Blow to Internet.org as Indian Internet Companies Begin to Withdraw
huffingtonpost.in
huffingtonpost.in
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 "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. :)
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 ...
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... ), 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".
http://www.cci.gov.in/index.php?option=com_content&task=view...
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)
"Crore" means 10 million (it's a modifier like "hundred" or "thousand" and does not necessarily relate to money).
10 000 000 Indian rupees = 160 310 U.S. dollars
http://telecom.economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/industry/cc...
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!
Maybe you could also interpret the backlash against Zero/AOL as an indication that customers do not want corporations regulating their access to information. So perhaps network carriers should think twice about aiming for a captive audience with "vertical integration".
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."
Does he really not see the enormous liability that a precedent like this can create?
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-un...
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.
Zuckerberg is providing free internet to millions.
It's like McDonald's building "free" roads that you can use to reach McDonald's, but if you want to go anywhere else you have to pay tolls. It is unbelievably self-serving and for Zuckerburg to dissemble on that point is wildly disingenuous.
"Well, at least they can reach McDonald's" is not a good argument against just building roads and letting people drive wherever.
Personally, I wish there was a better scheme to allocate precious wireless spectrum other than giving a 100 year license to the highest bidder in an auction. (Whether the auction is rigged or not is besides the point.)
We talk about common carrier when it comes to wireline communication but why can't we do the same for wireless?
I don't know about others but it sickens me to think that we consider it an achievement to raise a couple of billion dollars for granting exclusive license to prime low frequency spectrum to Cingular/Verizon. Wouldn't it be better if wireless carriers didn't have to fight over who has the least bad coverage? There has to be a better way...
Also, to be in good books McDonalds is giving access to school and hospital also for free.
How is X megabytes / month for free but with ads (this is network neutral) not better than Internet.org's current model? Why not let those millions decide which are the essential internet services for them? Do the poor millions don't deserve choice?
Let the user chose for himself. How hard can this be?
Why ads? Facebook would be providing internet.org for free, right? If the goal is getting more people on the internet, then internet.org could provide unfettered access to the internet and still reach their goal. However, if the aim is to get more people on their platform and increase Facebook's bottom line, then the goal is about manipulating one of the most disenfranchised people.
A way out for the zero rated schemes and internet.org is to sponsor bandwidth for the end user. The telecom service providers could offer 100mb per month free to the end users and bill internet.org et al for the service.
But that's not the case here.
It's about net neutrality. Unconnected people in India shouldn't destroy the bad impression we associated with this policy in the first place.
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?
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
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/ People can submit response here.
[3]: http://netneutrality.in/ Info site.
Edit: Corrected URL #3.
Ideally yes, but like every other Government institution in India these people are neck deep in corruption[New term: Lobbying].
The key issue is, telcos realize they are being reduced to mere data pipe suppliers and on the long term[May be a few years] their margins will drop like stone falling in a pit. They are being disrupted through software apps[Calls and SMS going through apps like Viber/Skype/Whatsapp]. So while data growth will happen for a while, post that they will be nothing more than data pipe suppliers.
This will just ensure massive flattening of positions in the market. Don't be surprised if BSNL does better than these people in that kind of a world. Because it will be all about infrastructure, and with a unlimited government funding, these people lose out against BSNL if all they will remain is data pipe suppliers.
These people once heralded as champions of free market economy and capitalism now want the government to bail them out with regulations in their favor. This was exactly the cry of all PSU's in the 90's when the government wanted to bring in privatization big time.
This is all about software disruption. These people disrupted BSNL's business, Now there business is being disrupted.
Funny how capitalism works when you are at the receiving end.
I know they'll make up for in data, but $1.2 trillion?
Globally, the overall revenues in the telecom/ICT sector are expected to continue rising because of growth in users, traffic and applications. Even though there may be a loss of up to 6.9 per cent in cumulative voice revenues (representing $479 billion) because of OTT services, the total revenue for TSPs is likely to grow to $2.4 trillion in 2019 from $2.1 trillion in 2014
I was way off base. :)
[1] Consultation paper: http://www.trai.gov.in/WriteReaddata/ConsultationPaper/Docum...
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.
CIS is not and will never be the EFF of India until the FCRA rules change. We need another organisation.
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.
After the fwd.us debacle and now this, why should anyone trust Zuck and Facebook in terms of "philanthropy"?
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.
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.
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.
But no, they want to sell the poor out to the highest bidders.
The protests are not against free data at all. Internet.org could have very well given 100megabytes/month free. They could support it with ads, which is perfectly neutral, if they wanted.
Saying that "the poor don't/can't make the right choice for themselves so let us chose for them" - now, THAT IS ivory tower thinking.
I'm sure they will operate in the best interest of the public.
As for opposing GMOs -- one needs to consider why certain countries "can't feed themselves", and if maybe food cartels might have something to do with it.
For the record, I'm deeply sceptical to GMOs for two reasons: 1) I don't think allowing patent on life/genes to be a good idea -- and find the idea that you're not allowed to plant crops you buy (eg: not being legally allowed to plant a potato, because you didn't buy it "with intent to plant", but paid the "lower" price for "intent to consume") -- or not being able to because of second generation being sterile -- 2) I worry about the pesticides, the interplay between evolution (super bugs), monoculture etc.
[ed: To add: I think the choice between starve like now, and be forever beholden to foreign corporations and their patents is a false choice. Similarly, I think no Internet like now, and be beholden to Facebook is a false choice too.
Setting up local (eg: village-size) mesh-nets, allowing intranets to form, and then slowly connecting those to the bigger Internet, should be entirely viable. Allow for free text (xmpp), voice (sip etc) as well as browsing (maybe initially favouring usenet groups, as that is resilient and works well on low bandwidth links) -- and allow it to grow organically. No need to try and bootstrap straight to the first-world, balkanized Internet of lobotomized, centralized, content-silo-oriented services...]
GMOs are not giving a curated list of seeds away for free to make the farmers dependent on them.
GMOs sell their product like every body else in the free market.
https://www.reddit.com/r/india/comments/32o00z/proof_the_tra...
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.
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?
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.
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?
Why not give X megabytes/month data to the user for free and let HIM chose what the "essential internet services" for HIM are? Internet.org is a non-profit so it would be completely fine giving it for free. But even if they wanted to recover their costs, they could do it in a neutral manner - by ads.
Even with your premise accepted, there are better solutions. Internet.org's current model makes sense only when you consider the ulterior motives as well.
This is something that's totally compatible with net neutrality while providing the same benefits you're advocating.
Even without that, thumb drives are usable with smartphones via OTG cables.
I could see pages used as public group walls, profile pages as personal walls, "discuss"-pages as discussion. Only thing missing is "private" chat/pages -- but a browser-plugin with support for OTR/GPG (encrypt to many recipients...) could fix that, and be way more secure/private than Facebook...
As more and more people come out of poverty, they will be able to access basic services such as water, electricity and data plans. There is no reason why data plans is the only service among the three services that needs to be free. If it is free, it is the government that should provide it rather than private corporations whose single interest is profit.
Now, people who are super poor may not be able to pay for electricity let alone will access free internet.
Either way, FB and bunch of other companies want to profit out of the people who are uninformed and these people may end up buying only services and products from those limited free websites that they get from free internet.
It also looks like the telecom services might take advantage of this and partner with some companies provide selective access to some websites and the biggest losers of this kind of partnership could be companies that dont have enough capital to pay each of the telecom providers to be in their "basic package"
I don't know, but I can conceive of it as a possibility that Internet.org would hinder the propagation of NN "real internet" providers.
Eventually these companies will work towards making internet difficult to access so their own sites can have the monopoly.
Internet isn't impossible to provide eventually every one will have access. But to do it this way will create problems which takes decades to solve.
You can follow that at 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)
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.
If Verizon were to sign up for this, it would fall foul of FCC's rules too (it is clearly paid prioritization when all websites that don't pay are blocked.) It's not for nothing that net neutrality laws in a bunch of countries (Chile, the Netherlands, Brazil and probably a few more) explicitly forbid zero-rating.
If Wikipedia want to give away free access to information, suddenly its an unfair advantage in the market of free information?
Actually some do claim that:
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/08/14/world/americas/14iht-food....
edit: In case you are hit by the paywall,
> Charity finds that U.S. food aid for Africa hurts instead of helps, Celia W. Dugger, 2007-08-14
Do you want to live in a world where your access to information is constrained to one site only?
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.
So I would argue that Wikipedia is the perfect candidate for such a program, and Facebook the worst.
Except for the high likelihood of having a pop over of Jimmy Wales asking for money show up on all your content.
Net neutrality is a means to an end, not the end itself. And wiki being available to millions or billions of people for free doesn't threaten the "open internet."
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.
They were counting on people's sentiments to fall for free services/products. They realized it could back fire big time. That 'we are for net neutrality' argument is plain B.S. They are making a virtue out of compulsion.
Flipkart has a string of screw up's off late. The Xiaomi flash sale, the big billion dollar sale, other price related issues.
They are already falling out of fashion. Last thing they need is to perceived as a 'yet another baniya company'.
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.
"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 :)
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...
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.
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.
There is a long history or nationalism in India.
If ISPs doesn't charge for facebook usage, then who _actually_ pays?
Someone has to...right? Just curious.
http://htmlpreview.github.io/?https://gist.githubusercontent...
My guess-- limited Internet access is preferable to no Internet access and ideological purity.
Its sad, whatever you think about FB, getting more people access to Wikipedia is clearly a good thing (fixing illiteracy would be better, clearly).
Now, combine this with the fact that picking who gets on internet.org gives the telcos and FB huge leverage, the ulterior motives seem much more likely cause.
For-profit company making these decisions on the basis of commercial arrangements will take away all the potential of the Internet as we know it. Would there have been a KhanAcademy if ComcastAcademy ("limited internet access") was offered "for free"?