“If you dictate what the poor should get, you take away their rights to choose what they think is best for them.” - Naveen Patnaik, chief minister of the Indian state Odisha.
The Times of India of 28-Dec-2015 carried an edit page article by Mark Zuckerberg promoting the rebranded 'Free Basics'. Both the title, and its claim, are preposterous. Who and what are Zuckerberg, Facebook, and ‘Free Basics’ to claim that they ‘protect’ net neutrality? In fact, no single service can or will do that. Only strict compliance to both rules and norms – informal and formal – will protect net neutrality against the constant attempts by commercial interests and government agencies to violate or dilute it. We have to make sure that Facebook, internet-dot-org, ‘Free-Basics’ or any other service does not overtly or covertly violate net neutrality while claiming to be net neutral.
Mr Zuckerberg has the funny notion that what is basic is different for the poor and rich. From the tenor his article, he is quite annoyed that people in India are sceptical about the benefits he is offering. He is surprised that in a country where in his words “more than 1 billion people need to be connected to the internet” they question what is on offer. He is angry that they are ungrateful to him and his company. He thinks, by the tone his writing, that Indians have no business to question the benefits of his charity-like offer. After all, quite patronizingly, he is doing it for the good of poor Indians and they had better accept it without a whimper.
Zuckerberg repeatedly relies on so-called research to argue that internet access can help lift people out of poverty. While digital connectivity, indeed, has helped certain business models to flourish and helped some to do better, that did not happen through the restricted access of the kind offered by F-B. The full-page advertisements by F-B use anecdotes, clichés, and bluffs. For example, an engineering student is relying on F-B for ‘research’ as he does not have access to Internet. Clearly, we should not allow any engineering college or even a non-technical institute to operate without providing full digital connectivity to its students and teachers within its premises. The solution is not F-B but ensuring availability of full access to the Internet. Moreover, it is practically impossible for anyone to use F-B for any serious Internet-based research, as the access is severely restricted.
Zuckerberg says India must choose facts over fiction. Yes, indeed! Not only India, everybody must do so. While pontificating thus, Mr Zuckerberg in fact is selling us a mountain of white lies. Let me put it this way: a bit of fiction is, perhaps, far better than an endless chain of nested falsehoods. Mr Zuckerberg has cleverly combined the terms ‘free’ and ‘basics’ to conceal the real nature of this devious enterprise that tries to carve out a confined corner in Internet under the pretence of providing ‘free’ access to things that are touted as ‘basics’ to an Internet user. What is the reality? ‘Free-Basics’ is just a pseudonym or effectively a mask for the devious contraption that is “internet.org”. By the way, it is a bit confusing: Facebook, Free-Basics and ‘internet-dot-org’. For brevity, I use the short forms ‘fb’, ‘F-B’, and ‘i.o’ for these three names/entities.
One wonders how fb managed to get ownership over the domain “internet-dot-org”. It is patently misleading – the Internet and the “internet.org”. fb officially states that ‘i.o’ is a ‘proxy server’. The normal function of a proxy server is to allow clients to make indirect network connections to other network services. In contrast, ‘i.o’ is an active mechanism that serves as a highly efficient gatekeeper, monitor, filter, and a lot more! Fb has partly disclosed what it does. There is not a shade of ‘free’ as in freedom in ‘F-B’. When it comes to free as in free lunch, fb decides what the menu is. What they claim as ‘basic’ is not what most of us consider as truly basic to using Internet for fun or work. While the basic services in health or education are real, the only thing common between them and F-B is the word ‘basic’. It was added as part of the rebranding of ‘i.o’ after they faced severe criticism for trying to make the service as a pseudonym for The Internet to the users of the service.
The ‘Technical Guidelines’ for F-B provided by fb states: “From within Free Basics, all traffic is routed through the Internet.org proxy. We do this in order to create a standard traffic flow so that operators can properly identify and zero rate your service.” Further, it assures the service providers who sign up to the scheme: “ … by detecting requests that pass through the Free Basics Platform, you can apply controls such as geo-blocking for your content and/or measure your Free Basics Platform traffic.” In other words, both F-B and service provider can do their own monitoring and filtering in their own ways. The real devil in the detail is the ‘i.o’, the gatekeeper. That is what makes free into unfree; basics into non-basics. The ‘free’ in ‘F-B’ is not a fact; it is a big white lie. The ‘basics’ in F-B is an outright perversion of what constitutes basic elements of Internet usage.
The clever combination of words ‘free’ and ‘basics’ and advertising it as a ‘free service’ offering access to something very ‘basic’ is highly misleading and should not be allowed as a proprietary name or brand by regulators anywhere in the world. Firstly, it is a service offered with severely restrictive terms – both technical and non-technical. Secondly, instead of offering anything ‘basic’ it severely restricts user’s access to the whole of Internet. In the name of offering ‘free’ access (via zero-rating plans that protects certain kinds of commercial interests at the cost of user’s interests) to so-called ‘basic’ services it limits users access to a small basket of services that have tied up with F-B.
In fact, in India or anywhere else for that matter, moderate speed dial-up modems are enough to get reasonably sound access to thousands of Internet sites. Such access is far better than what one gets through F-B offered through ‘zero-rating’ plans. In fact, when there is no other option, people can use minimal browsers or certain settings to gain text only access to thousands of websites through very low bandwidth data networks. The question of what ought to be a minimal band width each citizen ought to get as his/her right must be decided by each country’s regulator through consultations with users, government, and service providers. Companies with huge commercial interests and deep pockets to lobby for business advantage should not be the ones who should decide that. The authorities must disallow or discourage them from lobbying the regulators. The telecom regulator must not accept emails sent from fb accounts misleading fb users. The regulator must penalize fb for indulging in this unethical practice.
The free in ‘FB’ is in fact definitely unfree. Similarly, ‘basic’ in ‘FB’ is anything but truly basic! It isn’t even remotely close to the basic access it ought to be or even the kind of reasonable access we could get even on dialup modems of low to moderate speed in the 1990’s, or on WLL handsets when it was first rolled out in India way back in early 2000.
The cleverly nicknamed ‘basic’ in ‘FB’ is in fact a highly sophisticated gatekeeper that blocks free access to nearly one billion websites. It filters the access and monitors closely user’s activity. It restricts access to a select list a few hundred websites worldwide that has signed on to the terms set out by Facebook. None of them offers the kind of ‘basic’ information that all normal, basic internet users – rich or poor – need.
The real nature or the factual position of ‘FB’ is clearly evident from the sketchy and, rather ‘basic’ technical specifications Facebook has put out under the garb of ‘Technical Guidelines’ for the dubious service. The ‘i.o’ gatekeeper controls how and what can be accessed. On the other hand, if we use a low bandwidth connection that does not have any such gatekeeper filtering the access, we can access nearly every website, albeit with some difficulty. The F-B allows access only to services that have signed up with them subject to all their terms. Strangely, nowhere does F-B mention what is the bandwidth limits envisaged for it. It merely states that websites enrolled in the scheme “must be built to be optimized for browsing on both feature and smartphones and in limited bandwidth scenarios.”
F-B dictates: “websites must be properly integrated with Internet.org to allow zero rating and must meet technical guidelines.” It then goes on to insist: “In order to make your website display properly within the Free Basics Platform and be accessible to people on all types of phones and data plans, your mobile website(s) must meet certain technical conditions created by the Free Basics proxy.” As discussed earlier, the F-B proxy is nothing but ‘i.o’ the gatekeeper. It then asserts that if any websites are found to contain certain disallowed features post-implementation, F-B “will block them until we can confirm that the content has been removed.” After providing a false assurance that F-B will provide secure connectivity to all users, they acknowledges that when people use F-B, “information is temporarily decrypted” (i.e., data stream is not secured) to ensure “proper functionality of the services”. It does not need much technical insight to infer what all that really means. All these are facts disclosed by F-B on their website.
Instead of providing the possibility of accessing any of the nearly one billion websites worldwide, Free Basics limits access to a handful of sites and services that have signed up to Zuckerberg’s terms and are compliant with the protocols enforced by them. The ‘free basics’ allows users access to a selection of a few hundred sites routed through the gateway called ‘internet-dot-org’. It does not allow users to access freely the nearly unlimited, open, plural, and diverse internet. The business tie-ups of ‘Free Basics’ with particular telecom operators give Free-Basics’ an enormous commercial advantage.
Central to Net Neutrality is service providers, applications, and telecom operators providing a completely neutral platform – neutral to mode of access, type of user, kind of application, source of data, and the nature of data. Net Neutrality means no service or service provider will selectively give a competitive advantage to user or application by filtering, blocking, or restricting data flows between user and the data accessed by the user. Almost each contention of Zuckerberg is a carefully crafted lie. Instead of relying on facts and truth, he has dished out a stream of falsehoods hoping to hoodwink the regulator and users. He does all this to provide a walled garden of online content in order to create a certain type of monopoly and get an unfair advantage over all potential competitors. It is despicable to tout it as charity; it must also be rejected as an unfair business practice involving "ruthless encroachment of the cyberspace" (as argued by Free Software Movement of India - FSMI).
Also see: One critical question Mark Zuckerberg hasn’t answered about Free Basics - by Nikhil Pahwa
The Times of India of 28-Dec-2015 carried an edit page article by Mark Zuckerberg promoting the rebranded 'Free Basics'. Both the title, and its claim, are preposterous. Who and what are Zuckerberg, Facebook, and ‘Free Basics’ to claim that they ‘protect’ net neutrality? In fact, no single service can or will do that. Only strict compliance to both rules and norms – informal and formal – will protect net neutrality against the constant attempts by commercial interests and government agencies to violate or dilute it. We have to make sure that Facebook, internet-dot-org, ‘Free-Basics’ or any other service does not overtly or covertly violate net neutrality while claiming to be net neutral.
Mr Zuckerberg has the funny notion that what is basic is different for the poor and rich. From the tenor his article, he is quite annoyed that people in India are sceptical about the benefits he is offering. He is surprised that in a country where in his words “more than 1 billion people need to be connected to the internet” they question what is on offer. He is angry that they are ungrateful to him and his company. He thinks, by the tone his writing, that Indians have no business to question the benefits of his charity-like offer. After all, quite patronizingly, he is doing it for the good of poor Indians and they had better accept it without a whimper.
Zuckerberg repeatedly relies on so-called research to argue that internet access can help lift people out of poverty. While digital connectivity, indeed, has helped certain business models to flourish and helped some to do better, that did not happen through the restricted access of the kind offered by F-B. The full-page advertisements by F-B use anecdotes, clichés, and bluffs. For example, an engineering student is relying on F-B for ‘research’ as he does not have access to Internet. Clearly, we should not allow any engineering college or even a non-technical institute to operate without providing full digital connectivity to its students and teachers within its premises. The solution is not F-B but ensuring availability of full access to the Internet. Moreover, it is practically impossible for anyone to use F-B for any serious Internet-based research, as the access is severely restricted.
Zuckerberg says India must choose facts over fiction. Yes, indeed! Not only India, everybody must do so. While pontificating thus, Mr Zuckerberg in fact is selling us a mountain of white lies. Let me put it this way: a bit of fiction is, perhaps, far better than an endless chain of nested falsehoods. Mr Zuckerberg has cleverly combined the terms ‘free’ and ‘basics’ to conceal the real nature of this devious enterprise that tries to carve out a confined corner in Internet under the pretence of providing ‘free’ access to things that are touted as ‘basics’ to an Internet user. What is the reality? ‘Free-Basics’ is just a pseudonym or effectively a mask for the devious contraption that is “internet.org”. By the way, it is a bit confusing: Facebook, Free-Basics and ‘internet-dot-org’. For brevity, I use the short forms ‘fb’, ‘F-B’, and ‘i.o’ for these three names/entities.
One wonders how fb managed to get ownership over the domain “internet-dot-org”. It is patently misleading – the Internet and the “internet.org”. fb officially states that ‘i.o’ is a ‘proxy server’. The normal function of a proxy server is to allow clients to make indirect network connections to other network services. In contrast, ‘i.o’ is an active mechanism that serves as a highly efficient gatekeeper, monitor, filter, and a lot more! Fb has partly disclosed what it does. There is not a shade of ‘free’ as in freedom in ‘F-B’. When it comes to free as in free lunch, fb decides what the menu is. What they claim as ‘basic’ is not what most of us consider as truly basic to using Internet for fun or work. While the basic services in health or education are real, the only thing common between them and F-B is the word ‘basic’. It was added as part of the rebranding of ‘i.o’ after they faced severe criticism for trying to make the service as a pseudonym for The Internet to the users of the service.
The ‘Technical Guidelines’ for F-B provided by fb states: “From within Free Basics, all traffic is routed through the Internet.org proxy. We do this in order to create a standard traffic flow so that operators can properly identify and zero rate your service.” Further, it assures the service providers who sign up to the scheme: “ … by detecting requests that pass through the Free Basics Platform, you can apply controls such as geo-blocking for your content and/or measure your Free Basics Platform traffic.” In other words, both F-B and service provider can do their own monitoring and filtering in their own ways. The real devil in the detail is the ‘i.o’, the gatekeeper. That is what makes free into unfree; basics into non-basics. The ‘free’ in ‘F-B’ is not a fact; it is a big white lie. The ‘basics’ in F-B is an outright perversion of what constitutes basic elements of Internet usage.
Figure: The devious gatekeeper - Internet.org, the proxy through which all F-B traffic is routed/filtered (source: 'Technical Guidelines' provided by Facebook)
The clever combination of words ‘free’ and ‘basics’ and advertising it as a ‘free service’ offering access to something very ‘basic’ is highly misleading and should not be allowed as a proprietary name or brand by regulators anywhere in the world. Firstly, it is a service offered with severely restrictive terms – both technical and non-technical. Secondly, instead of offering anything ‘basic’ it severely restricts user’s access to the whole of Internet. In the name of offering ‘free’ access (via zero-rating plans that protects certain kinds of commercial interests at the cost of user’s interests) to so-called ‘basic’ services it limits users access to a small basket of services that have tied up with F-B.
In fact, in India or anywhere else for that matter, moderate speed dial-up modems are enough to get reasonably sound access to thousands of Internet sites. Such access is far better than what one gets through F-B offered through ‘zero-rating’ plans. In fact, when there is no other option, people can use minimal browsers or certain settings to gain text only access to thousands of websites through very low bandwidth data networks. The question of what ought to be a minimal band width each citizen ought to get as his/her right must be decided by each country’s regulator through consultations with users, government, and service providers. Companies with huge commercial interests and deep pockets to lobby for business advantage should not be the ones who should decide that. The authorities must disallow or discourage them from lobbying the regulators. The telecom regulator must not accept emails sent from fb accounts misleading fb users. The regulator must penalize fb for indulging in this unethical practice.
The free in ‘FB’ is in fact definitely unfree. Similarly, ‘basic’ in ‘FB’ is anything but truly basic! It isn’t even remotely close to the basic access it ought to be or even the kind of reasonable access we could get even on dialup modems of low to moderate speed in the 1990’s, or on WLL handsets when it was first rolled out in India way back in early 2000.
The cleverly nicknamed ‘basic’ in ‘FB’ is in fact a highly sophisticated gatekeeper that blocks free access to nearly one billion websites. It filters the access and monitors closely user’s activity. It restricts access to a select list a few hundred websites worldwide that has signed on to the terms set out by Facebook. None of them offers the kind of ‘basic’ information that all normal, basic internet users – rich or poor – need.
The real nature or the factual position of ‘FB’ is clearly evident from the sketchy and, rather ‘basic’ technical specifications Facebook has put out under the garb of ‘Technical Guidelines’ for the dubious service. The ‘i.o’ gatekeeper controls how and what can be accessed. On the other hand, if we use a low bandwidth connection that does not have any such gatekeeper filtering the access, we can access nearly every website, albeit with some difficulty. The F-B allows access only to services that have signed up with them subject to all their terms. Strangely, nowhere does F-B mention what is the bandwidth limits envisaged for it. It merely states that websites enrolled in the scheme “must be built to be optimized for browsing on both feature and smartphones and in limited bandwidth scenarios.”
F-B dictates: “websites must be properly integrated with Internet.org to allow zero rating and must meet technical guidelines.” It then goes on to insist: “In order to make your website display properly within the Free Basics Platform and be accessible to people on all types of phones and data plans, your mobile website(s) must meet certain technical conditions created by the Free Basics proxy.” As discussed earlier, the F-B proxy is nothing but ‘i.o’ the gatekeeper. It then asserts that if any websites are found to contain certain disallowed features post-implementation, F-B “will block them until we can confirm that the content has been removed.” After providing a false assurance that F-B will provide secure connectivity to all users, they acknowledges that when people use F-B, “information is temporarily decrypted” (i.e., data stream is not secured) to ensure “proper functionality of the services”. It does not need much technical insight to infer what all that really means. All these are facts disclosed by F-B on their website.
Instead of providing the possibility of accessing any of the nearly one billion websites worldwide, Free Basics limits access to a handful of sites and services that have signed up to Zuckerberg’s terms and are compliant with the protocols enforced by them. The ‘free basics’ allows users access to a selection of a few hundred sites routed through the gateway called ‘internet-dot-org’. It does not allow users to access freely the nearly unlimited, open, plural, and diverse internet. The business tie-ups of ‘Free Basics’ with particular telecom operators give Free-Basics’ an enormous commercial advantage.
Central to Net Neutrality is service providers, applications, and telecom operators providing a completely neutral platform – neutral to mode of access, type of user, kind of application, source of data, and the nature of data. Net Neutrality means no service or service provider will selectively give a competitive advantage to user or application by filtering, blocking, or restricting data flows between user and the data accessed by the user. Almost each contention of Zuckerberg is a carefully crafted lie. Instead of relying on facts and truth, he has dished out a stream of falsehoods hoping to hoodwink the regulator and users. He does all this to provide a walled garden of online content in order to create a certain type of monopoly and get an unfair advantage over all potential competitors. It is despicable to tout it as charity; it must also be rejected as an unfair business practice involving "ruthless encroachment of the cyberspace" (as argued by Free Software Movement of India - FSMI).
Also see: One critical question Mark Zuckerberg hasn’t answered about Free Basics - by Nikhil Pahwa
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