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Internet.org will finish internet the way we know it, hurt India’s growth

sunday-guardian.com

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Re: Internet.org will finish internet the way we know it, hurt India’s growth

#61

Post by anon4 »

anon4 wrote: post #59

HOF (HTTP over Facebook) when?

Thinking about it a bit more, if Facebook messages are themselves free, you can set up a fake facebook account and run a desktop client which acts on special messages, in effect achieving TCP over XMPP. This is probably no more than a week of work for one motivated developer.

Or, given that wikipedia is free, you could use a private talk page to transmit data too. That could be even faster for individual files. Post a message to the talk page which a daemon polls frequently, then replaces the talk page with a base-64 encoding of the content you requested.

Both of those require you to have a machine with unrestricted internet access, but I imagine unrestricted home internet access to be much cheaper than mobile internet.

Re: Internet.org will finish internet the way we know it, hurt India’s growth

#62

Post by belorn »

random_coder wrote: post #15

I'm Indian and I'm deeply frustrated and disappointed with this. My fear is that other mobile networks like Airtel will pick up dumb ass half-baked ideas like this and start charging for data from other non approved sources and for high cost paid wireless Internet to become the norm. I know Reliance is way too greedy, but this really is a new low. While wireless data costs in other countries are coming down, here we…

"start charging for data"? Wait, does that mean they do not charge for data at this moment in time?

Are ISP government supported and thus free of charge to any citizen?

Re: Internet.org will finish internet the way we know it, hurt India’s growth

#63

Post by rakoo »

anon4 wrote: post #61
anon4 wrote: post #59

HOF (HTTP over Facebook) when?

Thinking about it a bit more, if Facebook messages are themselves free, you can set up a fake facebook account and run a desktop client which acts on special messages, in effect achieving TCP over XMPP. This is probably no more than a week of work for one motivated developer. Or, given that wikipedia is free, you could use a private talk page to transmit data too. That could be even faster for individual files. Post…

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9203946

Unsurprisingly, the need was raised from the same "internet.org" bullshit.

Re: Internet.org will finish internet the way we know it, hurt India’s growth

#64

Post by rohan1024 »

belorn wrote: post #62
random_coder wrote: post #15

I'm Indian and I'm deeply frustrated and disappointed with this. My fear is that other mobile networks like Airtel will pick up dumb ass half-baked ideas like this and start charging for data from other non approved sources and for high cost paid wireless Internet to become the norm. I know Reliance is way too greedy, but this really is a new low. While wireless data costs in other countries are coming down, here we…

"start charging for data" ? Wait, does that mean they do not charge for data at this moment in time? Are ISP government supported and thus free of charge to any citizen?

No they are charging for data. I think belorn wanted to say something like airtel will charge pay per site violating net neutrality.

Re: Internet.org will finish internet the way we know it, hurt India’s growth

#65

Post by [deleted] »

pen2l wrote: post #2

Expected nothing less from our Zuckerberg. NSA at least makes the pretense of seeming hands off when fucking over people, Zuck just doesn't give a shit. Anyway - what can we actually do to stop this? Anything? Clearly this is the beginning of something unthinkably bad, and we should do absolutely anything to stop this.

[deleted]

Re: Internet.org will finish internet the way we know it, hurt India’s growth

#66

Post by belorn »

rakoo wrote: post #60
eklavya wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you are bending it. They are charging the same they were before and there is no change in that regard. They are still charging same regardless of what the packet contains. Some sites are paying to be subsidised. They are paying for a service, what's wrong? You want to compete? Get your site subsidise as well. Someone has to pay either the customer or the provider, customer doesn't have to pay more for particular…

> They are still charging same regardless of what the packet contains. The issue here is that this is not internet. Facebook has partnered with a local ISP that decided that some packets (say, those from Wikipedia) can pass for free but others (say, those from GMail) cannot. Wikipedia is not (AFAIK) an AS; as such it doesn't have a deal with Reliance Communications at the internet level. And yet, there is now some bu…

While looking at this from the point of view of AS is helpful to understand the ISP industry, it does not help to understand why giving away things for free is bad.

Lets look at the first thing that springs to mind about giving stuff away for fee: humanitarian aid. If a larger food producer "dump" free food into a region, this will decrease the incentives for local grown food, while driving up prices of alternative source of nutrition. A "evil" organization could, I guess, use humanitarian aid as a method to destroy local industry and cement themselves as the only game in town. The question then becomes, is the concept of humanitarian aid wrong and could there be safeguards that will prevent misuse.

I would suggest that non-profit charity that gives out food, medicin and knowledge is an acceptable line in the sand, while commercial monopolies and for-profit price dumping is bad. This still enables the good aspects of "free", while preventing bad actors from exploiting the side effects of giving away things for free. In the context of Internet this would mean that Wikipedia and similar non-profit information sharing sites would be acceptable, but not for-profit companies like facebook and google.

Re: Internet.org will finish internet the way we know it, hurt India’s growth

#67

Post by amirmc »

hardcandy wrote: post #7

This will not end well for Facebook. Once you start competing like this, you quit competing with innovation and eventually end up losing to someone else.

FB (& Google) have reached a size where one of the ways to keep growing is to bring more people onto the Internet. If they can do that in a way that puts their product front-and-centre for those 'new' users, they can capture more of the market. I'm not saying I approve of this strategy, but I can see it as being a viable one for now (just as AOL was viable for its time).

Re: Internet.org will finish internet the way we know it, hurt India’s growth

#69

Post by eklavya »

rakoo wrote: post #60
eklavya wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, you are bending it. They are charging the same they were before and there is no change in that regard. They are still charging same regardless of what the packet contains. Some sites are paying to be subsidised. They are paying for a service, what's wrong? You want to compete? Get your site subsidise as well. Someone has to pay either the customer or the provider, customer doesn't have to pay more for particular…

> They are still charging same regardless of what the packet contains. The issue here is that this is not internet. Facebook has partnered with a local ISP that decided that some packets (say, those from Wikipedia) can pass for free but others (say, those from GMail) cannot. Wikipedia is not (AFAIK) an AS; as such it doesn't have a deal with Reliance Communications at the internet level. And yet, there is now some bu…

I think you are saying that access to some sites is blocked? That is not the case (for most). I see that internet.org is now accessible only from Reliance network. But it won't end nicely for internet.org.

I am yet to see a website being blocked because the site didn't pay for the "privilege" to be accessible. I am just seeing some sites becoming exclusive (to their own detriment) and some sites being provided for free. I don't see a problem here.

The ones trying to be exclusive will fall hard face first. The ones not being provided for free will not be affected. People will continue to pay for internet access, they are not going to limit themselves to 32 websites. It might be helpful for those unprivileged Indians who can not afford an internet connection though.

I would love to see the peering style take off too :)

Re: Internet.org will finish internet the way we know it, hurt India’s growth

#70

Post by ishadua »

rohan1024 wrote: post #64
belorn wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"start charging for data" ? Wait, does that mean they do not charge for data at this moment in time? Are ISP government supported and thus free of charge to any citizen?

No they are charging for data. I think belorn wanted to say something like airtel will charge pay per site violating net neutrality.

I think that belorn is trying to imply 'airtel's charging of VOIP calls' here
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