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I once had a chat with a guy who grew up in a similar place with no internet. He mentioned that given the choice between no internet and a corporate curated in

I once had a chat with a guy who grew up in a similar place with no internet. He mentioned that given the choice between no internet and a corporate curated internet, he would have wanted the latter. Having thought on it more, I ended up drawing a comparison to child labor. We can agree that child labor (as in the 7 days a week, 12 hours a day variant) is all sorts of bad, including limiting a child's ability to get an education. But I remember reading in the past that bans on child labor have often times ended up with children turning to even more harmful means to survive or not surviving at all. Is defending net neutrality in all cases worth the immediate short term costs? Should we even be the ones to make that decision? Or are some exceptions reasonable, such as non-profits? Other comments here have already pointed out different ways these exceptions could be abused, but how does the damage of that abuse equate to someone who was depending upon Wikipedia Zero to gain knowledge who is now cut off? I'm really not sure.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
Iv 10y ago
Net neutrality is a good thing. Free access to information is a good thing. In rare cases, these two objectives collide. Making a website free of charge would amount it to public infrastructure. I would understand it for governmental websites, but I feel it is a bit weird for foreign non-profits and would be even weirder for specific companies. I think the slippery slope argument is good enough in that case. First Wikipedia will argue that it is an essential service, then Google, Facebook and Twitter will do the same and they can provide good arguments for that.
intended 10y ago
Maybe I am really old, or maybe there’s been some huge change while I was asleep and the internet became Wikipedia. Let me see if that’s the case. Wikipedia is an amazing, near magical confluence of the best of human intentions. For no reason, other than to share and inform people collected, annotated and curated as much human knowledge as they could and placed it on a single website. This was done without a central core, almost entirely self organized. The rules were simple – anyone can edit any page. That’s it. People power did the rest. The part that should amaze you isn’t the collection of information, as amazing as it is. What should amaze you is that all it took to create something that massive and that unimagined is the ability of anyone anywhere, to create something that grew into Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not the internet. The internet is not a dictionary, or an encyclopedia, or facebook, google, amazon, ebay, or youtube or Netflix. Those are just sites and servers. A network anyone can connect to. That together is the internet. And that’s what you are sacrificing by adding middle men. That’s what the NN debate is about. Inserting middle men, into the system. There should be no doubt, in anyone’s mind, that NN is more valuable than Wikipedia, and likely more valuable than the entire internet as it stands today. If all the sites were wiped out, and we had to recover – you wouldn’t succeed with middle men in the way. NN is what allows that random someone, to connect to Wikipedia in Hindi, and muck it up, and thus learn how to correct their mistake. And then to make another website, and put it up for her/his friends to see. There is a massive set of websites still to come, entire language groups underserved today, and entirely new systems and devices yet to be invented to help people come online. To your friend, I’d point out that its not the Wikipedia of today that matters. It’s the new and unexpected that he will add to the internet of tomorrow, that matters. NN is the rule that keeps the middle man out of the way. Sacrificing that for Wikipedia is to declare you have no faith in a better future
- skocznymroczny 10y ago
  It can be used for file sharing too :) http://www.techtimes.com/articles/144825/20160329/facebook-and-wikipedia-turning-into-file-sharing-paradise-in-angola-heres-whats-happening.htm http://www.techtimes.com/articles/144825/20160329/facebook-a...
- BearGoesChirp 10y ago
  >And that’s what you are sacrificing by adding middle men. That’s what the NN debate is about. Inserting middle men, into the system. This makes sense, if you are talking about someone who already has some level of internet access. But consider the person who doesn't. Either they can get internet from a middle man, or they can't get internet. To that person, Wikipedia using a middle man is definitely more valuable than NN. Perhaps if NN is so valuable that we should protect it, then we should protect it by competing and offering a free internet with no middle man instead of using government regulation to ban the middle man. Offer the end user a better choice. If it isn't worth the price it would cost us to do it... then NN might not be that valuable.
  - intended 10y ago
    I'm surprised you focused only on that point and followed it up with "Wikipedia with middle men is more valuable than NN" My whole point is that the internet is much, much more than Wikipedia. Giving that up is simply a bad choice. ---- As for your point on govt regulation. - Telecom is a textbook example of an industry which has barriers to entry and a tendency towards monopoly. You have to have regulation to compensate for the inherent structural issues of the market. Secondly there are free versions of the net being offered and discussed, Mozilla has one, which conform to NN. But The middle men still want NN broken so that they can seek rents. This results in the old cable tv model, which is exactly the kind of poor system the internet iterates over. I keep being surprised by how people bring these incorrect and inappropriate analogies to this discussion (free market, choice). I feel now, that it's free market-ism which causes this problem - a belief that by allowing the market and firms to figure it out, there will be some better outcome. Which is so odd to hear from Americans given The history of every telecom auction, the promised roll out of fiber, the tax breaks and many more.

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

Iv 10y ago

Net neutrality is a good thing. Free access to information is a good thing. In rare cases, these two objectives collide. Making a website free of charge would amount it to public infrastructure. I would understand it for governmental websites, but I feel it is a bit weird for foreign non-profits and would be even weirder for specific companies. I think the slippery slope argument is good enough in that case. First Wikipedia will argue that it is an essential service, then Google, Facebook and Twitter will do the same and they can provide good arguments for that.

intended 10y ago

Maybe I am really old, or maybe there’s been some huge change while I was asleep and the internet became Wikipedia. Let me see if that’s the case. Wikipedia is an amazing, near magical confluence of the best of human intentions. For no reason, other than to share and inform people collected, annotated and curated as much human knowledge as they could and placed it on a single website. This was done without a central core, almost entirely self organized. The rules were simple – anyone can edit any page. That’s it. People power did the rest. The part that should amaze you isn’t the collection of information, as amazing as it is. What should amaze you is that all it took to create something that massive and that unimagined is the ability of anyone anywhere, to create something that grew into Wikipedia. Wikipedia is not the internet. The internet is not a dictionary, or an encyclopedia, or facebook, google, amazon, ebay, or youtube or Netflix. Those are just sites and servers. A network anyone can connect to. That together is the internet. And that’s what you are sacrificing by adding middle men. That’s what the NN debate is about. Inserting middle men, into the system. There should be no doubt, in anyone’s mind, that NN is more valuable than Wikipedia, and likely more valuable than the entire internet as it stands today. If all the sites were wiped out, and we had to recover – you wouldn’t succeed with middle men in the way. NN is what allows that random someone, to connect to Wikipedia in Hindi, and muck it up, and thus learn how to correct their mistake. And then to make another website, and put it up for her/his friends to see. There is a massive set of websites still to come, entire language groups underserved today, and entirely new systems and devices yet to be invented to help people come online. To your friend, I’d point out that its not the Wikipedia of today that matters. It’s the new and unexpected that he will add to the internet of tomorrow, that matters. NN is the rule that keeps the middle man out of the way. Sacrificing that for Wikipedia is to declare you have no faith in a better future

skocznymroczny 10y ago
It can be used for file sharing too :) http://www.techtimes.com/articles/144825/20160329/facebook-and-wikipedia-turning-into-file-sharing-paradise-in-angola-heres-whats-happening.htm http://www.techtimes.com/articles/144825/20160329/facebook-a...
BearGoesChirp 10y ago
>And that’s what you are sacrificing by adding middle men. That’s what the NN debate is about. Inserting middle men, into the system. This makes sense, if you are talking about someone who already has some level of internet access. But consider the person who doesn't. Either they can get internet from a middle man, or they can't get internet. To that person, Wikipedia using a middle man is definitely more valuable than NN. Perhaps if NN is so valuable that we should protect it, then we should protect it by competing and offering a free internet with no middle man instead of using government regulation to ban the middle man. Offer the end user a better choice. If it isn't worth the price it would cost us to do it... then NN might not be that valuable.
- intended 10y ago
  I'm surprised you focused only on that point and followed it up with "Wikipedia with middle men is more valuable than NN" My whole point is that the internet is much, much more than Wikipedia. Giving that up is simply a bad choice. ---- As for your point on govt regulation. - Telecom is a textbook example of an industry which has barriers to entry and a tendency towards monopoly. You have to have regulation to compensate for the inherent structural issues of the market. Secondly there are free versions of the net being offered and discussed, Mozilla has one, which conform to NN. But The middle men still want NN broken so that they can seek rents. This results in the old cable tv model, which is exactly the kind of poor system the internet iterates over. I keep being surprised by how people bring these incorrect and inappropriate analogies to this discussion (free market, choice). I feel now, that it's free market-ism which causes this problem - a belief that by allowing the market and firms to figure it out, there will be some better outcome. Which is so odd to hear from Americans given The history of every telecom auction, the promised roll out of fiber, the tax breaks and many more.