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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.
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.
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.
Despite the ludicrous summary, the actual wording of that part was was:
[The European Parliament] calls on the Member States to prevent any changes to the International Telecommunication Regulations which would be harmful to the openness of the internet, net neutrality, the end-to-end principle, universal service obligations, and the participatory governance entrusted to multiple actors such as governments, supranational institutions, non-governmental organisations, large and small businesses, the technological community and internet users and consumers at large
Obviously that's not an instruction.
No, the vote signals the stance of the EP, this is important as the council is more aware of the current mood in the parliament and they need to take this into account when negotiating new rules in the council and the commission since the rules must go through the EP in a final vote anyhow. It is not just related to the specific question on hand.
"Civis Europaeus sum!"
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.
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 don't see anything wrong with arresting someone for using facebook. A few more cases pour encourager les autres and with any luck we could get the whole fucking thing shut down.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
Hm, this reminds me a little bit about non-cooperation, non-violence and peaceful resistance. These people seem too old to understand tech, and too young to understand how Ghandi obtained Indian independence.
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
I wish we had a few hundred more Ameila Andersdotters in the the European Parliament and in legislatures and governments across the world. While most politicians I have met want to do the right thing, she's one of the very few (if only one) who seems to know enough, be sharp enough and care enough to do it.
On the other hand, she does make the rest of us look bad...
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!"
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.