Slashdot Mirror
Dutch To Introduce Net Neutrality By Law
An anonymous reader writes "Big news out of the Netherlands this week, where a government minister announced plans to guarantee network neutrality by law. If Parliament approves the amendment to Dutch telecommunications law, and it expected to do so, it would become one of the first countries in the world to legislate against Internet providers who want to charge more for using particular applications or services."
Go Net Neutrality!
The Netherlands is truly a developed country. Too bad it's so overcrowded.
I'm moving to the Netherlands!
US congress, I pray that you pay attention to this. Your constitutions actually WANT this type of legislation!
Not so sure about that. We (the Dutch) are leading in telephone taps in the world. And local regulation is already wasting gigbaytes on mandatory ISP communications monitoring. And there have been numerous plans for CP filters and what not.
So, this is just one win in the battle.
http://yro.slashdot.org/story/10/07/13/2056218/Chile-First-To-Approve-Net-Neutrality-Law
You won't like it you yank. Our beer got taste, our cheese is not just a barely edible plastic, our food isn't genetically manipulated, the soda contains real sugar, the women are the easiest in the world, the pot is so cheap just anyone can smoke it... eh... oh wait, I got it. We are SOCIALIST. You got to pay taxes here. Sales tax? 21%. (might 20% they keep on raising it recently).
That should scare of the Americans... well apart from the beer having taste etc etc. America is an interesting place to visit, just don't eat or drink anything that wasn't prepared by a first generation immigrant.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
so if an ISP is discriminating in the US (where your favorite services houses their servers) you service will still be throttled or potentially cut off.
It's pretty hard for a Dutch person to have their ISP be located in the US. Unless they use a satellite service or have a leased, undersea cable. But yes, for a US user, this DUTCH law would have no effect.
This law deals with the ISP, not the servers you deal with. Where do you get the idea that "your favorite services" are required to provide service to you? If the iTunes store or whoever wants to block your IP, they have that right. What this law, and net neutrality in general, deals with is the ISP blocking your access to certain destinations, not those destinations blocking your access to their services.
For the life of me, I have no idea why a poster upthread thought this had something to do with "copyright owners". Net neutrality has nothing to do with copyright. Zip. Nada.
This idea comes frome one of the most corporate-friendly governments the country has had in a long time. The three ruling parties are all right-wing:
1. VVD: liberal, capitalist, pro privatization of state-run companies;
2. CDA: christian democrats. They're the initiators of this law;
3. PVV: anti-muslim, anti-immigration, populist. Not really part of the government, but they promised to agree on most things (except for their anti-Muslim stance).
The opposing parties are labour, socialist, environmentalist, liberal and two small christian parties.
I can't imagine why any of those parties would vote against this law (except for one or two small ones), so I would be very, very surprised if this law won't be passed.
Telecom companies will just move to charging by bandwidth if they need to. Telecom companies should just give up fighting net neutrality here in the US too and just say "OK, fine. We'll just raise prices considerably."
You think ISPs are against net neutrality for bandwidth reasons? HA! They see hugely popular sites like YouTube, and FaceBook and see an opportunity for profit by charging more to access those sites. They also seem to think that they have a right to hold the bandwidth of sites that they have no agreements with hostage if they aren't paid. Or the ISP also operates their own cable network or VoIP service and wants to charge their competitors more. This is all about seeing a way to squeeze every drop of profit out of consumers and competitors that they can.
Legalized prostitution -and- net neutrality? Immigrating to another country has never been quite so attractive.
I just copied and pasted the first paragraph from the link in the article when submitting, but I didn't think it would be posted this way. I think some more information is required for a proper news article/discussion. Therefore, a short summary of the law in question.
For Dutch readers, here is the amendment in Dutch: https://www.bof.nl/live/wp-content/uploads/Amendement-van-het-lid-Verhoeven-c.s..pdf
Summary for English readers:
It will be forbidden by law to block or induce a bandwidth limitation on select internet IP addresses/websites/applications. Unless:
- the blocking or capping reduces congestion, but every type of service still has to be treated equally
- for the integrity or safety of the network and service of the provider
- to block unwanted communication stated that the client has explicitly asked so
- has to be done by court order
There is some more in depth information what internet access really means, and it also states that providers may block everything, providing it's for example a VoIP only subscription. It's not allowed to offer an internet subscription while blocking certain stuff, but the other way around thus still will be legal. Also it's ofcourse still allowed to give an overall bandwidth cap or monthly data cap.
All in all I think it's a pretty solid amendment. Submitted by the four left wing parties: D66, PvDA, SP and Groenlinks
I'm Dutch.
Sorry to inform you, you are wrong on much of what you state.
We do have great social services, second only to scandinavia AFAIK. ;)
Taxes are not flat but range roughly from 33% to 50% depending on income with a tax-free bottom sum.
Can't compare disposable income, but from what I've know it's pretty much equal considering in the US you have to pay for a lot of things that are paid through taxes here; the amount of money we have left at the end of the month is probably quite close. More significantly we have far less economic "outliers" around here; few billionairs and few people living in poverty.
Houses ARE more expensive and since the economic crisis, credits have become somewhat more difficult.
As for dull; life is what you make of it; if your friends prefer to live a dull live around here, they can do so
Cars are more expensive, but not by much (OTOH, fuel IS a lot more expensive than in the US).
Consumer goods aren't twice as expensive, perhaps some 10%-20% more expensive. Mostly because of corporate taxes. As I understand it, many US companies are able to pay $0 taxes due to creative accounting. Tax laws are a little less pro-corporate around here.
Internet isn't free, neither wired nor mobile. I don't quite know what you get for $80/mo with AT&T, but the most expensive mobile subscription for iPhone4 around here is roughly $55 a month.
AFAIK, most of the above is similar for the rest of the north and west European countries.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Thanks for the info. I decided to check what you said and what I thought against the "Pocket World in Figures" on my shelf. Most of what you said is much more accurate than the impressions I got from friends in the Netherlands. I don't know why I thought that internet connection was free; I found references from friends living in other countries where it was free, but not from the Netherlands. (A friend of mine in Italy waited six months between ordering and getting hooked up.)
I checked the used car prices on autotrack and found that the price is a little higher, the cars are usually lower mileage, and the taxes quite a bit higher. Insurance is higher and NL has a pretty expensive road tax. Actual quantification eludes me.
The OECD database seems to indicate that disposable income is about 80% of a comparable US citizen's disposable income. However, it seems that Americans have a greater amount to blow away due to the much lower cost of consumer items. I guess I'm saying that a comparable sum will, at this time, buy more goods in the USA than in NL, because less of it goes to consumer taxes.
Browsing past editions of the PWiF, I see that the USA has dropped quite a bit in the past few years. In 2000, we had more disposable income than Germany, Japan and GB combined. As we adopt more socialistic practices and gather more debt, I suspect that the USA economic miracles will be at an end in few years.
There is nothing like a lot of facts to blow away my favorite presuppositions...
"The mind works quicker than you think!"
...before you move over here we expect you to learn Nederlands goed ;=) (you even have to do an exam in a Dutch Embassy of your choice)
Dumb idea though. But the good news is: as long as you are higher educated and have a good income nobody gives a f... if you only talk English.
Slashdot: stuff for news, nerds that matter, matter for news, stuff that nerd
You'll also find a lot of posts complaining we Dutch are rude.
We're honest and direct. That's what we like to call it. But we're honest and direct to the point of rudeness, and sometimes that gets a bit out of hand. We're also some other things to the point of rudeness. Although some Dutchmen can be very polite and considerate. Mostly we're all different, though. The thing that anooys Dutchmen most of all is other Dutchmen, except for the ones that are somewhat like us.