[Advocacy Advisors] Wikipedia Zero specifically excepted from ban of zero-rating services in Chile

Tue Sep 23 10:20:52 UTC 2014

On Tue, 23 Sep 2014, Cristian Consonni wrote:

> Secondly, I would like to know if the idea of "lobbyists are using
> Wikipedia Zero to crack net neutrality" is a theoretical thing or it
> is happening now as in "there are actual lobbyists going around
> advocating Wikipedia Zero for their own purposes" (and I mean
> Wikipedia Zero *specifically* not zero rating in general).
> As the case of Chile is showing, I would like to know if something we
> think (in this case "Wikipedia Zero can be treated as an exception
> because it's free knowledge") is a theoretical possibility (even if it
> is a reasonable possibility) or if it is something that is happening
> on the ground.

I'd like to share my perspective here, although this year
I've been much less active but I still keep a very good
contact to various media organisations (among others).

In Poland we have had an open clash of the pro-Internet
and pro-content-segregation lobbyists on the ground
of online advertisting. T-Mobile has openly threatened
to cut and replace ads on their network with their own.
This is obviously a reminescence of battles with Internet
giants like Google and Poland has been chosen to be 
a guinea pig to test market, regulatory and media response.

I don't remember and I don't believe that Wikipedia Zero
was actually used in such discussion.

There is yet another context of this story which needs
to be mentioned - it is the difficulty of engaging
the Wikipedia community in public affairs. I think
even this very mailing list is an attempt to bridge
and coordinate efforts in this area.

I do observe a certain level of mistrust of the core
editing community ("we just want to write an encyclopaedia
here") towards various Internet activists. Even mild activities
of the Polish Wikimedia chapter in this area have been
criticized by some. Sometimes I have a feeling some
community members would like to have the difficult job
of lobbying outsourced to some other organizations
and leave Wikipedia brand pure and virgin, free of any
kind of decision-influencing (ergo, political) activity.
The mistrust of the community is not only directed
towards activits - also the initial agreement between
Wikimedia Foundation and Orange (implemented in Poland
as one of the first markets) - had been a subject of
a lively debate within the community itself.

I have personally had committed lots of energy to
convince "the community" (whoever it was on the talk page)
to join the ACTA protects back then. In the end,
it was a Wikimedia community voice that was a tipping point
for media attention and the whole thing resulted in massive
street protests seldomly seen in this country. Or at least
it was one of the major factors.

I don't think the net neutrality debate has taken proper
shape in our media; certainly I don't think that media
organisations have researched the the material properly
to find out about Wikipedia Zero and its implications.

But this subject raises many eyebrows in our internal
discussions, "if we don't want that Internet access
is only limited to Facebook for free, how is Wikipedia
Zero different?". We feel we don't have a satisfactory
answer to this should the question pop up.

In the end, are we building a community or are
we just one of the "permium content" websites,
which needs to expand in order to stay relevant?

//Marcin

saper at plwikipedia