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."

Comments

Not fully correct

[santax]

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.

Re:Not fully correct

[mcrbids]

This is probably not likely to lead to a more widespread adoption of free WiFi services in hotels.

Now, since when is it in the core competence of a hotel to provide IT services?

Never.

Sure, have it available, provide it as a service to guests, but the hotels themselves don't offer the service, they outsource. Just like they do with the water, telephones, power, and everything else. If you actually LOOK at the default home page that your average hotel provides, you'll find a logo in the corner someplace indicating who the real service provider is. Hint: it's never the hotel unless it's some ratty shathole where the owner tries to save a few bucks by buying a couple of routers at the local Best Buy and sneaking a consumer DSL line.

In any real sense, this will have almost no effect on hotels with 3 or more stars. It might have some impact on the cheap independents.

Re:Not fully correct

[MichaelSmith]

Why do we keep electing these fools?

Because people who are not fools have better things to do with their time.

Re:Not fully correct

[YeeHaW_Jelte]

Parent is correct, article summary is very imprecise ... slow news day?

Someone, not mentioned explicitely in the article, complained to the OPTA, saying that hotels should be considered ISPs. OPTA considered the wording of the laws they are enforcing and said ' yeah, they might be right ' and has now summoned a few hotels to register as ISP's, to see where this leads.

Obviously, the law is poorly worded and this is a side effect nobody foresaw or intended. This will be probably be fixed, if even necessary.

Please stop with all the efforts to make every little hickup in the law system armaggedon for freedom, please. It's cheap and sensationalist.

Retention of E-mail headers?

[Kaz Kylheku]

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.

Re:Free country?

[Barryke]

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.

Timothy this title is misleading.

[Barryke]

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.

Re:Free country?

[Carewolf]

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.