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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."
The OPTA has said that they are not sure yet if the hotels are ISP's. They are still investigating this and I think that is the reason they have send some letters out. In order to get a trial so it will become clear what an ISP is. In the Netherlands everyone who offers public access to internet or other telecomservices has to deal with the OPTA. It's also the organisation that puts fines on spamming etc. Our telecom watchhound in short.
Now, after so many years, I can finally register as an ISP just because I provide a free access point. I already have a data retention scheme in place, only for statistical purposes of course.
Everything I write is lies, read between the lines.
I remember things like this whenever someone criticizes the US and suggests that I move to a free country. Netherlands has often been on that supposed list of "free countries."
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
I wonder if this will lead to more broader implications once the Mafiaa can't DMCA ISPs into compliance.
I read this yesterday on nu.nl and I think it's completely ridiculous. The hotels (and my hospital I found out yesterday, and McDonalds and many many other places) can offer WiFi because they have a deal with a provider. Isn't that enough? I thought the Opta was there for the consumer but now I am not so sure anymore.
-- Cheers!
some hotels use cable likey the same one that tv comes from.
Hotels were also found to be cable TV providers, telephone service providers, cell phone service providers, water and electric utility providers, furnishing distributors, and food and beverage distributors and must meet all the requirements and responsibilities of each of those industries.
Of course this makes sense. Didn't you realize that this is the same logic used to justify the long standing practice of classifying hotels as power, water, and sewage utilities, as well as TV broadcasters, farmers, ranchers, etc. What is the difference?
Hmm, the Netherlands, UK, Denmark, North Korea, Swaziland, Lesotho and a few other coconut states are dictorships with medieval style kings/queens. There may be elections once in a while, but that is just for show...
Excuse me, but please get off my Pennisetum Clandestinum, eh!
The hotels can say it's not free but part of the room rate / hotel resort fee.
Libertarians stand for privatized oppression. Most other parties stand for government-supplied oppression. Does anyone actually stand for freedom nowadays?
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
I'm amazed how little your comment resembles reality. Libertarians, and also the TEA party crowd (though they are not exactly the same) favor a smaller government all the way around. Sure, there are some who, for instance, hate recreational drug use. However, as they favor less government, they don't want the government to restrict it. On the other hand, on the left leaning side, some might not like people to have firearms, and yet they also don't want government regulation there.
The Libertairians and the TEA party voters don't agree on how to wield the mighty arm of the law, they agree that it should be weakened. They believe that instead these things should be decided on a state, or community level, but not on the national level. They certainly wouldn't push for the regulations you speak of, and controling communications is right out.
There are 10 commandments: 01)Thou shalt love the Lord Thy God 10)Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.Matt22:34-40
The majority of the guests are not going to use the borrow the SMTP server that the hotel uses.
They are typically going to HTTPS to some webmail account.
Good luck getting the headers out of that.
If the hotel has a NAT-ted network, what are they supposed to log? Which 192.168.x.y address had a particular evil-doing port number at a particular time, and match that t a guest?
Europeans are going daft.
I'm amazed how little your comment resembles reality. Libertarians, and also the TEA party crowd (though they are not exactly the same) favor a smaller government all the way around. Sure, there are some who, for instance, hate recreational drug use. However, as they favor less government, they don't want the government to restrict it. On the other hand, on the left leaning side, some might not like people to have firearms, and yet they also don't want government regulation there.
The Libertairians and the TEA party voters don't agree on how to wield the mighty arm of the law, they agree that it should be weakened. They believe that instead these things should be decided on a state, or community level, but not on the national level. They certainly wouldn't push for the regulations you speak of, and controling communications is right out.
Just looking at your comment history. Quite a few gems in there.
This one about you wanting hollywood movies to have no immorality and have biblically themed messages is hilarious.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1806598&cid=33775058
Now i'm not saying you in particular feel the need to push your viewpoint on others but there are plenty of Libertarians who do. They want to control the internet so that it fits their idea of morality. This has become the new meaning of Libertarianism. It's the opposite of what it should mean and it's unfortunate but the fact is Libertarianism, thanks to the religious right, is now an ideology that wants to control the lives of others. Your typical religious censorship nuts are quite representative of the Libertarian movement.
Unfortunately, while he was probably just trolling, a lot of people genuinely believe that the TEAbaggers are either small-l or big-L libertarians. It's hard to say who has the worst marketing department between the Libertarian Party, the North Koreans, and NAMBLA.
For the record, here's how you tell the difference: the L/libertarians were the ones bitching about government overreach during the last administration. The Tea Partiers are the ones who were perfectly content until a President of the Wrong Color was elected.
That's the crux of the thing, isn't it? People shout at the top of their voice how they are in favor of freedom, but when quizzed it turns it they want freedom so they can do whatever they damn well please, and the filthy gays/gun-nuts/pornographers/fundies/whatever can rot in hell.
And to get back to the article, we're talking the Netherlands, where the Freedom Party wants to ensure freedom by changing the first article of our constitution to explicitly state we're a Judeo-Christian nation and kicking all the muslims out of the country. Freedom...to be a good god-fearing christian, that is.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
How about anything that can route?
Linux?
At what point is this absurdity going to end?
Been there, done that, paid for the T-shirt
and didn't get it
I happen to be typing this from a Dutch Hotel.
This particular one has free wireless, and there is no way to identify a particular system accessing the net to a room. In fact, without staying here I could still probably sit in the car park or hotel lobby and access the internet from there. There's even a PC in the lobby with anonymous access from it.
Granted it does use a "Hotspot" login page (just need to check a checkbox and click login), so I suppose that could be modified to have someone provide a room number or PIN etc...
Changing the way things work though will invariably be a pain though, especially if you need to access the Internet over the weekends and the authentication system breaks down or something else goes wrong... (as seems to be quite common with the systems in many hotels). Reception tend to look at you with rather blank faces when this happens, and it usually isn't fixed until a weekday.
The data retention system is never ever going to prevent any terrorism. Real dangerous terrorists would never communicate over the open Internet, and amateurs that might are not really dangerous; they are more likely to either blow themselves up by accident or be unable to manufacture even the simplest explosive that works.
"For every complex problem, there is a solution that is simple, neat, and wrong." -- H.L. Mencken (1880-1956) --
Seeing as how I've actually been to TEA party rallies and support Libertarian ideas, and have not come across a single example of a libertarian push for government control of anything, I must ask you to cite your sources.
Tea Party protests FOR government intervention to stop the rebulding of a mosque at ground zero.
Brooklyn Tea Party founder John Press, who rallied against the Ground Zero Mosque in recent weeks, again raised the spectre of foreign domination. "The Mosque is founded by a very scary people and the US Constitution does not guarantee the right of a foreign nation to build a mosque in our country," he said. It's unclear if Mr. Press had merely forgotten the First Amendment, but one member of his protest group did recall the constitutional barrier on government suppression of religion -- he just chose to ignore it.
Link
Mark Williams, chairman of the Tea Party Express, blogged about the 13-story mosque and Islamic cultural center planned at Park Place and Broadway, calling it a monument to the 9/11 terrorists. "The monument would consist of a Mosque for the worship of the terrorists' monkey-god,"
Link
Example 2: Tea Party anti-abortionists that WANT government to legislate against abortion.
Link
Example 3: Tea Party WANTS laws to differentiate Gay and Lesbians.
Montana Tea Party Leader Endorses Violence Toward Gay People
Link
In other words the Tea Party is nothing more than religious conservatives trying to control our lives. The Libertarian Party used to be run by Ron Paul who helped kick start the tea party movement. The two are clearly intrinsically linked. Libertarian has come to mean the opposite of its original definition thanks to people trying to play double-speak.
For me, when I'm at a hotel I don't use tappable/monitorable e-mail. I'm either using secure IMAP to my own server, running a client on my home machine remotely via X11-over-SSH, or using my own WebMail server (or a Google one) via HTTPS with a check of the certificate. I assume that any time I'm on a "free wi-fi" network there may be proxy servers handling all unencrypted traffic (and potentially trying to MITM SSL traffic), so I avoid running anything across the network that I don't want the general public to see.
Hotels offer free wifi since guests demand it. If red tape turns up which turns them into an ISP I don't see it necessarily stopping them from offering wifi. Instead some enterprising company will sell an ISP in a box, which will be a glorified NAS / router with extra logging /audit trail.
"This is probably not likely to lead to a more widespread adoption of free WiFi services in hotels." Here's a much better one - "This may lead to less free WiFi services in hotels."
vos nescitis quicquam, nec cogitatis quia expedit nobis ut unus moriatur homo pro populo et non tota gens pereat.
hankwang and timothy! Article title is misleading.
"Dutch Hotels Must Register As ISPs" is wrong (they do not) and should read "Dutch OPTA sues Hotels for being an ISP".
It is the OPTA that is test-trialing 10 large hotels to find out (by ruling) whether they are (or not are) ISP's.
"OPTA checks whether market parties comply with the law in order to protect consumers." - http://www.opta.nl/en/about-opta/
In what way exactly this move protects consumers i am not sure, but i reckon the OPTA wants to break down some vague holes in the law behind some ISP's might hide themselves.
Hivemind harvest in progress..
Since the introduction of the Lex Nokia in Finland, which enables the ISPs to monitor the headers of e-mails (and other stuff) going through their pipes, this doesn't sound very surprising. I'm predicting that we will have similar laws here in Finland too, for Hotels and also Office buildings too, then later on extended to actual houses which share the same connection. This is their way of gaining control of the Internet.
If this happens, I'll be on the streets. Hope to see you there too. Stand up for your rights as a citizen of Earth! But in a peaceful way
GeoKone.NET
Early drafts of the Digital Economy Bill would have had all ISPs liable for data retention and, more onerously, require they could identify individual subscribers in the event of complaints about "illegal" downloading. Inability to comply would have meant the ISP taking full liability for their users actions. This would have been the end of collective Internet provision in a whole range of settings (hotels, cafes, managed business premises,...) where the costs of compliance would outweigh the revenue generated.
In its late stages, the bill was changed to exempt all but the larger ISPs from its provisions. Which is equally absurd because if you don't want your data retained and do want to download the latest Hollywood yawnfest then you sign up with one of the smaller ISPs.
Having hotels police the Internet is not really different to requiring them to have an old lady sitting on each landing noting the movement of people in and out of their rooms, a common practice in Eastern Europe back in the Cold War days.
The word "libertarian" comes from 19th century libertarian socialism, which was later called anarchism. It's a part of the socialist movement that rejected Marx's state socialism for being dictatorial and oppressive. They also rejected capitalist liberalism for creating privilege, injustice, and in the end also oppression.
I honestly think we should take another look at anarchism/libertarian socialism.
There is probably more then meets the eye here. The telecom regulator (OPTA) came into action after a complaint from a telco. It is not know what the complain is about but probably something about unfair competition ("we have to register as an ISP and the hotels get a free ride"). Currently OPTA is investigating if hotel wifi is a "public electronic communicationsnetwork". If they conclude hotel wifi falls into that definition then hotels (but also Starbucks and McDonalds) have to fulfill all obligations under the Dutch Telecommunications Act. And those are making the network ready for wiretapping and data retention. And that is not limited to responding to a wiretap warrant. They'll have to adjust their network so that they can execute the wiretap according to specs in the regulation. Those specs also require security measures for the wiretap equipment, screened personnel to handle warrants, etc. In the end hotels will conclude that this is costly and complicated. That is when the telco steps in (remember, they complained to the regulator). They can offer hotspots with all wiretap and data retention obligations already implemented. Profit! Hotels can of course easily fix the problem - if open wifi turns out to fall within that definition in the law - by requiring a password for wifi access. After that it's not pubic wifi anymore.
Hotels also supply customers with electricity, water and often tv over cable network. They dispose of their customers trash and relay messages left for their customers. So they should have to register as power distributor, waterworks, cable network company, postal company and waste disposal contractor, right?
i dont think "Libertairians" think that devolving government to the local level is desirable they want a very small number of key competencies delivered by government (normaly things like defence) and I suspect that a real libertarian would do away with the individual "states" ability to do anything.
I have a Galaxy S, yesterday I had to give to my poor iPhone friend some internet by turning my Galaxy S into a wirless hub.
That would make me an ISP.
Does that mean I have to retain his emails for 8 years ?
TEA party crowd (though they are not exactly the same) favor a smaller government all the way around. Sure, there are some who, for instance, hate recreational drug use. However, as they favor less government, they don't want the government to restrict it.
What Tea Party figurehead has come out against government restrictions on drugs? Has any speaker at any Tea Party event even brought this up?
No. The Tea Partiers are only against government restrictions on rich white christian folk.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
Anarchy: oppresion by the strongest warrior or most charismatic gang leader. In other words, Libertarianism Lite.
Forget magic. Any technology distinguishable from divine power is insufficiently advanced.
Has any speaker at any Tea Party event even brought this up?
Very first hit on Google: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J-73xSqoq5s
My God, it's Full of Source!
OUTSIDE_IP=$(dig +short my.ip @outsideip.net)
I was in Paris recently and had to register with their ISP as a free WIFI user prior to being granted access to the Internet.
They claimed it was due to a recently passed law (and provided a link to the law but I chose not to follow up as it was easier to just register and move on rather than argue with anybody during my vacation).
How is a hotel different from a family sharing an internet connection? Like even when the kids and their friends sit down at the dinner table and study.
There are a couple issues stated but one of them involves sending spam. Since most spam is sent from compromised it seems to me that the purveyors of fragile operating systems need to have their feet held to the fire.
Some purveyors charge much more for a software update than they charged the OEM to install the fragile OS in the first place.
Obsolescence is not a license to extort more fees.
Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn't. Mark Twain.