On 11/30/14, 9:49 AM, Ryan Lane wrote:
Providing free access to Wikipedia doesn't violate the concept of net neutrality. Access to Wikimedia is being subsidized by the mobile companies. Access to other sources of information isn't being slowed. There's no extra charge to access other sources of information.
I don't see a distinction here, unless you're extremely naive about economics. Discriminatory pricing in any market can be done in two ways: 1. have a "standard" rate and add a surcharge to certain disfavored uses; or 2. have a "standard" rate and give a discount to certain favored uses. Most things done with #1 could be reconfigured to be done with #2 or vice-versa; it ends up as mainly a rhetorical and administrative difference. In either case, applied to data, it's varying pricing packet pricing based on whether the source of the packets is favored or disfavored by the ISP (in this case, Wikipedia is favored), which is precisely what net neutrality wishes to prohibit.
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