Wired: Internet.org doesn’t care about Net Neutrality

Open networks, government investment, universal service funds/requirements, unlicensed spectrum, that's what people want. Ironically, Internet.org does the opposite -- deepens reliance and control on a telecom oligopoly. Speak out at NoFakeInternet.org THE BACKLASH AGAINST Facebook’s Internet.org project is growing.  On Monday, 65 advocacy organizations in 31 countries released an open letter to Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg protesting Internet.org—an effort to bring free internet service to the developing world—saying the project “violates the principles of net neutrality, threatening freedom of expression, equality of opportunity, security, privacy, and innovation.”

Open networks, government investment, universal service funds/requirements, unlicensed spectrum, that's what people want. Ironically, Internet.org does the opposite -- deepens reliance and control on a telecom oligopoly. Speak out at NoFakeInternet.org

THE BACKLASH AGAINST Facebook’s Internet.org project is growing. 

On Monday, 65 advocacy organizations in 31 countries released an open letter to Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg protesting Internet.org—an effort to bring free internet service to the developing world—saying the project “violates the principles of net neutrality, threatening freedom of expression, equality of opportunity, security, privacy, and innovation.”

With Internet.org, Facebook is partnering with various wireless carriers and other organizations to provide an app that offers free access to certain internet services, including Facebook, on mobile phones in developing countries. But this spring, a group of publishers in India pulled out of the program, saying it violated the principles of net neutrality—the notion that internet providers should treat all online services equally.

Zuckerberg has defended the project, saying that it can “coexist” with net neutrality. “To give more people access to the internet, it is useful to offer some service for free,” he wrote in an April 16 post to Facebook. “If someone can’t afford to pay for connectivity, it is always better to have some access than none at all.” But today’s open letter argues that the limited access offered by Internet.org could lead to a new kind of digital divide.

Exacerbating Inequality

“We think that Internet.org exacerbates existing inequalities,” says Josh Levy, of the global public advocate Access Now, one of the organizations behind the letter. “The goal here is for poor folks to get limited access to internet services and then, eventually, be prompted to pay for a data plan so they can get the full internet. But very likely, a lot of those people will never be able to afford those data plans. So they’ll be stuck on the second tier, where they don’t have access to the full Internet.”

- Read more at Wired