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EU Passes Resolution Against ITU Asserting Control Over Internet
An anonymous reader writes "Today, the European Parliament passed a resolution that condemns the upcoming attempt from the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) to assert control over the Internet, and instructed its 27 Member States to act accordingly. This follows an attempt from the ITU to assert itself as the governing body and control the Internet. From the article: 'The resolution, which was passed with a large majority, included Members of European Parliament (MEPs) from all major party groups, and the Pirate Party’s Amelia Andersdotter had been playing a central role in its drafting, together with MEPs Marietje Schaake and Judith Sargentini from the Netherlands, Sabine Verheyen and Petra Kammerevert from Germany, Ivailo Kalfin from Bulgaria, and Catherine Trautmann from France.'"
Despite all the failing and shortcomings, mother Europe still delivers.
we had Andersdotters here in India. Young politicians here are 40+, most are 60+ who can't understand tech if their lives depended on it. hence the facebook-post-arrests seen recently.
I'm pretty sure that having the EU tell you "STFU and leave it to the yanks" is one of the harsher put-downs that a multinational treaty organization can suffer...
But as with all things of this nature, I can't help but wonder where the catch is - sensible sounding legislation always comes back to bite us doesn't it?
Please consider this account deleted, I just can't be bothered with the spam anymore.
The anti-innovation, anti-competition strategy of the telcos must be stopped. The only thing as dysfunctional was the old USSR planned-economy model.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Today, the European Parliament passed a resolution that condemns the upcoming attempt from the International Telecommunications Union (ITU) to assert control over the Internet, and instructed its 27 Member States to act accordingly
The EU Parliament can instruct whatever it likes but it has no power over the member states. It might as well instruct all other world governments to agree as well, instruct the ITU to change track and instruct the weather to improve.
The most an instruction from the EU parliament to nationals governments can achieve is to raise enough outrage from nationalists that they take the opposite stand. In practice though nobody's likely to do more than roll their eyes at them.
Seriously, between the shittiness that is our national government and the shittiness that is the European Commission (fairly well demonstrated by having put my countryman Barroso in "charge"), the European Parliament seems like the only sane institution around here.
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Despite the US still being conservative compared to the progessive world, it is definetly far more liberal than nations such as Saudi Arabia where everyone citizen has to belong to the state sanctioned religion and women barely get by with showing their faces in public. Sure the current situation isn't ideal, but the ITU's solution is far worse.
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
I have a naive and maybe stoopid question : If ITU wants to grab the authority that IANA has now, how the hell are they going to enforce it ?
Root servers are not going to magically change overnight, and people in the US and Europe are certainly not going to switch to whatever the ITU decides, just because the ITU decides.
It would be nice for the ITU to remember that the Internet works because everybody agrees with it. If people start to disagree, it will only lead to a split in the internet, and I'm pretty sure the ITU fork will not be the winner, given the history of the slug.
I guess compliments always get wrongly interpreted. Totally reminds me of Anglo - Dutch translation guide.
Support Eachother, Copy Dutch Property!
It was probably more of a (positive) comment on the number of women who seem to be involved in the issue / in the EU Parliament.
Found an interesting document from my parliament (warning - PDF): http://www.parliament.uk/briefing-papers/SN01250.pdf. From this it seems that 35% of the EU Parliament are women. (The corresponding percentage for the UK is 22%. No idea what it is for the US after the recent elections, but according to the document in 2010 it was 17%).
Still could be better, of course. Only two parliament has either more women than men or the same number - Rwanda and Andorra! Given the figures globally I can't think that a positive observation on the role women are playing in any parliament can be considered misogynistic.
Alternatively, was the work you were looking for misandristic?
You never know what is enough unless you know what is more than enough. - Blake
Why would it matter at all what gender a member of parliament is?
The gender of an *individual* member of parliament shouldn't matter, but the *aggregate* number of women who are influential in some political process that is *not* specifically a "woman's issue" matters if you are keeping score on political equality of the sexes.
The point where women routinely take leadership roles on issues that aren't "just women's issues" is a significant milestone on the path to political equality. We weren't there twenty years ago, when it wouldn't raise any eyebrows to have an all male committee making decisions about things like women's health care. Democracy works better when there's political equality, especially (but not just) for the people who used to be grasping the short end of the stick.
Post may contain irony: discontinue use if experiencing mood swings, nausea or elevated blood pressure.
To be frank, after having travelled with railways in many places. I must say that the Dutch railways are probably the best working ones on the entire continent (except for when it is snowing).
"Civis Europaeus sum!"
'a VVD whore who sells voters to big business everytime she gets the chance'
[citation needed]
Looks like someone didn't vote for one of the current government coalition parties and is now grumpy!
it was this whore
Starting with a stupid sexist accusation like that makes me and many other people ignore the rest of your comment. Perhaps you have a valid point about her behaviour in office, but if you're unable to make it without a completely unjustified sexual slur, then you don't deserve to be heard.
Grow the fuck up.
The Dutch railroads are among the best in the world, with huge double-decker passenger trains between major cities with the frequency that some large cities don't even get on their metro lines. The cost of a ticket on Dutch trains is significantly lower than on the French or UK trains, and they are easier to get (from the machines), without the need of a stupid reservation. Even if a train is delayed, this delay is mostly measured in mere minutes. Only real accidents or failures will result on longer delays. And snow. Snow f***s everything up, because the Dutch don't invest enough to avoid that. But this is a sensible choice, not a failure. It just happens that it snowed in the last 2 years.
I never understand why the Dutch complain so much about their train system. I guess this is just because they never take the trains abroad.
The VVD may be wrong on many things, but they haven't messed up the trains.
I like her about a million times better as Eurocommissioner than as a minister. She's seriously doing some really good stuff now, and is the only Eurocommissioner that I regularly hear something positive from.
Too bad they're in the process of completely fucking up the ticket system. I used to be a fan of public transportation, but they're making it impossible for me now.
You haven't been to the Netherlands recently. NS should stand for "No Show"!
In my experience, while traveling between FR, DE, BE, LX, CH, AT and the NL, once a train (including a high speed train) crosses the Dutch border it's instantly delayed. Should I count the part where they are changing the trains to between NL and BE to "high-speed" trains, even if they are traveling at normal speed, is just an excuse for making the prices 3-4 times higher and with mandatory reservations (unless you buy the tickets from Belgium). Should I count the times that I've wasted on their platforms mostly in bad weather.
The Dutch are good at a lot of things. Punctuality hasn't been one of them in a long time, whether you're talking about KLM, KPN (especially Getronics), NS they have completely forgotten what punctual means. Furthermore, they have replaced their BS-free attitude to a disgusting "politically correct/tongue up your arse" attitude, where, in order not to loose your business they tell you what you want to hear instead of the ugly truth. Fortunately, the Germans and the French are still frank enough.
UNIX was not designed to stop you from doing stupid things, because that would also stop you from doing clever ones.