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Dutch Hotels Must Register As ISPs
hankwang writes "The Dutch telecommunications authority OPTA has announced that Dutch hotels must register as internet providers (original version, in Dutch) because that is what they formally are, according to Dutch laws. It is well possible that once hotels are officially internet providers, they will also have to abide by the European regulations on data retention and make efforts to link email headers and other data traffic to individual hotel guests. Could this also happen in other European countries? This is probably not likely to lead to a more widespread adoption of free WiFi services in hotels."
Mind that:
Option 2 is already implemented. (and i refer to the old US health insurance: its horror when compared to how free countries support their citizens health)
Option 1 is merely a "test trial" thrown against ten large hotels because OPTA has its job to do.
On this situation:
I view this as a protest against a bad law on what makes someone an internet provider. Perhaps a chess move in something that doesn't aim to make Hotels an ISP, but to make it so actual ISP's can't hide behind the same walls (like holes in a vague law) as hotels do. I can't ever imagine hotels beng labeled as ISP's, and i believe everyone (including OPTA and the Hotels) would enjoy knowing what they're supposed to do and what not.
Disclaimer; i am dutch.
Hivemind harvest in progress..
I am not sure if they do the same in other EU countries, but in Denmark we just ignore the data retention regulation. It is common for apartments blocks to have their own intranet with shared internet essentially making them ISPs. When the regulation came out a few years ago there was a large panic on how to possibly abide by it. Fortunately all the large ISPs prepared the systems to do it, but never implemented them, the official stanze is: We are not going to implement these systems until forced to, and with no one else following the regulations, no one wants to be the first.