The Centre for Internet and Society
http://editors.cis-india.org
These are the search results for the query, showing results 61 to 75.
Net Neutrality Advocates Rejoice As TRAI Bans Differential Pricing
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/odisha-tv-february-9-2016-subhashish-panigrahi-net-neutrality-advocates-rejoice-as-trai-bans-differential-pricing
<b>India would not see any more Free Basics advertisements on billboards with images of farmers and common people explaining how much they benefited from this Facebook project.</b>
<p>The article by Subhashish Panigrahi was <a class="external-link" href="http://odishatv.in/opinion/net-neutrality-advocates-rejoice-as-trai-bans-differential-pricing-125476/">published by Odisha TV </a>on February 9, 2016.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Because the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) has taken a historical step by banning differential pricing without discriminating services. In their notes TRAI has explained, “In India, given that a majority of the population are yet to be connected to the internet, allowing service providers to define the nature of access would be equivalent of letting TSPs shape the users’ internet experience.” Not just that, violation of this ban would cost Rs. 50,000 every day.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Facebook planned to launch Free Basics in India by making a few websites – mostly partners with Facebook—available for free. The company not just advertised aggressively on bill boards and commercials across the nation, it also embedded a campaign inside Facebook asking users to vote in support of Free Basics. TRAI criticized Facebook’s attempt to manipulate public opinion. Facebook was also heavily challenged by many policy and internet advocates including non-profits like Free Software Movement of India and Savetheinternet.in campaign. The two collectives strongly discouraged Free Basics by moulding public opinion against it with Savetheinternet.in alone used to send over 2.4 million emails to TRAI to disallow Free Basics. Furthermore, 500 Indian start-ups, including major names like Cleartrip, Zomato, Practo, Paytm and Cleartax, also wrote to India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi requesting continued support for Net Neutrality – a concept that advocates equal treatment of websites – on Republic Day. Stand-up comedians like Abish Mathew and groups like All India Bakchod and East India Comedy created humorous but informative videos explaining the regulatory debate and supporting net neutrality. Both went viral.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Technology critic and Quartz writer Alice Truong reacted to Free Basics saying; “Zuckerberg almost portrays net neutrality as a first-world problem that doesn’t apply to India because having some service is better than no service.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The decision of the Indian government has been largely welcomed in the country and outside. In support of the move, Web We Want programme manager at the World Wide Web Foundation Renata Avila has said; “As the country with the second largest number of Internet users worldwide, this decision will resonate around the world. It follows a precedent set by Chile, the United States, and others which have adopted similar net neutrality safeguards. The message is clear: We can’t create a two-tier Internet – one for the haves, and one for the have-nots. We must connect everyone to the full potential of the open Web.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">There are mixed responses on the social media, both in support and in opposition to the TRAI decision. Josh Levy, Advocacy Director at Accessnow, has appreciated saying, “India is now the global leader on #NetNeutrality. New rules are stronger than those in EU and US.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Had differential pricing been allowed, it would have affected start-ups and content-based smaller companies adversely as they could never have managed to pay the high price to a partner service provider to make their service available for free. On the other hand, tech-giants like Facebook could have easily managed to capture the entire market. Since the inception, the Facebook-run non-profit Internet.org has run into a lot of controversies because of the hidden motive behind the claimed support for social cause.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/odisha-tv-february-9-2016-subhashish-panigrahi-net-neutrality-advocates-rejoice-as-trai-bans-differential-pricing'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/odisha-tv-february-9-2016-subhashish-panigrahi-net-neutrality-advocates-rejoice-as-trai-bans-differential-pricing</a>
</p>
No publishersubhaSocial MediaFree BasicsNet NeutralityFreedom of Speech and ExpressionInternet Governance2016-02-23T02:10:42ZBlog EntryInternet Freedom
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/asian-age-february-14-2016-sunil-abraham-vidushi-marda-internet-freedom
<b>The modern medium of the web is an open-sourced, democratic world in which equality is an ideal, which is why what is most important is Internet freedom. </b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The article by Sunil Abraham and Vidushi Marda was published by <a class="external-link" href="http://www.asianage.com/editorial/internet-freedom-555">Asian Age</a> on February 14, 2016.</p>
<hr style="text-align: justify; " />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">What would have gone wrong if India’s telecom regulator Trai had decided to support programmes like Facebook’s Free Basics and Airtel’s Zero Rating instead of issuing the regulation that prohibits discriminatory tariffs? Here are possible scenarios to look at in case the discriminatory tarrifs were allowed as they are in some countries.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Possible impact on elections</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Facebook would have continued to amass its product — eyeballs. Indian eyeballs would be more valuable than others for three reasons 1. Facebook would have an additional layer of surveillance thanks to the Free Basics proxy server which stores the time, the site url and data transferred for all the other destinations featured in the walled garden 2. As part of Digital India, most government entities will set up Facebook pages and a majority of the interaction with citizens would happen on the social media rather than the websites of government entities and, consequently, Facebook would know what is and what is not working in governance 3. Given the financial disincentive to leave the walled garden, the surveillance would be total.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">What would this mean for democracies? Eight years ago, Facebook began to engineer the News Feed to show more posts of a user’s friends voting in order to influence voting behavior. It introduced the “I’m Voting” button into 61 million users’ feeds during the 2010 US presidential elections to increase voter turnout and found that this kind of social pressure caused people to vote. Facebook has also admitted to populating feeds with posts from friends with similar political views. During the 2012 Presidential elections, Facebook was able to increase voter turnout by altering 1.9 million news feeds.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Indian eyeballs may not be that lucrative in terms of advertising. But these users are extremely valuable to political parties and others interested in influencing elections. Facebook’s notifications to users when their friends signed on to the “Support Free Basics” campaign was configured so that you were informed more often than with other campaigns. In other words, Facebook is not just another player on their platform. Given that margins are often slim, would Facebook be tempted to try and install a government of its choice in India during the 2019 general elections?</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">In times of disasters</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Most people defending Free Basics and defending forbearance as the regulatory response in 2015/16 make the argument that “95 per cent of Internet users in developing countries spend 95 per cent of their time on Facebook”.<br /><br />This is not too far from the truth as LirneAsia demonstrated in 2012 with most people using Facebook in Indonesia not even knowing they were using the internet. In other words, they argue that regulators should ignore the fringe user and fringe usage and only focus on the mainstream. The cognitive bias they are appealing to is smaller numbers are less important.<br /><br />Since all the sublime analogies in the Net Neutrality debate have been taken, forgive us for using the scatological. That is the same as arguing that since we spend only 5% of our day in toilets, only 5% of our home’s real estate should be devoted to them.<br /><br />Everyone agrees that it is far easier to live in a house without a bedroom than a house without a toilet. Even extremely low probabilities or ‘Black Swan’ events can be terribly important! Imagine you are an Indian at the bottom of the pyramid. You cannot afford to pay for data on your phone and, as a result, you rarely and nervously stray out of the walled garden of Free Basics.<br /><br />During a natural disaster you are able to use the Facebook Safety Check feature to mark yourself safe but the volunteers who are organising both offline and online rescue efforts are using a wider variety of platforms, tools and technologies.<br /><br />Since you are unfamiliar with the rest of the Internet, you are ill equipped when you try to organise a rescue for you and your loved ones.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Content and carriage converge</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Some people argue that TRAI should have stayed off the issue since the Competition Commission of India (CCI) is sufficient to tackle Net Neutrality harms. However it is unclear if predatory pricing by Reliance, which has only 9% market share, will cross the competition law threshold for market dominance? Interestingly, just before the Trai notification, the Ambani brothers signed a spectrum sharing pact and they have been sharing optic fibre since 2013.<br /><br />Will a content sharing pact follow these carriage pacts? As media diversity researcher, Alam Srinivas, notes “If their plans succeed, their media empires will span across genres such as print, broadcasting, radio and digital. They will own the distribution chains such as cable, direct-to-home (DTH), optic fibre (terrestrial and undersea), telecom towers and multiplexes.”<br /><br />What does this convergence vision of the Ambani brothers mean for media diversity in India? In the absence of net neutrality regulation could they use their dominance in broadcast media to reduce choice on the Internet? Could they use a non-neutral provisioning of the Internet to increase their dominance in broadcast media? When a single wire or the very same radio spectrum delivers radio, TV, games and Internet to your home — what under competition law will be considered a substitutable product? What would be the relevant market? At the Centre for Internet and Society (CI S), we argue that competition law principles with lower threshold should be applied to networked infrastructure through infrastructure specific non-discrimination regulations like the one that Trai just notified to protect digital media diversity.<br /><br />Was an absolute prohibition the best response for TRAI? With only two possible exemptions — i.e. closed communication network and emergencies - the regulation is very clear and brief. However, as our colleague Pranesh Prakash has said, TRAI has over regulated and used a sledgehammer where a scalpel would have sufficed. In CIS’ official submission, we had recommended a series of tests in order to determine whether a particular type of zero rating should be allowed or forbidden. That test may be legally sophisticated; but as TRAI argues it is clear and simple rules that result in regulatory equity. A possible alternative to a complicated multi-part legal test is the leaky walled garden proposal. Remember, it is only in the case of very dangerous technologies where the harms are large scale and irreversible and an absolute prohibition based on the precautionary principle is merited.<br /><br />However, as far as network neutrality harms go, it may be sufficient to insist that for every MB that is consumed within Free Basics, Reliance be mandated to provide a data top up of 3MB.<br /><br />This would have three advantages. One, it would be easy to articulate in a brief regulation and therefore reduce the possibility of litigation. Two, it is easy for the consumer who is harmed to monitor the mitigation measure and last, based on empirical data, the regulator could increase or decrease the proportion of the mitigation measure.<br /><br />This is an example of what Prof Christopher T. Marsden calls positive, forward-looking network neutrality regulation. Positive in the sense that instead of prohibitions and punitive measures, the emphasis is on obligations and forward-looking in the sense that no new technology and business model should be prohibited.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">What is Net neutrality?</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">According to this principle, all service providers and governments should not discriminate between various data on the internet and consider all as one. They cannot give preference to one set of apps/ websites while restricting others.</p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<li><b>2006</b>: TRAI invites opinions regarding the regulation of net neutrality from various telecom industry bodies and stakeholders<b>Feb. 2012</b>: Sunil Bharti Mittal, CEO of Bharti Airtel, suggests services like YouTube should pay an interconnect charge to network operators, saying that if telecom operators are building highways for data then there should be a tax on the highway</li>
<li><b>July 2012</b>: Bharti Airtel’s Jagbir Singh suggests large Internet companies like Facebook and Google should share revenues with telecom companies.</li>
<li><b>August 2012</b>: Data from M-Lab said You Broadband, Airtel, BSNL were throttling traffic of P2P services like BitTorrent</li>
<li><b>Feb. 2013</b>: Killi Kiruparani, Minister for state for communications and technology says government will look into legality of VoIP services like Skype</li>
<li><b>June 2013</b>: Airtel starts offering select Google services to cellular broadband users for free, fixing a ceiling of 1GB on the data</li>
<li><b>Feb. 2014</b>: Airtel operations CEO Gopal Vittal says companies offering free messaging apps like Skype and WhatsApp should be regulated</li>
<li><b>August 2014</b>: TRAI rejects proposal from telecom companies to make messaging application firms share part of their revenue with the carriers/government</li>
<li><b>Nov. 2014</b>: Trai begins investigation on Airtel implementing preferential access with special packs for WhatsApp and Facebook at rates lower than standard data rates</li>
<li><b>Dec. 2014</b>: Airtel launches 2G, 3G data packs with VoIP data excluded in the pack, later launches VoIP pack.</li>
<li><b>Feb. 2015</b>: Facebook launches Internet.org with Reliance communications, aiming to provide free access to 38 websites through single app</li>
<li><b>March 2015</b>: Trai publishes consultation paper on regulatory framework for over the top services, explaining what net neutrality in India will mean and its impact, invited public feedback</li>
<li><b>April 2015</b>: Airtel launches Airtel Zero, a scheme where apps sign up with airtle to get their content displayed free across the network. Flipkart, which was in talks for the scheme, had to pull out after users started giving it poor rating after hearing about the news</li>
<li><b>April 2015</b>: Ravi Shankar Prasad, Communication and information technology minister announces formation of a committee to study net neutrality issues in the country</li>
<li><b>23 April 2015</b>: Many organisations under Free Software Movement of India protested in various parts of the country. In a counter measure, Cellular Operators Association of India launches campaign , saying its aim is to connect the unconnected citizens, demanding VoIP apps be treated as cellular operators</li>
<li><b>27 April 2015</b>: Trai releases names and email addresses of users who responded to the consultation paper in millions. Anonymous India group, take down Trai’s website in retaliation, which the government could not confirm</li>
<li><b>Sept. 2015</b>: Facebook rebrands Internet.org as Free Basics, launches in the country with massive ads across major newspapers in the country. Faces huge backlash from public</li>
<li><b>Feb. 2016:</b> Trai rules in favour of net neutrality, barring telecom operators from charging different rates for data services.</li>
</ul>
<hr style="text-align: justify; " />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The writers work at the Centre for Internet and Society, Bengaluru. CIS receives about $200,000 a year from WMF, the organisation behind Wikipedia, a site featured in Free Basics and zero-rated by many access providers across the world</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/asian-age-february-14-2016-sunil-abraham-vidushi-marda-internet-freedom'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/asian-age-february-14-2016-sunil-abraham-vidushi-marda-internet-freedom</a>
</p>
No publisherSunil Abraham and Vidushi MardaSocial MediaFree BasicsTRAINet NeutralityFreedom of Speech and ExpressionInternet Governance2016-02-15T02:51:10ZBlog EntryFacebook’s Free Basics hits snag in India
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/financial-times-february-8-2016-james-crabtree-facebooks-free-basics-hits-snag-in-india
<b>Indian regulators have dealt a major blow to Facebook’s controversial Free Basics online access plan by forbidding so-called differential pricing by internet companies, in effect banning the programme in the country. </b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The article by James Crabtree with additional reporting by Tim Bradshaw was published in <a class="external-link" href="http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/08fadf8e-ce5b-11e5-986a-62c79fcbcead.html#axzz40CQUxGze">Financial Times</a> on February 8, 2016. Pranesh Prakash was quoted.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/3ee3ec02-b840-11e5-b151-8e15c9a029fb.html#axzz3zZqe7eDy" title="‘Free Basics’ row presents India dilemma for Facebook - FT.com">Free Basics</a>, a plan to make access to parts of the internet free, has been at the centre of <a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/537834e8-e3f2-11e4-9a82-00144feab7de.html" title="Facebook’s Internet.org effort hits India hurdle">a fierce row in the country</a> between the social network and local start-ups and advocates for net neutrality — the idea that all web traffic should be treated equally and technology companies should not be allowed to price certain kinds of content differently from others.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Last December, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India ordered Facebook to put its Free Basics programme on hold pending a review.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">On Monday, Trai published the results of its deliberations, introducing a complete ban on any form of differential pricing.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The ruling is the latest in a series of regulatory battles pitting net neutrality campaigners against telecom and internet companies, and is likely to be viewed as a test case for other emerging markets in which programmes similar to Facebook’s are yet to be challenged in the courts.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">It also marks the most significant setback yet for Free Basics, which <a href="http://www.ft.com/topics/organisations/Facebook_Inc" title="Facebook news headlines - FT.com">Facebook</a> founder Mark Zuckerberg launched in 2014 as the centrepiece of plans to help poorer people access the internet in emerging economies. It operates in more than 30 countries.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Facebook had launched a high-profile public campaign to defend its programme, which offered stripped-down access to sites such as BBC News or Facebook’s own app to customers of Reliance Communications, the US company’s local telecoms partner.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">But critics attacked the programme as an attempt to become a gatekeeper for tens of millions of internet users.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In a post to his Facebook page on Monday, Mr <a href="https://www.facebook.com/zuck/posts/10102641883915251" title="Mark Zuckerberg post - Facebook.com">Zuckerberg said</a> the company “won’t give up on” finding new ways to boost internet access in India.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“While we’re disappointed with today’s decision, I want to personally communicate that we are committed to keep working to break down barriers to connectivity in India and around the world. Internet.org has many initiatives, and we will keep working until everyone has access to the internet,” he wrote.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Trai’s ruling was welcomed by anti-Facebook campaigners, a group that included the founders of many Indian start-ups including online retailers such as Flipkart, Paytm and restaurant search service Zomato, which had declined to offer their services as part of the Free Basics platform.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Analysts also hailed the Indian regulator’s ruling as a landmark. “This is the most broad and the most stringent set of regulations on differential pricing which exists anywhere in the world,” said Pranesh Prakash of the Bangalore-based Centre for Internet & Society, a think-tank.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/1a6cc092-4faf-11e4-a0a4-00144feab7de.htmlaxzz3zXMPWWz9" title="Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg plays the long game in India">India</a> has become an increasingly important focus for the company’s global business, with the country becoming its second-largest market by users last year.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/financial-times-february-8-2016-james-crabtree-facebooks-free-basics-hits-snag-in-india'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/financial-times-february-8-2016-james-crabtree-facebooks-free-basics-hits-snag-in-india</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaSocial MediaFree BasicsNet NeutralityFreedom of Speech and ExpressionInternet Governance2016-02-15T02:33:26ZNews ItemZuckerberg's Plan Spurned as India Backs Full Net Neutrality
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/bloomberg-adi-narayan-bhuma-srivastava-february-8-2016-zuckerberg-plan-spurned-as-india-backs-full-net-neutrality
<b>Facebook Inc.’s plans for expansion in India have suffered a major setback.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The article by Adi Narayan and Bhuma Srivastava was published in <a class="external-link" href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-02-08/facebook-faces-setback-as-india-bans-differential-data-pricing">Bloomberg</a> on February 8, 2016. Pranesh Prakash was quoted.</p>
<hr style="text-align: justify; " />
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
<li>Telecom regulator bans differential Internet data plans</li>
<li>Facebook had lobbied India to approve its Free Basics plan</li>
</ul>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">After the company spent months lobbying the country to accept its Free Basics service -- a way of delivering a limited Internet that included Facebook, plus some other tools, for no cost -- India’s telecom regulator ruled against any plans from cellular operators that charge different rates to different parts of the Web.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Telecom operators can’t offer discriminatory tariffs for data services based on content, and aren’t allowed to enter into agreements with Internet companies to subsidize access to some websites, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India <a href="http://www.trai.gov.in/WriteReadData/WhatsNew/Documents/Regulation_Data_Service.pdf" target="_blank" title="Link to website">said</a> in a statement Monday. Companies violating the rules will be fined, it said.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“This is the most extensive and stringent regulation on differential pricing anywhere in the world,” Pranesh Prakash, policy director at the Centre for Internet and Society, said via phone. “Those who suggested regulation in place of complete ban have clearly lost.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">With this decision, India joins countries such as the U.S., Brazil and the Netherlands in passing laws that restrict telecom operators from discriminating Internet traffic based on content. It is a <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-14/india-facebook-s-fight-to-be-free" title="Facebook’s Fight to Be Free">big blow</a> to Facebook’s Internet sampler plan known as Free Basics, which is currently offered in about <a href="https://info.internet.org/en/story/where-weve-launched/" target="_blank" title="Link to Internet.org page">three dozen</a> countries including Kenya and Zambia, none of which come close to the scale or reach that could’ve been achieved in India.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">With 130 million Facebook users, 375 million people online, and an additional 800 million-plus who aren’t, India is the biggest growth market for the social network, which remains blocked in China.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Facebook said in a statement that it’s “disappointed with the outcome.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg said the decision won’t cause Facebook to give up on connecting people to the Internet in India, “because more than a billion people in India don’t have access to the Internet.” The company will continue to focus on its other initiatives, like extending networks using satellites, drones and lasers.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Freebies Curtailed</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The rule will put an end to prepaid plans that offered free access to services such as Google searches, the WhatsApp messaging application and Facebook. These packages were popular with low-income users by giving them an incentive to get online, said Rajan Mathews, director general of the lobby group Cellular Operators Association of India.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“These types of plans were being used by operators to meet the policy goals of connecting one billion people,” Matthews said. “With these gone, the government needs to tell us what alternatives are there.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The regulator’s decision comes after months of public <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-28/zuckerberg-makes-personal-appeal-in-india-for-free-net-service" title="Zuckerberg Makes Personal Appeal for Free Internet in India (1)">lobbying by Facebook</a> for India to approve Free Basics, which allows customers to access the social network and other services such as education, health care, and employment listings from their phones without a data plan.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Free Basics was criticized by activists who said it threatened net neutrality, the principle that all Internet websites should be equally accessible, and could change pricing in India for access to different websites.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The regulator, which had sought stakeholders’ views, said it was seeking to ensure data tariffs remain content agnostic. Operators will have six months to wind down existing differential pricing services.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Google Unaffected</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“Anything on the Internet can’t be priced based on content, applications, source and destination,” R.S. Sharma, the regulator’s chairman, told reporters in New Delhi. Some Internet companies’ plans to offer free WiFi at public venues, like Google Inc.’s <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2015-12-16/data-too-dear-set-youtube-to-download-in-india-while-you-sleep" title="Data Too Dear? Set YouTube to Download in India While You Sleep">project</a> with Indian Railways, are not affected by this ruling, he said.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">For Free Basics, one or two carriers in a given country offer the package for free at slow speeds, betting that it will help attract new customers who’ll later upgrade to pricier data plans. In India, Facebook had tied up with Reliance Communications Ltd., though the service was suspended in December as the government solicited comments from proponents and opponents.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Since the government’s telecommunications regulator announced the suspension, Facebook bought daily full-page <a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2016-01-14/india-facebook-s-fight-to-be-free" title="Facebook’s Fight to Be Free">ads</a> in major newspapers and plastered billboards with pictures of happy farmers and schoolchildren it says would benefit from Free Basics. Zuckerberg has frequently made the case himself via phone or newspaper op-eds, asking that Indians petition the government to approve his service.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Entrepreneurs, business people and activists took to Twitter to share their views after the decision came out on Monday.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“Great to see TRAI backing <a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NetNeutrality?src=hash" target="_blank" title="Click to view webpage.">#</a><a href="https://twitter.com/hashtag/NetNeutrality?src=hash" target="_blank" title="Click to view webpage.">NetNeutrality</a>,” Kunal Bahl, founder of Snapdeal.com, one of India’s biggest e-commerce sites, said. “Let’s keep the Internet free and independent.”</p>
<ul style="text-align: justify; ">
</ul>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/bloomberg-adi-narayan-bhuma-srivastava-february-8-2016-zuckerberg-plan-spurned-as-india-backs-full-net-neutrality'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/bloomberg-adi-narayan-bhuma-srivastava-february-8-2016-zuckerberg-plan-spurned-as-india-backs-full-net-neutrality</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaSocial MediaFree BasicsTRAINet NeutralityFacebookInternet Governance2016-02-15T02:18:54ZNews ItemNow trending: Regional Indian language social media networks
http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/hindustan-times-kanika-sharma-february-14-2016-now-trending-regional-indian-language-social-media-networks
<b>How many languages did you speak today? Chances are there was a lot of English at work and at home, but at least a sprinkling of Hindi (or Marathi, Gujarati, Bengali, Tamil or Kannada) when you were chatting, gossiping or joking with friends and family.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The article by Kanika Sharma was published in the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.hindustantimes.com/more-lifestyle/now-trending-regional-indian-language-social-media-networks/story-DObjK5OD84L3adFBKPkOTL.html">Hindustan Times</a> on February 14, 2016. Sunil Abraham was quoted.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">You toggle so effortlessly that you probably don’t notice it, except when the option is no longer available — when arguing with a non-English-speaking cabbie while on vacation, for instance, or trying to write a heartfelt message to a faraway friend on Facebook.<br /><br />And that’s the key reason for the host of regional Indian-language social media platforms that have been popping up over the past four years—Shabdanagari and Mooshak in Hindi, in 2015; ejibON for Bengali, in 2014; Prasangik for Assamese, in 2013; Muganool in Tamil, in 2012; with an early start made by Vismayanagari (Kannada; 2008).</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“I set up Muganool.com out of love for the language and culture, and of course because it is so much easier to express oneself in one’s mother tongue,” says Sathish Kumar, 31, a software solutions company owner. “On Muganool, the feed is much better, you get relevant news and people’s views making them a delight to read. On Facebook, there’s just too much of timepass.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://www.hindustantimes.com/tech/facebook-and-whatsapp-top-social-networking-apps-in-india-report/story-aFKy3mrMkkhQbKxr44ngHI.html?utm_source=read" shape="rect"><span class="st_readmore_sp">Read: Facebook and WhatsApp top social networking apps in India, says report</span> </a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Most of these platforms are modelled on Facebook. You can post updates, links and videos on a newsfeed, share and repost links, form groups and live chat.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Some are even named after their inspiration — Muganool, for instance, comes from the Tamil Mugam for Face and Nool for Book.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Many go a step further. Shabdanagari has discussion forums, Prasanagik has a crowd-sourced encyclopedia section and ejibON has a crowd-funding tab.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">For users, the differentiator has been this sense of community.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“It’s too much of a crowd on Facebook,” says Umashankara BS , 39, a Bengaluru-based marketing professional and Vismayanagari user. “Here, I feel like I know who I’m talking to, and they know me. We share opinions about politics and literature, and once a month 15 of us meet at a Bengaluru café. That’s not something I would dream of doing via Facebook.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Property consultant Siddharth Bora, 35, who left Assam for Delhi a decade ago, describes Prasangik as his home away from home.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><a href="http://www.hindustantimes.com/india/logged-in-generation-next-requires-digital-de-addiction/story-MvisL6aRVk7LR4qtLHEYnJ.html?utm_source=read" shape="rect"><span class="st_readmore_sp">Read: Logged in generation next requires digital de-addiction</span> </a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“It takes me back more than an STD call can,” he says. “Prasangik feels intimate, almost private. While on Facebook it is considered rude to post content in the vernacular or go on about elements of your culture, here that is exactly what a lot of us do. From other homesick migrants to my mother in Assam, a 67-year-old retired lecturer.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">It seems strange to hear the word ‘intimacy’ when talking about interaction on social media, but it’s a concept that keeps coming up among users of the regional-language sites.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“Users take pains to give feedback and comment on post, unlike Facebook, where most content is lost in the crowd and clamour,” says Pankaj Trivedi, 53, a college staffer from Gujarat and a Shabdanagari user. “Also, since it is a language the users are confident in, conversations tend to sound more courteous. People are polite to one another. I know that there is a certain kind of audience that enjoys reading my posts and that makes me more comfortable posting on Shabdanagari.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">On ejibON (meaning ‘e-life’), a community has been formed across borders, with 10,000 users in India and Bangladesh bonding over their love of the language — and the idea of an undivided Bengal.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“Language can be such a great unifier,” says Bangladesh-based Maruf Sunny, 28, web developer and founder of ejibON. “The aim of this website is to build a sense of community across borders and religions to celebrate the Bengali community online.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Thinking vs Feeling</b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">These days, we think in one language and feel in another, says, Sunil Abraham, executive director of The Centre for Internet and Society. “Whether it is music, literature or even relationships — it feels truer and more ‘authentic’ in our mother tongue. So, despite a lot of English content and services online, we still yearn for our own languages in the online world. This is precisely why Wikipedia in regional languages has become so popular.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">For greater representation of Indian languages online, Gaur’s website actively encourages people to embrace and personalise their Hindi as they do their English.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“I want users to coin and combine words, use hashtags,” he says. “Eventually, I want more Indians to voice their opinions online so that the English-speaking elite are not counted as the voice of the nation. Today, whatever trends on Twitter is taken as the opinion of the majority. That’s just inaccurate.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">With thrice as many people offline in India as online, and most of them non-English-speakers, the potential of such websites is immense, Abraham points out. The stumbling block, of course, will be the resources — internet access and electricity.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Meanwhile, the money is already flowing in. Last month, Shabdanagari.com raised $200,000 (about Rs 1.35 crore) from Indian investors.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The way forward lies in governmental support, says Abraham.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“Indic language technologies are not sufficiently developed because of insufficient investment by the government,” he adds. “Existing work needs to be promoted and technology infrastructure developed to protect and promote India’s linguistic heritage.”</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/hindustan-times-kanika-sharma-february-14-2016-now-trending-regional-indian-language-social-media-networks'>http://editors.cis-india.org/a2k/news/hindustan-times-kanika-sharma-february-14-2016-now-trending-regional-indian-language-social-media-networks</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaSocial MediaAccess to Knowledge2016-02-15T01:44:56ZNews ItemLinking Facebook use to free top-up data
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/deccan-chronicle-february-14-2016-linking-facebook-use-to-free-top-up-data
<b>Just before the Trai notification, the Ambani brothers signed a spectrum sharing pact and they have been sharing optic fibre since 2013.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The article was published in the <a class="external-link" href="http://www.deccanchronicle.com/technology/in-other-news/140216/linking-facebook-use-to-free-top-up-data.html">Deccan Chronicle</a> on February 14, 2016. Pranesh Prakash gave inputs.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Some people argue that Trai should have stayed off the issue since the Competition Commission of India (CCI) is sufficient to tackle Net Neutrality harms. However it is unclear if predatory pricing by Reliance, which has only nine per cent market share, will cross the competition law threshold for market dominance? Interestingly, just before the Trai notification, the Ambani brothers signed a spectrum sharing pact and they have been sharing optic fibre since 2013.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Will a content sharing pact follow these carriage pacts? As media diversity researcher, Alam Srinivas, notes: “If their plans succeed, their media empires will span across genres such as print, broadcasting, radio and digital. They will own the distribution chains such as cable, direct-to-home (DTH), optic fibre (terrestrial and undersea), telecom towers and multiplexes.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">What does this convergence vision of the Ambani brothers mean for media diversity in India? In the absence of net neutrality regulation could they use their dominance in broadcast media to reduce choice on the Internet? Could they use a non-neutral provisioning of the Internet to increase their dominance in broadcast media? When a single wire or the very same radio spectrum delivers radio, TV, games and Internet to your home — what under competition law will be considered a substitutable product? What would be the relevant market?</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">At the Centre for Internet and Society (CIS), we argue that competition law principles with lower threshold should be applied to networked infrastructure through infrastructure specific non-discrimination regulations like the one that Trai just notified to protect digital media diversity.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Was an absolute prohibition the best response for Trai? With only two possible exemptions — i.e. closed communication network and emergencies — the regulation is very clear and brief. However, as our colleague Pranesh Prakash has said, Trai has over-regulated and used a sledgehammer where a scalpel would have sufficed. In CIS’ official submission, we had recommended a series of tests in order to determine whether a particular type of zero rating should be allowed or forbidden. That test may be legally sophisticated; but as Trai argues it is clear and simple rules that result in regulatory equity. A possible alternative to a complicated multi-part legal test is the leaky walled garden proposal. Remember, it is only in the case of very dangerous technologies where the harms are large scale and irreversible and an absolute prohibition based on the precautionary principle is merited.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">However, as far as network neutrality harms go, it may be sufficient to insist that for every MB that is consumed within Free Basics, Reliance be mandated to provide a data top up of 3MB.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This would have three advantages. One, it would be easy to articulate in a brief regulation and therefore reduce the possibility of litigation. Two, it is easy for the consumer who is harmed to monitor the mitigation measure and last, based on empirical data, the regulator could increase or decrease the proportion of the mitigation measure.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This is an example of what Prof Christopher T. Marsden calls positive, forward-looking network neutrality regulation. Positive in the sense that instead of prohibitions and punitive measures, the emphasis is on obligations and forward-looking in the sense that no new technology and business model should be prohibited.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/deccan-chronicle-february-14-2016-linking-facebook-use-to-free-top-up-data'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/deccan-chronicle-february-14-2016-linking-facebook-use-to-free-top-up-data</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaDigital MediaFacebookInternet GovernanceSocial Media2016-02-14T12:33:17ZNews ItemIndia Sets Strict New Net Neutrality Rules
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/voice-of-america-anjana-pasricha-february-9-2016-india-sets-strict-new-net-neutrality-rules
<b>In India, advocates of net neutrality have welcomed new rules by the telecom regulator that have blocked efforts by Facebook to offer free but limited access to the web in the country’s fast growing Internet market.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The article by Anjana Pasricha was published in <a class="external-link" href="http://www.voanews.com/content/india-sets-strict-new-net-neutrality-rules/3182965.html">Voice of America</a> on February 9, 2016. Sunil Abraham was quoted.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In a widely awaited ruling, the Telecom Regulator Authority of India (TRAI) said on Monday that “no service provider shall charge differential pricing on the basis of application, platforms or websites or sources." It will impose penalties of $735 a day if the regulations are broken.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Kiran Jonnalagadda, who was among a group of 10 that launched an impassioned campaign called <a href="http://www.savetheinternet.in" target="_blank">Save the Internet</a>, says they have won a “fabulous” victory against large corporations to ensure equal web access for millions.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“We were up against the most powerful companies in the world, we had no chance of fighting Airtel last year, we had no chance of fighting Facebook. I think the only reason it worked is that we were on the side of facts, the opposition was not,” says Jonnalagadda.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Debate on Airtel</b></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The campaign on net neutrality snowballed into a nationwide public debate after an Indian telecom company, Airtel, launched a marketing platform last April on which it planned to offer customers access with no data charges to certain Internet services and sites.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In recent weeks, the focus turned to “Free Basics”, a service being offered by Facebook on mobile phones to a handful of sites in areas such as communication, healthcare, and education.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Saying it wanted to vastly expand Internet access in poor, rural areas, Facebook had launched a massive advertising campaign in support of the platform. Only about 300 million in the country of 1.2 billion people have access to the net, many just through mobile devices.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">But campaigners slammed Free Basics as “poor Internet for poor people” and said it would create a “walled garden” in which Facebook would control the content it offered users. Leading Indian technology entrepreneurs and university professors also called on the government to guard against attempts by Internet giants to turn the country into a “digital colony.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Many of them have applauded the regulator’s move to strengthen net neutrality.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Ban on differential pricing </b><br /> <br /> However, some are raising questions about the the complete ban on differential pricing announced by the regulator. That includes the Bangalore-based Center for Internet and Society research group, which says India has put in place the most stringent net neutrality regulations across the world. Its executive director, Sunil Abraham, says TRAI cited the examples of the Netherlands and Chile, but the ban on differential pricing in those countries is not as absolute as the one notified in India.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“We think that if proper technological safeguards and other market safeguards are put in place, it would be possible to have both — to have rapid growth in Internet access and reduced harm that emerge[s] from network neutrality violations,” says Abraham.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Indeed, the last word may not have been said on net neutrality in India as big telecom operators are expected to mount legal challenges to the regulator’s ruling in the coming months.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Expressing disappointment with India’s ruling, the Cellular Operators Association of India has called the ban on differential pricing a “welfare reducing measure” that could block an avenue for “less advantaged citizens to move to increased economic growth and prosperity by harnessing the power of the Internet.”<br /> <br /> In a statement, Facebook has said “we will continue our efforts to eliminate barriers and give the unconnected an easier path to the Internet.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">But after having tasted victory, the volunteers at Save the Internet, who have grown from about 10 to 100 in the last year, have already set their sights on another aspect of net neutrality besides differential pricing.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“The campaign is not going to retire because this is not the end of it. There is also discrimination on the basis of speed, which the regulator has not taken up yet,” says Jonnalagadda.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/voice-of-america-anjana-pasricha-february-9-2016-india-sets-strict-new-net-neutrality-rules'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/voice-of-america-anjana-pasricha-february-9-2016-india-sets-strict-new-net-neutrality-rules</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaSocial MediaFree BasicsNet NeutralityFreedom of Speech and ExpressionFacebookInternet Governance2016-02-11T01:53:19ZNews ItemFacebook's Fall from Grace: Arab Spring to Indian Winter
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/first-post-february-9-2016-sunil-abraham-facebook-fall-from-grace-arab-spring-to-indian-winter
<b>Facebook’s Free Basics has been permanently banned in India! The Indian telecom regulator, TRAI has issued the world’s most stringent net neutrality regulation! To be more accurate, there is more to come from TRAI in terms of net neutrality regulations especially for throttling and blocking but if the discriminatory tariff regulation is anything to go by we can expect quite a tough regulatory stance against other net neutrality violations as well.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The article was published in First Post on February 9, 2016. It can be <a class="external-link" href="http://tech.firstpost.com/news-analysis/facebooks-fall-from-grace-arab-spring-to-indian-winter-298412.html">read here</a>.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Even the regulations it cites in the Explanatory Memorandum don’t go as far as it does. The Dutch regulation will have to be reformulated in light of the new EU regulations and the Chilean regulator has opened the discussion on an additional non-profit exception by allowing Wikipedia to zero-rate its content in partnership with telecom operators.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Bravo to Nikhil Pahwa, Apar Gupta, Raman Chima, Kiran Jonnalagadda and the thousands of volunteers at Save The Internet and associated NGOs, movements, entrepreneurs and activists who mobilized millions of Indians to stand up and petition TRAI to preserve some of the foundational underpinnings of the Internet. And finally bravo to Facebook for having completely undermined any claim to responsible stewardship of our information society through their relentless, shrill and manipulative campaign filled with the staggeringly preposterous lies. Having completely lost the trust of the Indian public and policy-makers, Facebook only has itself to blame for polarizing what was quite a nuanced debate in India through its hyperbole and setting the stage for this firm action by TRAI.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">And most importantly bravo to RS Sharma and his team at TRAI for several reasons for the notification of “Prohibition of Discriminatory Tariffs for Data Services Regulations, 2016” aka differential pricing regulations. The regulation exemplifies six regulatory best practices that I briefly explore below.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Transparency and Agility</b>: Two months from start to finish, what an amazing turn around! TRAI was faced with unprecedented public outcry and also comments and counter-comments. Despite visible and invisible pressures, from the initial temporary ban on Free Basics to RS Sharma’s calm, collected and clear interactions with different stakeholders resulted in him regaining the credibility which was lost during the publication of the earlier consultation paper on Regulatory Framework for Over-the-top (OTTs) services. Despite being completely snowed over electronically by what Rohin Dharmakumar dubbed as Facebook’s DDOS attack, he gave Facebook one last opportunity to do the right thing which they of course spectacularly blew.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Brevity and Clarity</b>: The regulation fits onto three A4-sized pages and is a joy to read. Clarity is often a result of brevity but is not necessarily always the case. At the core of this regulation is a single sentence which prohibits discriminatory tariffs on the basis of content unless it is a “data service over closed electronic communications network”. And unlike many other laws and regulations, this regulation has only one exemption for offering or charging of discriminatory tariffs and that is for “emergency services” or during “grave public emergency”. Even the best lawyers will find it difficult to drive trucks through that one. Even if imaginative engineers architect a technical circumvention, TRAI says “if such a closed network is used for the purpose of evading these regulations, the prohibition will nonetheless apply”. Again clear signal that the spirit is more important than the letter of the regulation when it comes to enforcement.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>Certainty and Equity</b>: Referencing the noted scholar Barbara Van Schewick, TRAI explains that a case-by-case approach based on principles [standards] or rules would “fail to provide much needed certainty to industry participants…..service providers may refrain from deploying network technology” and perversely “lead to further uncertainty as service providers undergoing [the] investigation would logically try to differentiate their case from earlier precedents”. Our submission from the Centre for Internet and Society had called for more exemptions but TRAI went with a much cleaner solution as it did not want to provide “a relative advantage to well-financed actors and will tilt the playing field against those who do not have the resources to pursue regulatory or legal actions”.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">What next? Hopefully the telecom operators and Facebook will have the grace to abide with the regulation without launching a legal challenge. And hopefully TRAI will issue equally clear regulations on throttling and blocking to conclude the “Regulatory Framework for Over-the-top Services” consultation process. Critically, TRAI must forbear from introducing any additional regulatory burdens on OTTs, a.k.a Internet companies based on unfounded allegations of regulatory arbitrage. There are some legitimate concerns around issues like taxation and liability but that has to be addressed by other arms of the government. To address the digital divide, there are other issues outside net neutrality such as shared spectrum, unlicensed spectrum and shared backhaul infrastructure that TRAI must also prioritize for regulation and deregulation.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Without doubt other regulators from the global south will be inspired by India’s example and will hopefully take firm steps to prevent the rise of additional and unnecessary gatekeepers and gatekeeping practices on the Internet. The democratic potential of the Internet must be preserved through enlightened and appropriate regulation informed by principles and evidence.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; "><b>The writer is Executive Director, Centre for Internet and Society, Bengaluru. He says CIS receives about $200,000 a year from WMF, the organisation behind Wikipedia, a site featured in Free Basics and zero-rated by many access providers across the world).</b></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/first-post-february-9-2016-sunil-abraham-facebook-fall-from-grace-arab-spring-to-indian-winter'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/first-post-february-9-2016-sunil-abraham-facebook-fall-from-grace-arab-spring-to-indian-winter</a>
</p>
No publishersunilFree BasicsFreedom of Speech and ExpressionInternet GovernanceSocial Media2016-02-11T15:51:34ZBlog EntryIndia bans Facebook’s ‘free’ Internet for the poor
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/washington-post-annie-gowen-february-8-2016-india-bans-facebooks-free-internet-for-the-poor
<b>India’s telecom regulator said Monday that service providers cannot charge discriminatory prices for Internet services, a blow to Facebook’s global effort to provide low-cost Internet to developing countries.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The article by Annie Gowen was published in <a class="external-link" href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/indian-telecom-regulator-bans-facebooks-free-internet-for-the-poor/2016/02/08/561fc6a7-e87d-429d-ab62-7cdec43f60ae_story.html">Washington Post</a> on February 8, 2016. Sunil Abraham gave inputs. The article was also mirrored by <a class="external-link" href="http://www.ndtv.com/india-news/facebooks-behaviour-may-not-have-helped-its-cause-in-india-foreign-media-1275173">NDTV</a>.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Facebook’s “Free Basics” program provides a pared-down version of Facebook and weather and job listings to some 15 million mobile-phone users in 37 countries around the world.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">When it debuted in India in April, however, Free Basics immediately ran afoul of Internet activists who said it violated the principle of “net neutrality,” which holds that consumers should be able to access the entire Internet unfettered by price or speed.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">On Monday, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India agreed, prohibiting data service providers from offering or charging different prices for data — even if it’s free. The Free Basics program has run into trouble elsewhere in the world recently — with Egypt <a href="http://gizmodo.com/a-week-after-india-banned-it-facebooks-free-basics-s-1750299423" target="_blank">banning it</a> and Google <a href="http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/tech/tech-news/Google-bids-adieu-to-Facebooks-Free-Basics-in-Zambia/articleshow/50669257.cms" target="_blank">clarifying</a> that it pulled out of the application during a testing phase in Zambia.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In a statement, Facebook said that while the company was “disappointed with the outcome, we will continue our efforts to eliminate barriers and give the unconnected an easier path to the Internet.”<br /><br />In an interview before the ruling, Chris Daniels, Facebook’s vice president for Internet.org — the umbrella organization of the global effort — said India’s negative reaction has been “unique versus other markets we’ve seen. We’ve been welcomed with open arms in many countries.”<br /><br />Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg launched the program to great fanfare in 2013, partnering with other international tech firms on a mission to connect the 4 billion people in the world without Internet access — which he says is a basic human right.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">India has 300 million mobile Internet users but still has close to 1 billion people without proper Internet access. But it is second only to the United States in number of Facebook users, with 130 million, with vast expansion potential as Facebook works to increase its user base beyond the developed world.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Yet the Free Basics program was <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/india-egypt-say-no-thanks-to-free-internet-from-facebook/2016/01/28/cd180bcc-b58c-11e5-8abc-d09392edc612_story.html">controversial from the start in India</a>, where critics accused Facebook of creating a “walled garden” for poor users that allowed them access to only a portion of the web that Facebook controlled.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Dozens of well-known tech entrepreneurs, university professors and tech industry groups spoke out against it, saying that the curated app, with its handpicked weather, job and other listings, put India’s <a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/risk-averse-india-embraces-silicon-valley-style-start-ups/2015/11/28/85376e20-8fb6-11e5-934c-a369c80822c2_story.html">scrappy start-ups</a> and software developers at a disadvantage.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">On Monday, Vijay Shekhar Sharma, the founder and creator of India’s payment application PayTM, applauded the regulator’s move.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">He had been among the program’s fiercest critics, dubbing Free Basics “poor Internet for poor people” and comparing Facebook’s actions to that of British colonialists and their East India Co.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“India, Do u buy into this baby internet?” Sharma tweeted in December. “The East India company came with similar ‘charity’ to Indians a few years back!”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“In a country like India that’s just taking off, it’s important that there is an equal playground for every app developer,” he said in an interview.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In December, India’s regulator put out a position paper on differential pricing and asked for public comment on whether such programs were fair.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In response, Facebook launched a public relations blitz, with television and newspaper advertisements, billboards and <a href="http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/toi-edit-page/free-basics-protects-net-neutrality/">an opinion piece by Zuckerberg</a> in the Times of India in which he argued against criticism that the social-media giant was providing the service simply to expand its user base.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Facebook also engineered a prompt to users that sent “robo” letters of support for Free Basics to India’s telecommunications regulator. The regulator, flooded with form letters, <a href="http://indianexpress.com/article/technology/social/trai-slams-facebook-letter-on-free-basics-campaign-wholly-misplaced/">was not amused.</a></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Facebook’s behavior may not have helped its cause, some analysts said.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“Facebook went overboard with its propaganda [and] convinced ‘the powers that be’ that it cannot be trusted with mature stewardship of our information society,” said Sunil Abraham of the Center for Internet and Society in Bangalore.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Yet David Kirkpatrick, the author of “<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1439102120?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creativeASIN=1439102120&linkCode=xm2&tag=thewaspos09-20" target="_blank" title="www.amazon.com">The Facebook Effect</a>,” says that Zuckerberg is determined to see the program succeed.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“Facebook is relentless,” he said. “Zuckerberg has said from the beginning his goal is to make the world more open and connected. And that’s a phrase he continues to repeat 10 years later.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The regulator had asked Facebook, and its local telecom partner, Reliance Communications, to suspend Free Basics’ operations during the public comment period. But the social-media giant and its partner appeared to flout the suspension order, with the program continuing to be operational on Reliance SIM cards.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">A spokesman for Reliance earlier said that the applications was in “testing mode” and that it was not commercially promoting the product.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The regulatory body said Monday that anybody violating the order in the future will be subject to a fine of about $735 a day. It will return to review the policy in two years to see if it is effective.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/washington-post-annie-gowen-february-8-2016-india-bans-facebooks-free-internet-for-the-poor'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/washington-post-annie-gowen-february-8-2016-india-bans-facebooks-free-internet-for-the-poor</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaSocial MediaFree BasicsInternet GovernanceFreedom of Speech and ExpressionFacebook2016-02-10T02:53:49ZNews ItemA Megacorp’s Basic Instinct
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/outlook-february-8-2016-arindam-mukherjee-a-megacorps-basic-instinct
<b>Bolstered by academia and civil society, TRAI stands its ground against FB’s Free Basics publicity blitz.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The article by Arindam Mukherjee was <a class="external-link" href="http://www.outlookindia.com/article/a-megacorps-basic-instinct/296510">published in Outlook</a> on February 8, 2016. Sunil Abraham was quoted.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Hours before the January 31 deadline for telecom regulator TRAI to give its opinion on Facebook’s controversial and expensive Free Basics pitch—which seeks to give India’s poor “free” access to certain partner websites—the consensus seems to be building up against the social media giant. “If there is cannibalising of the internet through services like Free Basics, the internet will be split; it will parcel out and slice the internet. Its future is at stake,” says a senior government official on condition of anonymity.<br /><br />In a climate where the tech-savvy Modi government is seen to be close to the online trinity of Facebook, Google and Twitter, TRAI’s defiant stance in favour of net neutrality stands out. There’s a lot at stake. India’s position becomes crucial as few countries in the world have clearly defined laws on net neutrality or have taken a stand on it. For Facebook, there’s a lot more at stake. India is its second-largest user base after the US (it is banned in China), so it is leaving no stone unturned. The massive Rs 300-crore electronic and print media campaign is an indication of that.<br /><br />TRAI sources say they are ready for any adverse onslaught and they are under no pressure from the PMO. The view gaining ground in government is that FB is trying to create a walled garden where it controls what people see and surf and what they can access online. While this will be offered to consumers for free—the technical term is differential pricing—the websites part of Free Basics will have to pay for being on the platform. Outlook’s queries to FB remained unanswered at the time of going to press.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">At an ‘open house’ meeting to discuss TRAI’s consultation paper on differential pricing last week, regulator Ram Sevak Sharma stood firm against the barrage of pro-Free Basics opinions that flowed from FB, telecom operators and some members of the public. TRAI’s message was clear: FB’s tactics of moulding public opinion by stealth will not be acceptable in India. In the past few weeks, there have been bitter exchanges between TRAI and FB over the latter’s responses to a consultation paper on differential pricing.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">TRAI’s defiant stand draws from an unprecedented show of strength by civil society against Free Basics and FB’s intentions. Says former Aadhar man Nandan Nilekani, “Free Basics is certainly against net neutrality. How can a solution be neutral, if it disproportionately benefits a particular website or business on the internet? Today, 400 million Indians are online. They came online because of the inherent value the internet offers. How can a walled garden of 100-odd websites provide the same value?”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">What does Free Basics mean for PM Modi’s Digital India campaign? Being a walled garden, thousands of start-ups without adequate budgets to pay for such dedicated service will be forced to stay out of it. Similar questions are being raised about government services that are increasingly coming online. The concern is that all government traffic will have to pass through FB servers. The senior government official quoted above agrees, “In such a scenario, the government will have to approach FB to make its websites accessible on the free service which is neither desirable nor safe.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The other fear is what happens to public data if it goes through a service like Free Basics. There is fear that a lot of government and public data will be put through Free Basics once government services start coming online. If Free Basics is for the poor who are also beneficiaries of government services, FB too can access this data. Says Prabir Purkayastha, chairman, Knowledge Commons, “FB says public service will be available through Free Basics but can public service be given through a private initiative? Public data is valuable and can’t be handed over to a private company.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Few again are convinced by FB’s claim that Free Basics aims to make the internet accessible to the poor, with the many services offered through it. “The claim that the poor will get access to the internet is false,” warns Sunil Abraham, executive director, Centre for Internet and Society, Bangalore. “Free Basics gives access to less than 100 of the one billion plus websites on the world wide web. Those in the walled garden will be treated quite differently.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">What gives TRAI a shot in the arm is that, for the first time, academia has put its weight behind Free Basics opponents. In a signed statement, several IIT and IISc Bangalore professors have said that Free Basics won’t serve the purpose FB is proposing and is not good for the country. “The problem is the internet being provided (via Free Basics) is a shrunken and sanitised version of the real thing. Free Basics is not a good proposal for the long-term development of a healthy and democratic internet setup in India,” says Amitabha Bagchi, IIT Delhi professor and one of the signatories to the memo.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Of course, many of the experts <i>Outlook</i> spoke to say that the government, and not FB, should be responsible for providing free internet to the people. Says Parminder Jeet Singh, executive director, IT for Change, “The government is sitting on Rs 40,000 crore of USO funds. It can surely utilise that to provide a free basic data package to people in India. Basic government services and emergency services should essentially be free.” Nilekani is also in favour of the government providing free internet to people. “The internet is a powerful poverty alleviation tool.... Government can do a direct benefit transfer for data, a more market-neutral way of achieving the goal of getting everyone on the internet,” he told <i>Outlook</i>.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Legally, though, there may be issues in stopping FB from introducing its Free Basics platform in India. Says Singh, “Technically, the Indian government may not be able to stop FB from introducing Free Basics in India as it is just a platform. What the government has to do is to stop telcos from collaborating with it for free internet because Indian telcos, not FB, mediate access to the internet.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The demand for the government and TRAI to come clean on net neutrality has reached fever pitch. Experts like Nilekani feel that net neutrality, which does not allow zero rating and differential pricing based on telcos looking at the contents of the subscriber’s data packets, should be enshrined in law through an act of Parliament, the way countries like the US have done. TRAI has also proposed two models where the internet is provided free initially and charged at a later stage and another where content providers and websites reimburse the cost of browsing directly to consumers. Both these proposals have not found favour with experts who say that these are unworkable and only the government should disburse free internet.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In any case, all this is a matter of detail—important, no doubt. The key question is, what happens to Free Basics if TRAI rules in favour of net neutrality and goes against FB? “This is going to be a long-drawn-out battle as FB will certainly challenge this in court,” says the government official. After spending Rs 300 crore on publicity, there is no way it will roll over and die.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/outlook-february-8-2016-arindam-mukherjee-a-megacorps-basic-instinct'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/outlook-february-8-2016-arindam-mukherjee-a-megacorps-basic-instinct</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaSocial MediaTelecomFree BasicsTRAINet NeutralityFreedom of Speech and ExpressionInternet Governance2016-02-04T13:53:05ZNews ItemIndia, Egypt say no thanks to free Internet from Facebook
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/washington-post-annie-gowen-january-28-2016-india-egypt-say-no-thanks-to-free-internet-from-facebook
<b>ALWAR, India — Connecting people to the Internet is not easy in this impoverished farming district of wheat and millet fields, where working camels can be glimpsed along roads that curve through the low-slung Aravalli Hills.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The article by Annie Gowen was <a class="external-link" href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/india-egypt-say-no-thanks-to-free-internet-from-facebook/2016/01/28/cd180bcc-b58c-11e5-8abc-d09392edc612_story.html">published in Washington Post</a> on January 28, 2016. Sunil Abraham gave inputs.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">So when Facebook chief executive Mark Zuckerberg helicoptered in about a year ago to visit a small computer lab and tout Internet for all, Osama Manzar, director of India’s Digital Empowerment Foundation, was thrilled.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">But when Manzar tried Facebook’s limited free Internet service, he was bitterly disappointed. The app, called Free Basics, is a pared-down version of Facebook with other services such as weather reports and job listings.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“I feel betrayed — not only betrayed but upset and angry,” Manzar said. “He said we’re going to solve the problem with access and bandwidth. But Facebook is not the Internet.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Zuckerberg launched his sweeping Internet.org initiative in 2013 as a way to provide 4 billion people in the developing world with Web access, which he says he sees as a basic human right.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">But the initiative has hit a major snag in India, where in recent months Free Basics has been embroiled in controversy — with critics saying that the app, which provides limited access to the Web, does a disservice to the poor and violates the principles of “net neutrality,” which holds that equal access to the Internet should be unfettered to all.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Activist groups such as <a href="http://www.savetheinternet.in/" target="_blank">Save the Internet</a>, professors from leading universities and tech titans such as Nandan Nilekani, the co-founder of Infosys, have spoken out against it. Another well-known Indian entrepreneur dubbed it “poor Internet for poor people.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The debate escalated in recent weeks after India’s telecommunications regulator suspended Free Basics as it weighs whether such plans are fair, with new rules expected by the end of the month.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">A week later, Free Basics was banned in Egypt with little explanation, prompting concern that the backlash could spread to other markets. More recently, Google pulled out of the app in Zambia after a trial period. An estimated 15 million people are using Free Basics in 37 countries, including 1 million in India.</p>
<p class="interstitial-link" style="text-align: justify; "><i>[<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/indias-modi-wants-to-woo-silicon-valley-but-censorship-and-privacy-fears-grow-at-home/2015/09/23/2ab28f86-6174-11e5-8475-781cc9851652_story.html" target="_blank">India’s Modi wants to woo Silicon Valley, but privacy fears grow at home</a>]</i></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“It’s a very important test case for what will be India’s network neutrality regime,” said Sunil Abraham of the Center for Internet and Society in Bangalore.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">India’s debate could affect the way other countries address the question of whether it is fair for Internet service providers to price websites differently. The U.S. Federal Communications Commission’s rules on net neutrality went into effect only in June.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Officials at Facebook launched an advertising blitz to counteract the negative publicity. “Who could possibly be against this?” Zuckerberg wondered in a Times of India editorial on Dec. 28.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“I think we’ve been a bit surprised by the strong reaction,” said Chris Daniels, Facebook’s vice president for Internet.org. “Fundamentally, the reason for the surprise is that the program is doing good. It’s bringing people online who are moving onto the broader Internet.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">India, a country of 1.2 billion, has the second-highest number of Internet users in the world, but an estimated 80 percent of the population does not have Internet access.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">India’s tech-savvy prime minister, Narendra Modi, is trying to combat this with an ambitious “Digital India” plan to link 250,000 village centers with fiber-optic cable and extend mobile coverage. He has turned to the Indian tech community as well as Silicon Valley for help, securing an agreement with Google to provide free WiFi in railway stations.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">India has 130 million Facebook users, second only to the United States, and is a key market as the social-media giant looks to expand beyond the developed world, where its growth has slowed.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“If Facebook manages to get another half a billion users in India, that’s a valuable set of eyeballs to sell to a political party or corporation,” Abraham said.</p>
<p class="interstitial-link" style="text-align: justify; "><i>[<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/is-india-the-next-frontier-for-facebook/2014/10/09/8b256ea0-d5d6-4996-aafe-8e0e776c9915_story.html" target="_blank">Is India the next frontier for Facebook?</a>]</i></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Facebook has long said that its program is about altruism, not eyeballs.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">But it does reap new customers. Those who buy a SIM card from Facebook’s local mobile partner, Reliance Communications, are then prompted to pay for additional data. About 40 percent who sign up for Free Basics buy a data plan to move to the wider Web after 30 days, Daniels said.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The service is still running despite the India suspension. A Reliance spokesman said it is in “testing mode” and is not being promoted.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“The thing people forget about Free Basics is that it’s intended to be a temporary transition for people to give them a taste of the Internet and sign up. It’s a marketing program for the carrier in some sense,” said David Kirkpatrick, author of “<a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1439102120?ie=UTF8&camp=1789&creativeASIN=1439102120&linkCode=xm2&tag=thewaspos09-20" target="_blank" title="www.amazon.com">The Facebook Effect</a>.” But he added: “The idea that it’s some kind of alternative Internet that’s a discriminatory gesture to the poor is the prevailing view among the Indian intelligentsia. It’s fundamentally misunderstood.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Facebook has pledged to open up to new scrutiny the selection process for companies with new applications, Daniels said. That is a response to concerns by many in India’s tech community that Facebook’s process put India’s fledgling start-ups at a disadvantage.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The project’s proponents say that India’s needs are so great it cannot afford to suspend one program that could help.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Mahesh Uppal, a telecommunications consultant, notes that more than 10 percent of the country does not have mobile phone coverage and that India’s progress in extending fiber-optic cable to village centers is proceeding at a glacial pace. Modi had set a goal of linking all 250,000 by 2016, but only 27,000 have cable so far and it is ready for use in only 3,200, according to a government report.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In comparison, some 80 percent of China’s villages are linked by broadband.</p>
<p class="interstitial-link" style="text-align: justify; "><i>[<a href="https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/asia_pacific/inside-the-indian-temple-that-draws-americas-tech-titans/2015/10/30/03b646d8-7cb9-11e5-bfb6-65300a5ff562_story.html" target="_blank">Inside the Indian temple that draws America’s tech titans</a>]</i></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In Alwar district in the northern state of Rajasthan, many remember when Zuckerberg came to visit but fewer know about Free Basics.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“I’ve heard it’s free and by Facebook and you don’t have to pay for it,” said Umer Farukh, 43, a folk musician. “But I don’t think Facebook should control it. The Internet should be for everybody.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Farukh has only been computer literate for two years, but he’s already emailing and using YouTube to post videos and promote his band.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">He’s become such a proponent that he has donated space for one of Manzar’s computer centers — part of a government initiative to build cyber-hubs in minority communities — and encouraged the female members of his family to take classes, which is rare in his conservative community.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Farukh says that challenges to connecting India go far beyond data plans and fiber-optic cable or the government broadband that often sputters out. Wages are low, and hours are long. Only about half of the women in his state are literate, and about a quarter of the young women in his neighborhood are kept at home and not educated.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">“This place is very backward,” he said. “India as a society is lagging far behind in terms of Internet.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In the small nearby community of Roja Ka Baas, ringed by fields of blooming mustard greens, residents are still awaiting the opening of their planned WiFi center. They are struggling along on cheap mobile phones with slow 2G spectrum until then, they said.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Sakir Khan, 14, said that once the Internet finally arrived in this village, the first thing he would do would be to sign up for Facebook.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Farheen Fatima and Subuhi Parvez contributed to this report.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/washington-post-annie-gowen-january-28-2016-india-egypt-say-no-thanks-to-free-internet-from-facebook'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/washington-post-annie-gowen-january-28-2016-india-egypt-say-no-thanks-to-free-internet-from-facebook</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaSocial MediaFree BasicsInternet GovernanceFreedom of Speech and ExpressionFacebook2016-02-03T01:49:25ZNews ItemFacebook’s Fight to Be Free
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/bloomberg-businessweek-adi-narayan-bhuma-shrivastava
<b>In India, Mark Zuckerberg can’t give Internet access away.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The article by Adi Narayan and Bhuma Shrivastava was published in Bloomberg Businessweek on January 15, 2016. Pranesh Prakash was quoted.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Thanks mostly to its mobile-ad profits, Facebook has had a great couple of years. According to its most recent earnings report, in November, the company’s quarterly ad revenue rose 45 percent, to $4.3 billion, from the same period in 2014. It has more than 1.5 billion monthly users, just over half of all the people online anywhere. Keeping up its rate of user growth—more than 100 million people each year—will only get tougher.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">A big part of the problem is that a lot of potential new eyeballs are in places where Internet access is patchy at best. Some of Facebook’s grander projects anticipated that issue: It has satellites and giant solar-powered planes that beam Wi-Fi down to areas that don’t have it. And then there’s Free Basics, the two-year-old project Chief Executive Officer Mark Zuckerberg has called an online 911. In about three dozen countries so far, Free Basics—also known as Internet.org—includes a stripped-down version of Facebook and a handful of sites that provide news, weather, nearby health-care options, and other info. One or two carriers in a given country offer the package for free at slow speeds, betting that it will help attract new customers who’ll later upgrade to pricier data plans.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Facebook says Free Basics is meant to make the world more open and connected, not to boost the company’s growth. Either way, online access is an especially big deal in India, where there are 130 million people using Facebook, 375 million people online, and an additional 800 million-plus who aren’t. (The social network remains blocked in China.) That may help explain why Zuckerberg spent part of the first few weeks of his paternity leave appealing personally to Indians to lobby for Free Basics. On Dec. 21 the Indian government suspended the program, offered in the country by carrier Reliance Communications, while it weighs public comments and arguments from Internet freedom advocates who say preferential treatment for Facebook’s services threatens to stifle competition.</p>
<p class="callout" style="text-align: justify; ">“An emerging country like India needs to provide the consumer with incentives to get onto the Internet.” —Neha Dharia, an analyst at consulting firm Ovum</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Since the government’s telecommunications regulator announced the suspension, Facebook has bought daily full-page ads in major newspapers and plastered billboards with pictures of happy farmers and schoolchildren it says would benefit from Free Basics. Zuckerberg has frequently made the case himself via phone or newspaper op-ed, asking that Indians petition the government to approve his service. “If we accept that everyone deserves access to the Internet, then we must surely support free basic Internet services,” the CEO wrote in a column published in the Times of India, the nation’s largest daily paper, shortly before the new year. “Who could possibly be against this?”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Opponents, including some journalists and businesspeople, say Free Basics is dangerous because it fundamentally changes the online economy. If companies are allowed to buy preferential treatment from carriers, the Internet is no longer a level playing field, says Vijay Shekhar Sharma, founder of Indian mobile-payment company Paytm. A spokesman for Sharma confirmed that Zuckerberg called to discuss the matter but declined to comment further.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">India’s Internet base will grow with or without Facebook’s help, says Nikhil Pahwa, a tech blogger and co-founder of the Save the Internet coalition, which opposes Free Basics. “We don’t see Free Basics as philanthropy. We see it as a land grab,” says Pahwa. When dealing with the famously protectionist Indian government, that’s a pretty good argument. An April attempt by India’s top mobile carrier to underwrite data costs for certain apps drew heavy criticism, and the carrier, Bharti Airtel, has put the program on hold.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">None of that means Facebook can’t help get more Indians online, says Neha Dharia, an analyst at consulting firm Ovum. “An emerging country like India needs to provide the consumer with incentives to get onto the Internet,” she says. “What Facebook Free Basics is doing is a bit extreme, but what you do need is a bit of a middle path.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Internet sampler packages such as Free Basics can also help carriers like Reliance, the fourth-largest in India, upgrade their often-struggling networks, Dharia says. That’s a symbiotic process, because customers may quickly grow frustrated with the bare-bones service and demand more. Free Basics doesn’t have Gmail, YouTube, Vimeo, Twitter, or Bollywood music streaming. (Video will account for 64 percent of India’s data traffic by March 2017, consulting firm Deloitte estimates.) It’s meant to be a steppingstone. Facebook says about 40 percent of Free Basics users start paying for data plans within a month.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">But again, if Free Basics catches on in India, people may just keep paying for data to use more Facebook and forget about some of those other services, says Dharia. “Facebook is the Internet” to a lot of people in India, she says. Google, whose services are most conspicuously absent from the Free Basics roster, declined to comment.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">India’s telecommunications regulator says Facebook’s advocates and opponents have until Jan. 14 to file public comments; it’s received about 2.4 million responses so far, most of them form letters supporting Free Basics. The government’s decision could also ripple beyond India, says Pranesh Prakash, a Free Basics opponent and the policy director at the nonprofit Centre for Internet & Society in Bengaluru. In the weeks since India suspended Free Basics, Egypt, which had done the same back in October, once again shut down the Facebook plan, though the government wouldn’t say why. The India fight “will be a reputational challenge for Facebook,” says Prakash. “It will set the tone for Free Basics debate in other countries.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The bottom line: Facebook’s free data plan in India faces strong opposition from local businesses and Internet freedom advocates.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/bloomberg-businessweek-adi-narayan-bhuma-shrivastava'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/bloomberg-businessweek-adi-narayan-bhuma-shrivastava</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaFree BasicsFreedom of Speech and ExpressionInternet GovernanceSocial Media2016-01-31T09:11:52ZNews ItemWill India win net neutrality battle?
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/governance-now-pratap-vikram-singh-and-taru-bhatia-january-6-2015-will-india-win-net-neutrality-battle
<b>There is more than what meets the eye in Facebook’s ‘noble mission’ of providing internet for all.</b>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The article by Pratap Vikram Singh and Taru Bhatia was <a class="external-link" href="http://www.governancenow.com/news/regular-story/will-india-win-net-neutrality-battle">published by Governance Now</a> on January 5, 2016. Sunil Abraham gave inputs.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">India is gearing up for an era of startups and entrepreneurship and the man pushing it as one of his biggest development and self reliance agenda is none other than prime minister Narendra Modi, who launched the ‘Startup India, Standup India’ campaign this year. Few technology giants, led by the likes of Facebook and some telecom service providers, however, have thrown a technology spanner. It is important to note that a significant number of the startups in India are internet-based – next only to the US and China in having maximum number of tech startups, according to industry body NASSCOM.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">For these to flourish and for India to have next Facebook or Google it is important to have an open and neutral internet, believe digital rights experts. A network which doesn’t discriminate between the data packets (smallest unit of information sent in binary format over a network) and provides level playing field for all. “It is critical for the Startup India campaign. If we let the principles of net neutrality be compromised, then it makes it very difficult for entrepreneurs and startups to compete against established players, who can close off the market for upstarts by schemes like differentiated pricing and zero rating (toll free access to websites or apps),” said Vishal Misra, associate professor, department of computer science, Columbia University.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">A prerequisite for startups</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">A few months from now, country’s telecom regulator, the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI), is going to decide whether internet would remain neutral and whether it will continue to foster innovation. A major threat to net neutrality, according to civil society and digital rights experts, comes from zero rating – toll free access to a few selected websites or apps, a strategy adopted by internet service providers or internet platforms to hook users to those select few sites. For telecom and internet service providers zero rating is a new stream of revenue, a way to secure optimal return on investment from their existing subscriber base – without requiring additional investment. The ISPs are arguing that they should be given more flexibility in managing their network – in a way they should be allowed to assume the role of gatekeeper of the internet.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">For ISPs, net neutrality is an obsolete and utopian idea. Facebook, which has grown into a mammoth internet platform since its inception in 2004, has recently joined this bandwagon. Under its Free Basics initiative (erstwhile internet.org), the internet giant provides toll free access to a set of websites (including Facebook obviously!) handpicked by itself to the users. In India so far it has partnered with Reliance Communications.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Facebook by far is the most audacious and aggressive proponent of ‘zero rating’ scheme. From lobbying the prime minister to giving back-to-back ads in television channels and two-page ads in national dailies to circulating a vaguely written letter in support of Free Basics on its social media site, Facebook is pitching for ‘digital equality’ by giving access to 'basic internet’ or say a slice of the internet.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Cautioning against zero rating, Prabir Purkayastha, chairperson, Society for Knowledge Commons, said the way zero-rating is being discussed, it seems Indians are only the consumers of internet, which is not true. “Indians are also the innovators on internet,” said Purkayastha. “Internet has given the innovators the right to connect to the users without having a huge amount of money. This is the character that will be destroyed if zero-rating will be implemented,” he says.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">That’s true. Be it US-based Facebook or Google or Indian Flipkart or PayTm or SnapDeal, had it not been for open and neutral internet they wouldn’t have become what are today.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Raman Jit Singh Chima, global public policy director, Access Now, a New York-based firm working for digital rights, said the idea is to prevent a telco or an internet platform from assuming a role of a gatekeeper and control access. Misra, too, has written extensively on the counter-productiveness of zero rating: stifling of innovation and service providers loosing incentive to improve service and keep prices low. Both Misra and Chima testified their views on net neutrality to the standing committee on IT in August after the department of telecommunications submitted an expert committee report on the neutrality issue.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Whither public consultation</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">To formulate a regulation on how internet will shape up, the TRAI has come out with two consultation papers concerning net neutrality in the last nine months. The first consultation paper on ‘regulatory framework for over the top players (OTTs)’, which came in March, was written in favour of telecom and internet service providers. “It was embarrassing,” said Purkayastha. Over 1.2 million people wrote to the regulator. This was result of the savetheinternet.in campaign ran by free internet activists and lawyers, who were later joined by All India Bakchod (AIB) whose video on net neutrality went viral on YouTube (the video has received three million views in last eight months). This was unprecedented in the history of TRAI consultations. However, the fate of those responses is still unclear.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In December the regulator brought another paper. This time it was titled ‘regulation on differential pricing’. Contrary to the initial paper, this paper is far more objective and reasonable, said Nikhil Pahwa, founder, MediaNama portal and a key volunteer behind savetheinternet.in campaign. The regulator has sought comments on its second paper by December 30 and counter-comments by January 7. Till the time a final call is taken, the telecom regulator has instructed Reliance Communications, Facebook’s India telecom partner, to put Free Basics on hold.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The savetheinternet.in campaign has formulated the responses to the new consultation paper and has made it available for everyone favouring net neutrality to send it to the TRAI. The AIB team has released another video titled ‘Save the Internet - 2 – Judgement Day’, which has been viewed close to one million times in just four months.<br /><br />The neutrality debate started in India in December 2014 when Airtel, country’s largest telco, announced – although it later backtracked – that the company would charge consumers more for using VOIP services, on top of the data charges. Later, it went on to launch Airtel Zero, wherein it struck deal with online services providers for user access at zero rate. Facebook had already introduced internet.org by then. While it was initially led by civil society, the debate was later joined by politicians – Naveen Patnaik, M Chandrashekhar, Jay Panda, Rahul Gandhi and Arvind Kejriwal – who strongly came out in support of net neutrality. <br /><br />Facebook has termed its zero rating platform as a philanthropic activity intended to connect billions of unconnected population so that they can access education, health and employment related information. It has urged users to sign a petition, cautioning them against "a small, vocal group of critics" lobbying to prevent 1 billion people from accessing 'affordable internet'. Under Free Basics, Facebook claims, it doesn't charge app developers and includes them if they comply to its 'objective tech specs'.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Free Basics: A camouflage?</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Critics, however, call it a walled garden. In providing free access to close to a hundred websites it continues to play the role of a gatekeeper. It is not the poor who decide what to access but Facebook! While it says that it is not making money out of Free Basics as it doesn't display ads in the Free Basics version of Facebook, it keeps the option of monetisation open in the future.<br /><br />“It [Free Basics] has been camouflaged as charity," said a senior TRAI official, in an off the record conversation. While speaking to the Guardian on Facebook’s zero rating in December, Tim Berners Lee, founder of world wide web (www), said, “In the particular case of somebody who's offering... something which is branded internet, it's not internet, then you just say no. No it isn't free, no it isn't in the public domain, there are other ways of reducing the price of internet connectivity and giving something... [only] giving people data connectivity to part of the network deliberately, I think is a step backwards.”<br /><br />Speaking in favour of zero rating, Payal Malik, associate professor, economics, Delhi University, said that it is wrong to assume that all consumers will get hooked to zero rated sites. “In a way you are saying that all humans have same preferences and likes and dislikes, which is very unlikely,” said Malik. <br /><br />Experts representing telecom industry argue that the net neutrality regulation should be geography specific and the telecom players should be given more flexibility in dealing with the network. Mahesh Uppal, a senior telecom consultant and director, ComFirst India, while speaking at a round table discussion in Delhi, said that a majority of population in the West including countries opting for strict net neutrality – including Netherlands, Slovenia and the US – are already connected. "The data connectivity is primarily through fixed lines - copper, co-ax cable or optical fibre wired — wherein it is easier to add capacity to meet traffic growth. However this is difficult to do so for wireless networks," said Uppal. In developing countries, including India, mobile telephony and internet majorly runs on wireless. Hence, he argued, telecom and internet service providers should be given flexibility to zero rate. For Uppal, if zero rating or sponsored content is implemented properly “it can be one of the ways to scale up internet access” to the unconnected regions.<br /><br />Neutrality proponents, however, differ. “It is basic economic theory, and zero rated sites get a price advantage. There are studies that show customers stay within the world of zero rated sites and never venture outside or are aware of the full internet,” professor Misra said.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Zero or equal rating?</h3>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">So is there a middle ground? Are there ways to increase access without tampering with open and neutral character of the internet? Experts believe there are. Some of the solutions are not completely black and white, but in between. While there is a fierce opposition to zero rating, it might work, according to Sunil Abraham, executive director, centre for internet and society (CIS), if provided with an amount of equal rating (giving free data pack to users so that they can access any site or app they want). <br /><br />Mozilla Foundation advocates equal rating. The foundation has sought to create such an alternative in Bangladesh and countries in Africa within the Firefox OS ecosystem. The foundation has tied up with telecom operator Grameenphone in Bangladesh to provide 20 Mb data per day for free to users, in exchange for viewing an advertisement. The model could be easily replicated in India, said Pahwa of MediaNama.<br /><br />For African countries, the foundation has partnered with Orange. Both allow Africans to purchase $40 Firefox OS smartphones that come packaged with free three to six months of voice calling, text, and up to 500 Mb of monthly data. Purkayastha of Knowledge Commons said that zero-rating plan by telecom operators only makes sense when government services are provided for free through it. “That is the form of zero-rating I would support.”<br /><br />There are a few platforms which are reimbursing data in megabytes to users accessing partnering apps. The user can then use the free data pack to access any other site or app. Some of them include: mCent, Gigato and DataMi. mCent, owned by Boston-based firm Jana, is a pioneer in this area. It is being used by 30 million users cross 98 countries. In India, according to Jana, one out of every 10 internet users has subscribed to mCent. <br /><br />Yes, it does violate neutrality as it puts those app providers not having enough money at a disadvantageous position vis-à-vis to those having deep pocket to reimburse data to users. “I think it’s a grey area,” said professor Misra. On the surface it seems to be just like Free Basics, however, Gigato (or mCent) is making no pretense that what they are doing is philanthropy of increasing access, said professor Misra, adding that it is still acceptable as user will have the data to venture out of the walled garden. The senior TRAI official too finds it acceptable. “In my opinion, Facebook should become like Gigato,” he said. <br /><br />If the regulator is going to protect consumers’ right and also not stifle startups and entrepreneurism, it will have to ensure some broad, core principles of the internet. It will have to prevent both the ISPs and the internet platforms from becoming gatekeepers. It must not allow any throttling, blocking, fast and slow lanes, discrimination based on price or quality of service and distortion of level playing field. How and whether TRAI is going to do these would be clear in a few months.</p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/governance-now-pratap-vikram-singh-and-taru-bhatia-january-6-2015-will-india-win-net-neutrality-battle'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/governance-now-pratap-vikram-singh-and-taru-bhatia-january-6-2015-will-india-win-net-neutrality-battle</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaSocial MediaFreedom of Speech and ExpressionTRAINet NeutralityInternet Governance2016-01-11T02:28:44ZNews ItemFacebook Free Basics: Gatekeeping Powers Extend to Manipulating Public Discourse
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/catchnews-january-6-2016-vidushi-marda-facebook-free-basics-gatekeeping-powers-extend-to-manipulating-public-discourse
<b>15 million people have come online through Free Basics, Facebook's zero rated walled garden, in the past year. "If we accept that everyone deserves access to the internet, then we must surely support free basic internet services. Who could possibly be against this?" asks Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, in a recent op-ed defending Free Basics.
</b>
<p>The article was published in Catchnews on January 6, 2015. For more info <a class="external-link" href="http://www.catchnews.com/tech-news/facebook-free-basics-gatekeeping-powers-extend-to-manipulating-public-discourse-1452077063.html">click here</a>.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">This rhetorical question however, has elicited a plethora of answers. The network neutrality debate has accelerated over the past few weeks with the Telecom Regulatory Authority of India (TRAI) releasing a consultation paper on differential pricing.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">While notifications to "Save Free Basics in India" prompt you on Facebook, an enormous backlash against this zero rated service has erupted in India.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/FreeBasics.png" alt="Free Basics" class="image-inline" title="Free Basics" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The policy objectives that must guide regulating net neutrality are consumer choice, competition, access and openness. Facebook claims that Free Basics is a transition to the full internet and digital equality. However, by acting as a gatekeeper, Facebook gives itself the distinct advantage of deciding what services people can access for free by virtue of them being "basic", thereby violating net neutrality.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Amidst this debate, it's important to think of the impact Facebook can have on manipulating public discourse. In the past, Facebook has used it's powerful News Feed algorithm to significantly shape our consumption of information online.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">In July 2014, Facebook researchers revealed that for a week in January 2012, it had altered the news feeds of 689,003 randomly selected Facebook users to control how many positive and negative posts they saw. This was done without their consent as part of a study to test how social media could be used to spread emotions online.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Their research showed that emotions were in fact easily manipulated. Users tended to write posts that were aligned with the mood of their timeline.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Another worrying indication of Facebook's ability to alter discourse was during the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge in July and August, 2014. Users' News Feeds were flooded with videos of individuals pouring a bucket of ice over their head to raise awareness for charitable cause, but not entirely on its merit.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The challenge was Facebook's method of boosting its native video feature which was launched at around the same time. Its News Feed was mostly devoid of any news surrounding riots in Ferguson, Missouri at the same time, which happened to be a trending topic on Twitter.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Each day, the news feed algorithm has to choose roughly 300 posts out of a possible 1500 for each user, which involves much more than just a random selection. The posts you view when you log into Facebook are carefully curated keeping thousands of factors in mind. Each like and comment is a signal to the algorithm about your preferences and interests.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">The amount of time you spend on each post is logged and then used to determine which post you are most likely to stop to read. Facebook even keeps into account text that is typed but not posted and makes algorithmic decisions based on them.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">It also differentiates between likes - if you like a post before reading it, the news feed automatically assumes that your interest is much fainter as compared to liking a post after spending 10 minutes reading it.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Facebook believes that this is in the best interest of the user, and these factors help users see what he/she will most likely want to engage with. However, this keeps us at the mercy of a gatekeeper who impacts the diversity of information we consume, more often than not without explicit consent. Transparency is key.</p>
<hr style="text-align: justify; " />
<p style="text-align: justify; "><i>(Vidushi Marda is a programme officer at the Centre for Internet and Society)</i></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/catchnews-january-6-2016-vidushi-marda-facebook-free-basics-gatekeeping-powers-extend-to-manipulating-public-discourse'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/blog/catchnews-january-6-2016-vidushi-marda-facebook-free-basics-gatekeeping-powers-extend-to-manipulating-public-discourse</a>
</p>
No publishervidushiFree BasicsFreedom of Speech and ExpressionInternet GovernanceSocial Media2016-01-09T13:43:56ZBlog EntryFacebook Free Basics vs Net Neutrality: The top arguments in the debate
http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/indian-express-december-31-2015-facebook-free-basics-vs-net-neutrality-the-top-arguments-in-the-debate
<b>On Twitter, there's a whole conversation around Facebook Free Basics and whether zero-rating platforms should be allowed in India. Here's a look at the debate.</b>
<p>The article was <a class="external-link" href="http://indianexpress.com/article/technology/social/facebook-free-basics-debate-the-arguments-that-are-unfolding-on-twitter/">published in the Indian Express</a> on December 31, 2015. Sunil Abraham and Pranesh Prakash were quoted.</p>
<hr />
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Facebook’s Free Basics app, which aims to provide ‘free Internet access’ to users who can’t afford data packs, has run into trouble in India over the last two weeks. After regulator TRAI issued a paper questioning the fairness of zero-rating platforms, it also asked Reliance Communications (the official telecom partner for Free Basics) to put the service on hold.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Facebook on its part has gone for an aggressive campaign, both online and offline, to promote Free Basics and ensure that its platform is not banned permanently. For Net Neutrality activists, zero-rating platforms are in violation of the principle as it restricts access to free, full Internet for users.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">On Twitter too, there’s a serious debate unfolding around Free Basics and whether zero-rating platforms should be allowed in India. Here’s a look at some of the prominent voices around this Net Neutrality vs Free Basics debate.</p>
<h3 style="text-align: justify; ">Watch our video</h3>
<table class="grid listing">
<tbody>
<tr>
<th><iframe frameborder="0" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/Y6vXJNVUDug" width="560"></iframe></th>
</tr>
</tbody>
</table>
<p id="stcpDiv" style="text-align: justify; ">Nikhil Pahwa, founder of news website MediaNama, has been campaigning for quite some time against zero-rating platforms in general and Net Neutrality. On Twitter, Pahwa points out that the problem with the zero-rating apps is that it gives telecos right to play kingmaker, and get into a direct relationship between a website and a user.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Pahwa also wrote a counter-blog to Mark Zuckerberg’s <a href="http://blogs.timesofindia.indiatimes.com/toi-edit-page/its-a-battle-for-internet-freedom/">column in The Times of India </a> questioning why Facebook is going with this restricted version of the web on Free Basics, rather than giving access to all websites.</p>
<p>He posted recently on Twitter, “Why hasn’t Facebook tried any model other than on which gives it a competitive advantage?”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Pahwa adds, “With zero rating, telcos insert themselves into a previously direct relationship between a site and user. Some sites made cheaper versus others. Said it earlier, saying it again. Problem with zero rating is that it gives telcos the right to play kingmaker through pricing. So Net Neutrality battle isn’t just about Facebook. It’s about telcos lobbying for differential pricing+revenue share from Internet companies.”</p>
<div id="stcpDiv">Check out <a class="external-link" href="http://twitter.com/nixxin/status/681731772682354688">some of this tweets on the issue of Net Neutrality</a>:</div>
<div></div>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Pranesh Prakash, the director for policy at Centre for Internet and Society (CIS) in Bangalore, has said that a total ban might not be the ideal solution and one should look at the platforms on a case by case basis.<br /><br />He writes on Twitter, “My position: We should ban some zero-rating, allow some zero-rating, and deal w/ middle category either w/ +ve obligation or case-by-case. I’m all for banning Free Basics if it harms people more than it benefits them. I’ve even proposed tests for determining this. The regulator needs more data on a) conversion rates to full-Internet; b) cost of subsidy & c) QoE (speed, etc.) of Free Basics.”</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Check out Pranesh's tweets below</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/P1.png" alt="Pranesh Tweet" class="image-inline" title="Pranesh Tweet" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/copy_of_P2.png" alt="Pranesh Tweet" class="image-inline" title="Pranesh Tweet" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/P3.png" alt="Pranesh Tweet" class="image-inline" title="Pranesh Tweet" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Sunil Abraham, executive director at Centre for Internet and Society, has however questioned Free Basics on Twitter. He also posted counter-points to Pranesh’s tweets about data on conversion being used to create regulations around zero-ratings. He’s also called for a ban on Free Basics.</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; ">Check out his tweets below</p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/P4.png" alt="Pranesh Tweet" class="image-inline" title="Pranesh Tweet" /></p>
<p style="text-align: justify; "><img src="http://editors.cis-india.org/home-images/P5.png" alt="Pranesh Tweet" class="image-inline" title="Pranesh Tweet" /></p>
<p>
For more details visit <a href='http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/indian-express-december-31-2015-facebook-free-basics-vs-net-neutrality-the-top-arguments-in-the-debate'>http://editors.cis-india.org/internet-governance/news/indian-express-december-31-2015-facebook-free-basics-vs-net-neutrality-the-top-arguments-in-the-debate</a>
</p>
No publisherpraskrishnaSocial MediaFree BasicsInternet GovernanceFreedom of Speech and ExpressionVideoSocial Networking2016-01-07T02:26:16ZNews Item