines. An amount which he could've made bamboozled off in one day of
stock manipulation on the exchanges.

So my point is it's one thing to have all these fancy bodies and titles and
quite another to have them act on anything.

This recent action against zero-rated apps by one of our telcos, Airtel, is a
heartening move which ofcourse morphed into heat brought upon FB's
internet.org which is a bigger culprit on net neutrality front.

Way to go online activism in India! (Disclosure: I'm a member of the
#SaveTheInternet volunteer group)

~~~
denzil_correa
I do understand that most of these bodies are toothless but we do have a CCI.
The parent comment mentioned that we don't have one and I thought I would
mention the fact that we do. As we speak, the CCI seems to be probing Indian
telecoms.

[http://telecom.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/industry/cc...](http://telecom.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/industry/cci-
probing-indian-telcos-violating-net-neutrality/46854200)

I'm not in favor of zero rating or violations of net neutrality as we know it.

Disclosure : I'm a passive member of the #SaveTheInternet volunteer group
(anonymously) too. I really appreciate your efforts and work. I am trying to
tell all my colleagues and friends about you guys. Keep going!

~~~
flangloria
These commissions are set up here, only after someone from a global body like
UN, World Bank, IMF etc complains about their absence.

------
nileshtrivedi
Today was phenomenal. The campaign has sent more than 620,000 email to TRAI
(Indian equivalent of FCC) who wanted public opinion on whether Internet (or
as they say, "Over-the-top services") should be regulated or not.

Cleartrip showed courage in being the first one to opt out of Internet.org. A
few more soon followed.

Tomorrow could be amazing!

Edit: Very similar to US, comedians played a pivotal role in popularizing this
issue. Here is the video that went viral:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfY1NKrzqi0](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mfY1NKrzqi0)

~~~
aravindet
Thanks for doing this, guys :)

------
ishansharma
One thing to note is that there's no EFF like organisation and this is mostly
done by volunteers [1].

This has also been largest response to any consultation by Indian government
having received 600K+ responses through campaign sites[2][3]. Previous highest
was 20000 mails in 1999.

[1]: Disclaimer: I am associated and helping the group.

[2]: [http://savetheinternet.in/](http://savetheinternet.in/) People can
submit response here.

[3]: [http://netneutrality.in/](http://netneutrality.in/) Info site.

 __Edit __: Corrected URL #3.

~~~
viggy_prabhu
Having no organization like EFF is something that needs to be fixed. Depending
on volunteers for such activity may not always be feasible in long term fights
like this. #Sec66A fight took 3 years of dedication by many individuals to
reach some conclusion and we can be sure many such fights will come in future.
[https://wethegoondas.in/](https://wethegoondas.in/) is such issue which still
hasnt got enough attraction. Are there efforts in forming a non-profit
organization which will work on such issues on long term basis. Crowd funding
for the same when the issue in limelight seems to be the best thing if we have
committed people coming forward to work and lead the organization.

~~~
denzil_correa
> Having no organization like EFF is something that needs to be fixed.

I think the closest organization to EFF that India has is the Centre for
Internet & Society (CIS). Though, the aim of CIS isn't about digital civil
rights like EFF. It is more to study Internet related policy with respect to
India. Many times, CIS does take similar stands to that of EFF would given the
situation.

[http://cis-india.org](http://cis-india.org)

~~~
jace
Because there is no tradition of funding civil society organisations in India,
CIS is mostly foreign-funded. That puts them under the purview of FCRA, which
means they are explicitly forbidden from lobbying and politics, at risk of
having their funding cut off. They necessarily have to limit themselves to
policy research.

CIS is not and will never be the EFF of India until the FCRA rules change. We
need another organisation.

~~~
bjelkeman-again
Are there not enough people interested in this type of thing today in India to
try to start an EFF equivalent?

------
aravindet
Facebook's internet.org plan to be somewhat hypocritical, given their
(correct) stand in favor of net neutrality in the US.

internet.org isn't about the internet at all - it's more a proprietary network
similar to Compuserve or AOL.

It's the same brand of philanthropy that Microsoft practices when it offers
discounted Windows and Office to schools.

~~~
r00fus
I'd say Facebook's moves here are more sinister than Microsoft's (or Apple's -
they do the same thing). In the MS/Apple cases, it's simply about pushing
product. In FB's case it's about pulling up the ladder after they've climbed
it (balkanized Internet means dominant services like FB stay dominant).

After the fwd.us debacle and now this, why should anyone trust Zuck and
Facebook in terms of "philanthropy"?

~~~
codexon
It really isn't surprising for anyone who has read his history that he is not
a very moral person.

He made the precursor to Facebook by hacking servers and stealing people's
pictures.

Then he lied to the Winklevoss twins that he would build their website for
them to stall them for as long as he could so he could release Facebook before
them.

------
lukevdp
Internet.org is offering a free service to people who would otherwise have no
access to the Internet. Net neutrality on a free service in a developing
country is an entirely different issue than net neutrality in developed
countries with high Internet access rates.

I see similarities between this and GMO in developing countries, where rich,
well fed people in developed countries oppose gmo in countries that can't feed
themselves because "corporations evil".

People for whom Internet access is a normal part of society are in an ivory
tower on this issue.

~~~
gnufied
If internet.org was really about providing internet access to people who
otherwise can't access it, what is stopping Facebook from making it open? In
current form lets say internet.org allows access to 100+ websites. I assume
speed will be slow anyways. So make it open. Speed and data cap will be a
deterrent for people wanting to abuse the platform (and things like torrent
etc can be blocked anyways)

But I guess that will not serve facebook's interests. As an Indian, I actually
prefer no internet at all compared to a moderated list that I am allowed to
access. The way things are moving - Govt. has to act to provide internet in
India for the last mile consumers anyways. With curated access there is a
danger of wanting to maintain status quo because that kind of access - checks
a tickbox.

~~~
olegbl
I believe the price is stopping it. Getting a telco to give you massively
reduced rates on a few domains is drastically different than paying for
internet access for everybody. Also, please correct me if I am mistaken, but
I.org doesn't prevent you actually paying for full internet access?

~~~
nileshtrivedi
They could put data caps. They could support it with ads. Both of which give
neutral access to full open internet. If it has to be _few_ domains only, they
could let the user chose his preferred domains on the 1st of every month.

But no, they want to sell the poor out to the highest bidders.

~~~
ckrusk
adding ads will just make the already slow internet slower. loading content +
ads is not good for the customer.

~~~
nileshtrivedi
Only if the ads are loaded in parallel with the content. The ads can very well
be like TV or YouTube ads.

------
aravindet
The Indian regulator's egregiously biased consultation paper (which sparked
this protest) has been exposed on reddit as being written by the telecom
industry's lobbyist:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/32o00z/proof_the_tra...](https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/32o00z/proof_the_trai_consultation_paper_was_written_by/)

Apparently they even doctored an alleged quote from The Economist, inserting
text that was not in the original article, to make it more biased towards
operators.

~~~
nileshtrivedi
Wow! That's unbelievable! I hope the media takes TRAI to the task on this.

------
exacube
Can someone give me a good argument as to why no internet is better than free
limited internet with facebook + google search + wikipedia?

If Facebook will provide free limited internet (and as always, you can pay
regularly to get full internet access) for a lot of basic service, it only
seems reasonable they will package their facebook and messenger apps as well.

On the whole, do you think internet.org is a bad, negative effort?

~~~
ndesaulniers
Because it's the opposite of net neutrality. It's picking winners and losers.
If Facebook is free, but you have to pay for local home grown Indian social
networking sites, well then how will those businesses ever compete?

Personally, I'm torn. I'm all for free access to Wikipedia. The problem is,
not all of the world's knowledge exists there, so you therefor are only giving
people a taste of knowledge.

With Facebook and Google, you are choosing the silos for people, and making it
very very difficult for competitors. And without competition, localized
monopolies tend to stagnate, which ultimately hurts consumers.

~~~
exacube
I see the argument for competition, but I don't think that freedom is as
important as the freedom of communication and education.

Imagine someone in the slums of India (there are tens of millions in these
conditions) wanting to learn more about irrigation. Is it more important that
they have no limited internet for the sake for competition, or limited
internet?

~~~
yellowapple
Neither is important if they have offline-cached copies of Wikipedia (all the
content of which is readily available for download and made available under a
CC-BY-SA / GNU GFDL dual-license), which can then be distributed on optical
media, thumb drives, or some other relatively-inexpensive data distribution
medium.

This is something that's totally compatible with net neutrality while
providing the same benefits you're advocating.

~~~
sumedh
Poor people in India have cheap smartphones but they dont have PCs so optical
media, thumb drives are useless to them.

~~~
yellowapple
Old PCs are actually much cheaper nowadays than even the cheapest smartphones
of equivalent computing power, and typically include more than enough storage
space for the entirety of Wikipedia. One shared PC in a community would solve
that problem right quick.

Even without that, thumb drives are usable with smartphones via OTG cables.

------
asdofindia
The only reason why Mark Zuckerberg is bold enough to make irrational
statements about the benevolence of Internet.org is the lack of such strong
opposition. I hope India becomes a model for the world in this issue.

------
zodvik
I'm currently writing a series of posts dissecting the damning TRAI
consultation paper (115 pages long).

You can follow that at [http://www.zodvik.com/2015/04/15/damn-trai-
paper-1/](http://www.zodvik.com/2015/04/15/damn-trai-paper-1/) and contact me
if you feel there are improvements to be made (or submit them via PR)

------
hsod
I'm all for net neutrality, but I wonder how the currently unconnected people
who have a chance at free connectivity feel about this.

My guess-- limited Internet access is preferable to no Internet access and
ideological purity.

~~~
disgruntledphd2
Yeah, most of those 620K emails (which isn't a lot at Indian scale) by
definition, come from people that already have internet access.

Its sad, whatever you think about FB, getting more people access to Wikipedia
is clearly a good thing (fixing illiteracy would be better, clearly).

~~~
yellowapple
You can do that by distributing offline copies of Wikipedia.

~~~
sumedh
How are you going to fit Wikipedia on a cheap smartphone which most poor/lower
middle class Indians use. Most of them dont even have a PC.

------
luizparreira
Very good for India that they finally realized what facebook plans to do,
which is have all the next Billion people coming online having free access to
its site and therefore increase its revenue on Ads and other means. Its
absolutely unacceptable any government sign up on this, this defeats the
entire idea of internet being open to everyone. Last week Mr. Zuckerberg met
with the Brazilian President to announce that he intends to bring this to a
number of places in Brazil, and the dumb idiot(Brazilian President) was all
proud to be announcing that she is making another American billionaire even
more billionaire by delegating the work that should be done by her government.
I really hope that this "partnership" of them won't last too long, otherwise
facebook will have even more leverage and power, than they already have, over
anyone who wants to build products that may compete with their apps for
consumer's time.

------
vy3r
Zuckerberg's sly attempt to sneak in free Facebook through Internet.org not
gonna work in India.

~~~
jbob2000
Oh no! Giving something away for free! The travesty!

~~~
ishansharma
Internet.org is currently offered on only one carrier (Reliance) and this is a
clear net neutrality violation. Even if it were offered on all carriers, this
is a violation. Also, this is hypocritical since FB supports NN in US!

What's worse is that some companies are using this as an example to push for
legalisation of zero rating. This is worsened by our regulator's stancce which
is pro telecom companies.

~~~
miteshashar
Even worse is that a lot of decision makers in our country's administration
can be misled into accepting the practice as digital status quo, because a
large company like facebook says so.

------
koolhead17
Happy that someone wrote about this. We don`t need Facebook's walled garden.
It is surprising to see "Wikipedia" aka champion of free speech part of
internet.org.

~~~
belorn
If a company wanted to provide aid and give away food, we don't claim that it
is creating an unfair market for the local food industry.

If Wikipedia want to give away free access to information, suddenly its an
unfair advantage in the market of free information?

~~~
manish_gill
Because the access to information is extremely constrained. The Internet is
much bigger than just wikipedia. There have been studies which showed that
people in such situations who used these so called "Free services" didn't even
realize they were actually a part of the much bigger Internet, and just
considered them standalone. I guess a similar situation would be people in the
old days thinking AOL was synonymous with the Internet.

Do you want to live in a world where your access to information is constrained
to one site only?

~~~
disgruntledphd2
Give the choice between that and no internet (Wikipedia alone could be
transformative, conditional on literacy), then yes, I'd probably make that
choice.

Its not ideal, but marrying the commercial incentives of telcos to get people
paying for data and the gateway drug of free access seems more likely to get
more people connected faster than anything else.

------
Yuioup
Can somebody explain what is going on here? I'm having trouble understanding
what this story is about.

~~~
Terr_
Facebook and mobile-phone companies in India got together to try a project.

The project aimed to provide cheap internet access... only to their "approved"
websites. Anything else requires more money from the customer... Or perhaps
money from the companies whose websites are blocked.

People are starting to realize/acknowledge that the arrangement is a bit of an
anti-competitive conflict of interest with a tinge of "pay us or we'll block
you" extortion.

------
ignoramous
It is surprising that both Flipkart and Times Group pulled out of Facebook's
initiative, but unsurprising that they pulled out in tandem. Both Flipkart and
Times Group have taken multi-million dollar investments from early Facebook
employees and some even sit on their board. They must have really felt the
heat to take such an action. Ironically, a lot of awareness in India around
net-neutrality spread through WhatsApp and Facebook!

~~~
manish_gill
Apparently Times Group hasn't really pulled out. They have announced that they
will, provided their competition pledges to do the same.

~~~
jace
They've completely pulled out for some services and conditionally for some
others.

------
vasundhar
I think [http://savetheinternet.in](http://savetheinternet.in) did really save
Internet from the stupid regulators who have absolutely no clue of
technological implications of what the Big and dominant ISPs are doing to the
freedom and Net Neutrality.

Indian ISPs are too opportunistic to divert the subject from Quality of
Service to Issues to making more buck than what they are really worth.

------
chubs
What if Mark Z framed it as 'free facebook + some educational site access'
instead of 'free internet', then he could sidestep all these complaints
easily?

"The perfect (NN) is the enemy of the good (free fb+wiki)".

I imagine farmers could improve their lives by sharing information on regional
facebook groups. Best of luck with it Mark, although i know you'll likely
never read this :)

------
gshrikant
It is indeed heartwarming to see such mobilization for a just cause like
internet neutrality.

One of the biggest hurdles in defending 'intellectual' issues like net
neutrality, privacy or academic pay-walling is the general public's apathy
towards such perceived niche issues while there are pressing issues to deal
with closer to ground - poverty, hunger, vaccination come to mind.

I am reminded of Bill Gates' take on the Internet.org initiative [1] and while
I certainly stand with him on that, I feel it is important to recognize what
such intellectual issues represent: freedom to information, which is
admittedly abstract, but fundamental nonetheless.

[1] [http://www.cnet.com/news/bill-gates-prioritizing-internet-
ac...](http://www.cnet.com/news/bill-gates-prioritizing-internet-access-
before-malaria-research-is-a-joke/)

------
ravipratapm
I think this is a very positive development. In the end, Internet.org and
Airtel Zero are not very different in their scant regard for net neutrality.

It's also indicative of just how huge the public debate has become. Indian
companies (and the media) have had to very publicly retract on their earlier
stand on the issue.

------
pratikjhaveri
Awesome news and thanks for standing up to a dual-standards company and CEO.
You can't be for NN in the US and against it elsewhere. Internet.org is purely
a vehicle to get more users on to FB....not the internet.

------
jace
For everyone interested in tracking the campaign: stats are posted here:
[https://twitter.com/bulletinbabu](https://twitter.com/bulletinbabu)

~~~
aravindet
[Offtopic] The campaign provides a bcc address to keep track of the number of
emails people actually send. However when I sent a response it bounced for
this bcc address, although it was delivered to TRAI.

This happened on the first day of the campaign (the day the AIB video came
out) and it is probably fixed now, but this count could be understating things
a bit.

~~~
jace
I think we're counting about 100k short of actual figures.

------
suryamech
cant believe that Indians pushed these companies this much hard for Net
neutrality..

~~~
balls187
Why? They gained independence from Great Britain without going to war.

There is a long history or nationalism in India.

------
sand87ch
Net neutrality is freedom of speech and liberty doesn't have a
nationality.join the net neutrality club and support freedom of choice

------
vemuruadi
Great news big players opting out, more to come.

------
mkagenius
Just trying to understand from the first principle:

If ISPs doesn't charge for facebook usage, then who _actually_ pays?

Someone has to...right? Just curious.

~~~
miteshashar
Facebook pays. And then owns the user.

~~~
nileshtrivedi
So, ultimately it's still the user who pays. But he pays relatively more,
because now there is less competition (leveraging the network/access to
acquire and retain users).

------
kerneltime
Reddit link :
[http://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/31vvf2/fight_for_net_...](http://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/31vvf2/fight_for_net_neutrality_the_way_forward/)

------
kanchankumar
Happy to see Cleartrip, times, NDTV, newshunt out of internet.org. Let's talk
to every other Indian company which is there, request, cajole, nudge, whatever
it takes to get them to withdraw. That's the best way to make this irrelevant
in india.

------
awalGarg
I really find it _very_ hard to believe that a company like Facebook with
(probably) so many intelligent people on-board will launch such a project
without considering the _serious_ downsides and the available better ideas
(like the ones mentioned below in comments about free _capped_ internet) etc.
I don't want to, but the more I think about it, the more it seems that they
just want their own profit with this.

~~~
gtirloni
This shouldn't be, but it's indeed business as usual. They have their
profitability/success to worry about, especially since they have trouble
generating enough profits to justify their share price. They dream of AOL
times, if only with some coolness factor to offset their consciences.

------
ravimbalgi
wondering, when facebook, google and twitter start opting out from
internet.org

~~~
nileshtrivedi
Google and Twitter are not on internet.org. They are Facebook competitors
after all. So much for Facebook's mission of "connecting the world". As
ClearTrip said today in its statement: "it is impossible to pretend there is
no conflict of interest".

~~~
exacube
Google search is on internet.org, so is Wikipedia.

~~~
jacquesm
What point is there to search without anywhere to go to from your searches
other than the sites of those that join the club?

~~~
kamaal
I'm not sure. But eventually they would rank sites from internet.org higher in
their search results?

------
Ash-k
Mark Zuckerberg on Net Neutrality in India

[http://htmlpreview.github.io/?https://gist.githubusercontent...](http://htmlpreview.github.io/?https://gist.githubusercontent.com/anonymous/57d41c0f1e6a06ac6f2a/raw/075e0e4c04cf8202bcf99734e71bfb0745fb5f30/MarkZuck-
Response)

------
bugsmasher
I hope Facebook, Internet.org and Zuck give up their charade of philanthropy
and come out clean because I can't seem to identify the so-called "poor"
people of India from their ad.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s390lZ5UXc4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s390lZ5UXc4)

------
alondonstartup
Really happy to see citizens standing up for principles and against corporate
interests in the developing world. Great to see these principles in such a
large developing country, compare to places like China where the population
seems much happier to let "big brother" tell them whats best.

------
erikpukinskis
Question: If I built a web site that I provide for free and then set up a
cheap wireless provider in my town that only provides unlimited SMS and lets
you connect to my web site, am I violating Net Neutrality?

------
dummyfellow
internet.org is a good idea to accelerate internet adoption in developing
economies, but an honest one should be open to all companies, any company can
join in by providing $x/GB and be part of the program, with x remaining
constant for all and no special/hidden contracts. They may also favor startups
by giving 1st n MB/GB free.

------
sandeeptodi
Everyone is greedy once in a while. So were the Internet hotshots in India but
good that sense prevailed finally.

------
minusSeven
Really good job by the volunteers who put in the effort to the raise the
awareness about this.

------
driverdan
_This_ is how net neutrality should work; driven by market forces, not the
government.

------
mandeepj
i think we need both Net Neutrality and internet.org. There should not be a
choice of one over the other. Please let me know if I am missing something.

