Net Neutrality wins, India and "true entrepreneurs" lose.

I disagree with TRAI guidelines because its NOT the job of government to enforce what it thinks are right actions in market, or classify individual actions as charitable or profit driven. Government is instituted to protect rights of those who choose to deploy resources. As long as businessmen deploying resources are working voluntarily with stakeholders, and none of these stakeholders are complaining of any breach of promised terms, government has no right to ban anything. In fact, in case of free basics, at best government should impose fine IF TERMS OF CONTRACT ARE VIOLATED, and that too through courts, when the stakeholders approach it.

Petitioning government to stop private individuals from collaborating is an assault on Liberty. Fullstop, no but.

I don't consider other ISPs or web platforms as stakeholders, because neither they are providing resources for free basics, or are consumers of free basics. If they think free basics will make them noncompetitive, then like any business they should innovate or sell their assets. Thats what Apple did when it faced existential crisis while competing with Microsoft, which also was market driven(rather than government driven) monopoly.

Multiple alternatives are not the essence of Liberty, but its consequence. Essence of Liberty is to act according to one's rational conclusions. There is no guarantee that these conclusions are full proof. But nobody has right to force you to not act. But this is precisely whats happening. Facebook is being forced not to act according to what its stakeholders think is right.

Possible refutations

>In this case who gets to decide what's good >for the public and what gets to be included in >the free basics:

>1) Is it the public by some up voting mechanism?

>2) Is it the government?

>3) Or is it the businesses?

None. Its the market that decides. Market here referring to complete set. If free basics is pushing useless ads or not offering whats required, then its consumers will either spend less time or switch to paid carriers if they find value.

>Or the next innovative service born out of a >garage project by the next Mark Zuckerberg? >Who may probably not have resources to >compete with the Facebook!

>Would Facebook have even existed today if >the free basics was launched (by Microsoft or >google) before it's inception in 2004, and told >facebook "Resistance is futile. You will be >assimilated"?

Let me give you an example from evolutionary biology. Mammals did not evolve from Dinosaurs, birds did. The ancestors of mammals struggled till asteroid wiped out Dinosaurs. If nature had decided to give equal space to both mammals ancestors and Dinosaurs, then I don't think mammals would have developed such sophisticated skills as perception mechanism or neuro mechanism, which ultimately lead to Humans.

True, if there was free basics at the time of facebook, it would have taken more time. But I think it would then have been even better. Perhaps incorporating features of Quora, twitter, and reddit. An example is Disney. For long it had monopoly over animation films. But once its quality deteriorated, it was forced to collaborate with Pixar for Toy Story. Rest is history. Pixar didn't knock "Department of Justice" saying it wants equal distribution for animation. It improved its story telling, and its technology.

Similarly, if poor do not gain sufficient value, they will opt out or move on, leaving facebook's investments in soup. And here, there still are other carriers, and potential last mile internet innovations like set top box to compete for.

So "survival of the fittest" has to be determined by market. Which is a place where government only protects breaches of contracts. And the players collaborate based on what they think is right.