4 ms·

Well, presumably if carriers provide reduced- or no-cost access to Wikipedia that's a direct violation of net neutrality, aka charging the same amount of money

Well, presumably if carriers provide reduced- or no-cost access to Wikipedia that's a direct violation of net neutrality, aka charging the same amount of money for data moving through the pipes no matter what it is or who it comes from. Presumably the OP is concerned that this could degenerate from "breaking net neutrality is fine as long as it favors sites we like" to "breaking net neutrality is fine". Note that I don't necessarily share the belief of the OP, but it's certainly a point worth some real consideration.

_delirium 13y ago
I do think there is some risk (though I'm not sure how much delta it adds to the risk either way) that it plays into normalizing the proposals for tiering, a specific kind of non-neutral net, where ISPs would give you access to different levels of "internet content" based on your subscription level, like cable TV packages for the internet. Example: a few sites are available in the Free tier, a basic whitelisted set of sites (news, webmail, popular blogs, etc.) are in the Lite tier, everything but high-bandwidth video and torrents comes with the Standard tier, and the full internet is unlocked only by the Premium tier. The free tier would be made up of "content partners" who are a mixture of nonprofits like Wikipedia, and for-profits that pay for their inclusion in the free tier (CNN, maybe).
- 6cxs2hd6 13y ago
  Which sounds like how cable TV works (at least in the US). In the old days when city governments granted these monopolies to cable TV companies, part of the deal was community access channels (Wayne's World!). Even if these benefitted hardly anyone, they provided some moral cover and justification. If I were an old media guy, I'd see Wikimedia Zero as the germ of an idea -- maybe suggesting a way how to squeeze the genie back in the bottle and wrap the internet in a cable TV model. And, hey, in the US most people's ISP is also their cable company. So ... I don't see it as a definitely bad thing, but I see the seeds of potential bad as well as good. (In general, a lot of bad stuff flies under the flag of a good cause fighting some other bad thing -- "because terrorism", "because children", "because hyper-inflation", etc. Of course a lot of _good_ stuff also flies under good flags. I'm just saying it's not obvious either way.)

_delirium 13y ago

I do think there is some risk (though I'm not sure how much delta it adds to the risk either way) that it plays into normalizing the proposals for tiering, a specific kind of non-neutral net, where ISPs would give you access to different levels of "internet content" based on your subscription level, like cable TV packages for the internet. Example: a few sites are available in the Free tier, a basic whitelisted set of sites (news, webmail, popular blogs, etc.) are in the Lite tier, everything but high-bandwidth video and torrents comes with the Standard tier, and the full internet is unlocked only by the Premium tier. The free tier would be made up of "content partners" who are a mixture of nonprofits like Wikipedia, and for-profits that pay for their inclusion in the free tier (CNN, maybe).

6cxs2hd6 13y ago
Which sounds like how cable TV works (at least in the US). In the old days when city governments granted these monopolies to cable TV companies, part of the deal was community access channels (Wayne's World!). Even if these benefitted hardly anyone, they provided some moral cover and justification. If I were an old media guy, I'd see Wikimedia Zero as the germ of an idea -- maybe suggesting a way how to squeeze the genie back in the bottle and wrap the internet in a cable TV model. And, hey, in the US most people's ISP is also their cable company. So ... I don't see it as a definitely bad thing, but I see the seeds of potential bad as well as good. (In general, a lot of bad stuff flies under the flag of a good cause fighting some other bad thing -- "because terrorism", "because children", "because hyper-inflation", etc. Of course a lot of _good_ stuff also flies under good flags. I'm just saying it's not obvious either way.)