Slashdot Mirror
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."
Too bad our politicians probably won't take the hint.
Net neutrality is a great step, but on the same day a judge ordered all ISPs in the Netherlands to block the Pirate Bay. You win some you lose some.
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.
I don't see how blocking TPB is not related to net neutrality. Net neutrality can be boiled down to "treat all package the same", which includes packages to and from TPB. The mechanism of package discrimination are different (pay us more or we won't allow this package to come through vs. we won't allow this package to come thorugh), but they are both examples of package discrimination, and thus breaks net neutrality (as I see it, at least). Of course, there is an immense differnce between an ISP deciding to do it themselves versus an ISP being ordered by a court, so they aren't equivalent in all respects.
The religious nutjobs, I have no idea how they fits in.
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...
I am dutch, our politicians are taking the hint and have sold out en-mass to big media by ordering the blocking of The Pirate Bay despite wasting millions on a free internet project.
This means nothing, it is just a load of drivel enacted by politician who have spend the last 2 years one enacting and revoking a 130km/h speed increase, a ban on burka's now canceled again and the privatization off the rail roads now to be reversed and the admittance that the privatization of the post office was a mistake...
It is not like the economy is down the crapper, un-employment is rising and the Euro/EU is a stinking pile of crap or anything.
Be very careful what you wish for when looking at other countries, KPN, which set of the rush for this law is the company that wanted to charge extra for whatsapp recently announced with other mobile operators that they would introduce a limited business only roll out of LTE, just enough to satisfy the license demands so if you pay a premium, own a business and are in the right street, you can have modern tech before the end of the decade. The rest? Get stuffed, we are making to many millions of 3G still.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.