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Netherlands Cements Net Neutrality In Law
Fluffeh writes "A while back, Dutch Telcos started to sing the 'We are losing money due to internet services!' song and floated new plans that would make consumers pay extra for data used by apps that conflicted with their own services — apps like Skype, for example. The politicians stepped in, however, and wrote laws forbidding this. Now, the legislation has finally passed through the Senate and the Netherlands is an officially Net Neutral country, the second in the world — Chile did this a while back."
And, in other news, a Dutch judge approved blocking of the piratebay, as requested by a private party Brein (dutch RIAA).
The net neutrality law actually allows blocking of sites through court orders.
-- The Internet is a too slow way of doing things, you'd never do without it.
Actually, we had cheap unlimited mobile internet up to about a year ago (E 9.99 for the internet add-on). Now that the customers have discovered the mobile web, mobile providers have doubled their rates three times (all in unison, fixed pricing anyone?) and adding ridiculously low data caps on their cheaper plans (100mbs a month, seriously??). Moreover, they tied the data allowance to the minutes in a plan, so if you want a 2gb cap, you'll also have to buy a ridiculous amount of minutes. Only last month some virtual providers started offering mix 'n match packages where you are free to select separate internet, voice and text packages.
Also, most non-mobile internet providers are formerly state-owned, so they didn't have to build their own networks. And if you want cable internet (triple play packages) there is absolutely no consumer choice as the Netherlands is divided between two large cable providers and a bunch of small ones, with their networks having NO overlap. Where you live decides your ISP. The only competition the cable companies have is ADSL through KPN (and a few virtual providers) and (in a few larger cities) Fiber.
Then again, we're not as screwed as Belgium where data caps are very normal (even on non-mobile) and competition is also absent.
I think you misunderstand the reasons for the creation of this law. It is not to safeguard us from censorship, or to protect providers from having to censor certain sites. It is to protect us consumer from those providers, preventing them from blocking certain traffic selectively and ask for a premium to have that block removed, and to prevent them from throttling bandwidth to services that compete with premium services they offer themselves. Since the providers were poised to do exactly that, this law is far from meaningless.
There is another exception, by the way: providers are still allowed to block certain sites at the request of the subscriber. There is a Dutch provider (Kliksafe) which offers pre-filtered Internet connections that are deemed safe for members of the Dutch Reformed church, whatever that means (maybe they shut off on Sunday...)
If construction was anything like programming, an incorrectly fitted lock would bring down the entire building...