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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 Neutral

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. :)

comex 12y ago
Popular support for net neutrality rallied at the last minute by comedians, eh? Comments sent en masse to a regulatory body? Sounds familiar! Hopefully the result will be the same.
- jace 12y ago
  With any luck we'll also turn out to be a campaign to be remembered. :)
rsync 12y ago
"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
- blumkvist 12y ago
  I just bought the book. Sounds like a very nice read. Thanks.
- ishansharma 12y ago
  This is their plan exactly. However, we have been able to get 6 out of 39 brands to pull their support back. Hopefully, tomorrow we will see even better support!
- nileshtrivedi 12y ago
  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-startups-and-innovation-a-real-story/ http://rashmiranjanpadhy.com/2015/04/12/airtel-kills-startup... ), 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 12y ago
    India has a Competition Commission since 2002. http://www.cci.gov.in/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=12 http://www.cci.gov.in/index.php?option=com_content&task=view...
    - nileshtrivedi 12y ago
      Thanks. I must have confused it with some amendment regarding competition commission.
    - kamikazi 12y ago
      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)
toxican 12y ago
That video is wonderful. Anyone know of a video that outlines the importance of net neutrality as it pertains to America? This video covers the core idea excellently, but some of the details are very specific to India and their struggle with neutrality. I'd love to have something to show people that think Neutrality is some government overstep. But I feel like they'd be too distracted by the fact that it's not specifically discussing the new American laws (which is stupid, I know).
- nileshtrivedi 12y ago
  Did you not see the John Oliver segment? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpbOEoRrHyU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpbOEoRrHyU
  - toxican 12y ago
    Nope, don't watch TV and never saw it popup on my subreddits or facebook wall. Thanks!
- denzil_correa 12y ago
  A website that explains the importance of Net Neutrality, in general. http://www.theopeninter.net http://www.theopeninter.net
fsniper 12y ago
I was against this zero movement from the start. I'm really happy to see that it is started to be seen as anti-NN. Wishing for Turkey Operators to pull out too.
jacquesm 12y ago
Wow, the mask really came off on that one.
Mahn 12y ago
> 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" Does he really not see the enormous liability that a precedent like this can create?
- girvo 12y ago
  The precedent already exists, at least here in Australia. Luckily it hasn't caused too many problems thus far, but whether that is merely an outlier remains to be seen.
  - madeofpalk 12y ago
    To clarify for the global audience: (most) broadband in Australia is metered, so back when ADSL started getting big, ISP's would offset 14GB bandwidth cap with 'free zone' content - data which is unmetered. This still continues today, the most recent competitive offering is unmetered Netflix - http://www.optus.com.au/netflix http://www.optus.com.au/netflix Which, the latest news is that Netflix regrets signing these deals in the first place http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2015/04/netflix-regrets-signing-unmetered-streaming-agreements-with-optus-and-iinet/ http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2015/04/netflix-regrets-signing-un...
    - rjaco31 12y ago
      Wow, there are actual countries with bandwidth cap and privileged content for Home Internet? Damn, I thought that was just the hypothetical scarecrow of NN defenders =/
      - madeofpalk 12y ago
        eh. It's something that made sense over ten years ago. Very little content was hosted locally within Australia so most traffic had to go over the expensive links to other countries (which are obviously constrained in bandwidth). Privileged/unmetered content was often things like local Steam mirrors or whatnot which was closer to the user/ISP. Now that more and more content is cached locally, there's less and less of a need for it both bandwidth caps and privileged content.
rocky1138 12y ago
In some ways I agree with Zuckerburg here, except that I don't think Facebook (or any other privately held company) should be the one to do it. An initiative to bring the Internet to people who cannot afford it or are so remote they are out-of-touch with modern economies should be done by the public sector and/or charities. Besides, I fail to see how this sort of thing would even be technically feasible. If you can provide some connection to the Internet, you can provide connections to all of the Internet, yes?
sriku 12y ago
> 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" That is not a literal quote. Here is the actual quote from that image - "For people who are not on the internet though, having some connectivity and some ability to share is always much better than no ability to connect and share at all. That's why programs like Internet.org are important and can co-exist with net neutrality regulations."
- manish_gill 12y ago
  My bad, I paraphrased the implications of the comment.
  - underwater 12y ago
    Presenting it as a direct quote is intellectually dishonest. Please don't use that kind of manipulation here, even if you think your cause warrants it.
    - manish_gill 12y ago
      In case you didn't notice, I also pasted the exact statement he gave as a screenshot. I only see an honest mistake (which was really just having the quotes around the thing -- I can't edit it otherwise I would have) instead of intellectual dishonesty. But thanks for the lesson.
      - underwater 12y ago
        I was a little hasty jumping on your previous post. Thanks for the clarification.
- loceng 12y ago
  Another great Zuckerburg quote for the internet history books..
pavanlimo 12y ago
All said and done, there's still no point in all this report unless TRAI/Government pull their socks up and make net neutrality a reality by law.
danraile 12y ago
What is the source of that Constine/Zuckerberg exchange?
- manish_gill 12y ago
  The latest Q&A session he did on his page. https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10102028100357421 https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10102028100357421
danraile 12y ago
what is the source of that Constine/Zuckerberg exchange?

comex 12y ago

Popular support for net neutrality rallied at the last minute by comedians, eh? Comments sent en masse to a regulatory body? Sounds familiar! Hopefully the result will be the same.

jace 12y ago
With any luck we'll also turn out to be a campaign to be remembered. :)

rsync 12y ago

"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

blumkvist 12y ago
I just bought the book. Sounds like a very nice read. Thanks.
ishansharma 12y ago
This is their plan exactly. However, we have been able to get 6 out of 39 brands to pull their support back. Hopefully, tomorrow we will see even better support!
nileshtrivedi 12y ago
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-startups-and-innovation-a-real-story/ http://rashmiranjanpadhy.com/2015/04/12/airtel-kills-startup... ), 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 12y ago
  India has a Competition Commission since 2002. http://www.cci.gov.in/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=12 http://www.cci.gov.in/index.php?option=com_content&task=view...
  - nileshtrivedi 12y ago
    Thanks. I must have confused it with some amendment regarding competition commission.
  - kamikazi 12y ago
    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)

toxican 12y ago

That video is wonderful. Anyone know of a video that outlines the importance of net neutrality as it pertains to America? This video covers the core idea excellently, but some of the details are very specific to India and their struggle with neutrality. I'd love to have something to show people that think Neutrality is some government overstep. But I feel like they'd be too distracted by the fact that it's not specifically discussing the new American laws (which is stupid, I know).

nileshtrivedi 12y ago
Did you not see the John Oliver segment? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpbOEoRrHyU https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpbOEoRrHyU
- toxican 12y ago
  Nope, don't watch TV and never saw it popup on my subreddits or facebook wall. Thanks!
denzil_correa 12y ago
A website that explains the importance of Net Neutrality, in general. http://www.theopeninter.net http://www.theopeninter.net

fsniper 12y ago

I was against this zero movement from the start. I'm really happy to see that it is started to be seen as anti-NN. Wishing for Turkey Operators to pull out too.

jacquesm 12y ago

Wow, the mask really came off on that one.

Mahn 12y ago

> 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" Does he really not see the enormous liability that a precedent like this can create?

girvo 12y ago
The precedent already exists, at least here in Australia. Luckily it hasn't caused too many problems thus far, but whether that is merely an outlier remains to be seen.
- madeofpalk 12y ago
  To clarify for the global audience: (most) broadband in Australia is metered, so back when ADSL started getting big, ISP's would offset 14GB bandwidth cap with 'free zone' content - data which is unmetered. This still continues today, the most recent competitive offering is unmetered Netflix - http://www.optus.com.au/netflix http://www.optus.com.au/netflix Which, the latest news is that Netflix regrets signing these deals in the first place http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2015/04/netflix-regrets-signing-unmetered-streaming-agreements-with-optus-and-iinet/ http://www.gizmodo.com.au/2015/04/netflix-regrets-signing-un...
  - rjaco31 12y ago
    Wow, there are actual countries with bandwidth cap and privileged content for Home Internet? Damn, I thought that was just the hypothetical scarecrow of NN defenders =/
    - madeofpalk 12y ago
      eh. It's something that made sense over ten years ago. Very little content was hosted locally within Australia so most traffic had to go over the expensive links to other countries (which are obviously constrained in bandwidth). Privileged/unmetered content was often things like local Steam mirrors or whatnot which was closer to the user/ISP. Now that more and more content is cached locally, there's less and less of a need for it both bandwidth caps and privileged content.

rocky1138 12y ago

In some ways I agree with Zuckerburg here, except that I don't think Facebook (or any other privately held company) should be the one to do it. An initiative to bring the Internet to people who cannot afford it or are so remote they are out-of-touch with modern economies should be done by the public sector and/or charities. Besides, I fail to see how this sort of thing would even be technically feasible. If you can provide some connection to the Internet, you can provide connections to all of the Internet, yes?

sriku 12y ago

> 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" That is not a literal quote. Here is the actual quote from that image - "For people who are not on the internet though, having some connectivity and some ability to share is always much better than no ability to connect and share at all. That's why programs like Internet.org are important and can co-exist with net neutrality regulations."

manish_gill 12y ago
My bad, I paraphrased the implications of the comment.
- underwater 12y ago
  Presenting it as a direct quote is intellectually dishonest. Please don't use that kind of manipulation here, even if you think your cause warrants it.
  - manish_gill 12y ago
    In case you didn't notice, I also pasted the exact statement he gave as a screenshot. I only see an honest mistake (which was really just having the quotes around the thing -- I can't edit it otherwise I would have) instead of intellectual dishonesty. But thanks for the lesson.
    - underwater 12y ago
      I was a little hasty jumping on your previous post. Thanks for the clarification.
loceng 12y ago
Another great Zuckerburg quote for the internet history books..

pavanlimo 12y ago

All said and done, there's still no point in all this report unless TRAI/Government pull their socks up and make net neutrality a reality by law.

danraile 12y ago

What is the source of that Constine/Zuckerberg exchange?

manish_gill 12y ago
The latest Q&A session he did on his page. https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10102028100357421 https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10102028100357421

danraile 12y ago

what is the source of that Constine/Zuckerberg exchange?