Re: Fwd: IAC's response to TRAI's Consultation Paper no. 2/2015 "OTT Services"

Few important points had got lost in some extreme "venting", that are only
clearing up now... i.e. after discussions are returning to room temperature.

The cookie-cutter / cyclostyled response sent out to TRAI, that had
apparently flooded it's mailbox, is probably not the best tool. However,
does it mean that it didn't serve any purpose ? I think, quite contrary to
that, it's purpose was to raise awareness through direct-action, and bring
visibility to the issues that would otherwise have been easily ignored. A
side-effect though is that many specialized, well-written, individually
crafted responses would get lost like needles in a hay-stack, and nobody
from TRAI, is likely to ever find those. At the same time, I think that the
volunteers behind #SaveTheInternet did try to listen to range of opinion on
this matter, while drafting the response. I hope, that they had sufficient
professional help as well.

Facebook is far from being a model of "Net Neutrality". And google is
perhaps not too far behind. They are not quite the shining examples of why
Net Neutrality is important. However, neither of the 2 companies is likely
to have become what they are today, had they started their life in a highly
non-neutral internet. The real shining examples are the likes of
"Coursera", "Khan Academy", "Uber", "Whatsapp" etc. I suspect that each of
these organizations would find it extremely difficult to survice or thrive
in a non-neutral environment. A non-neutral environment is likely to ensure
that shallow-pocketed "disruptors" invariably fail - sooner than later.
This is going to bring about stagnation, complacency and eventually might
lead to bait-n-switch of services. Now, these are the things that are
captured in the canned response. Question is, what is TRAI really going to
do with the responses !


On Wed, Apr 22, 2015 at 11:44 PM, Sarbajit Roy <[email protected]>
wrote:

> Hi Nikhil
>
> Cool.
>
> My 2 paise, This is a deeply insidious and wide-ranging RFC from TRAI
> and trivialising this RFC as "net neutrality" is dangerous and
> ultimately counter-productive.
>
> Sarbajit
>
> On 4/22/15, Nikhil Pahwa <[email protected]> wrote:
> > Hi Sarbajit,
> >
> > my apologies for the standup comedy comment. That was a personal comment
> > and I shouldn't have made it.
> >
> > My limited point is that whatever we are doing at savetheinternet.in
> isn't
> > funded. Some of the volunteers have given us their domain names (which
> they
> > had booked earlier after airtel began charging separately for VoIP) to
> use,
> > there's a tech team that has set the site up - all volunteers. We're not
> an
> > organization, and this is entire a volunteer effort, that we are all
> > dedicating our own time and personal resources towards, because were very
> > worried by the TRAI paper. That 'Mukesh Ambani's minions' comment is
> > completely unfounded, and would be impossible to ever substantiate
> because
> > it isn't true. Just because FirstPost carried a point of view
> (incidentally
> > so have many other publications), doesnt make us anyones minions.
> >
> > Nikhil
> >
> > On Wed, Apr 22, 2015 at 3:46 PM, Tarun Dua <lists-w/I/[email protected]> wrote:
> >
> >>
> >>
> >> I did not imply or impute that you are a Mukesh Ambani associate or
> >>> minion.
> >>>
> >>
> >> Good.
> >>
> >>>
> >>> I posted the link to your article accompanied by text describing that a
> >>> news portal associated with Shri Mukesh Ambani, ie. Firstpost.com, was
> >>> circulating articles encouraging people to "spam" the TRAI's
> >>> consultation
> >>> process on a non-issue like "net neutrality" over mobile phone
> networks.
> >>>
> >> Oh, and you know even Facebook & Twitter are circulating articles
> >> encouraging people to send email to TRAI.
> >>
> >> And why do you call it spam. Spam has the characteristic of being
> >> un-solicited. TRAI has solicited views from public.
> >>
> >>
> >>> There is a concerted campaign by foreign interests to get certain
> >>> beneficial provisions of the IT Act disabled, directly or indirectly.
> >>>
> >>
> >>
> >> Lack of net-neutrality laws helps foreign giants like
> >> Facebook/Google/Twitter abuse their dominant market position more than
> >> any
> >> domestic Internet centric businesses.
> >>
> >>>
> >>>
> >>> The first step to this was taken in the SC's 66-A judgement - which
> >>> under
> >>> cover of 66-A effectively disabled the ITIGR 2011 in its concluding
> >>> paras
> >>> without any reasons - except that Google and Facebook were overloaded
> >>> with
> >>> complaints being made to them under these rules.
> >>>
> >> With due respect, Googles and Facebooks of the world have all the
> >> financial muscle in the world to be able to handle an "overload" of
> >> complaints they were supposedly deluged with. On the other hand it is
> the
> >> anemic & capital constrained domestic entrepreneur(s) who face an
> >> un-certain regulatory environment.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >>> The net neutrality frenzy being whipped up, is only a smokescreen for
> >>> more such skullduggery. And that Reliance Jio is the largest "datapipe"
> >>> waiting to be activated makes it more interesting.
> >>>
> >>
> >> Not buying your conspiracy theory, I don't see the point you are making,
> >> perhaps the point doesn't exist at all.
> >>
> >> Net Neutrality debate is happening because it concerns common people
> like
> >> us who have no access to levers of power and are trying to run our
> >> startups/small businesses in an environment of capital constraints and
> >> un-certain regulation.
> >>
> >> Also you are wrong about Reliance Jio being the largest "datapipe" to be
> >> activated. The largest un-activated and un-used "datapipe" happens to be
> >> BSNL+MTNL+Powergrid Tel+RailTel+GailTel in India.
> >>
> >> Regards
> >> -Tarun
> >>
> >>
> >> _______________________________________________
> >> India-gii mailing list
> >> India-gii-IAPFreCvJWP2/[email protected]
> >> https://lists.india-gii.org/mailman/listinfo/india-gii
> >>
> >>
> >
>
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>



-- 
regards,
Banibrata
http://www.linkedin.com/in/bdutta
http://twitter.com/edgeliving

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