Slashdot Mirror
EU Wants To Enshrine Network Neutrality In Law
Bismillah writes "Following the example of the Dutch, who enacted laws supporting network neutrality, the European Union is now looking at doing the same. They are pushing for an end to the throttling and blocking of services such as Skype and Whatsapp by providers hoping to drive users to their own competing services. The EU also wants a service transparency requirement for ISPs, so people know what they're buying — like minimum speed. It'll be interesting to see how this pans out."
Looks like Europeans are caring more about their freedoms than Americans.
European Union politicians simply cannot be trusted as none have been elected by the people, so one can only wonder whose interests they serve.
That is quite a blanket statement. Members of the EU Parliament are politicians and directly elected by the people, so it is also wrong. Note that I am not saying that the European Union does not have serious democratic problems. The EU Parliament holds few of the powers usually attributed to parliaments and the EU Commission is appointed by the EU governments, so it is "buffered" against the people.
The truth may be out there, but lies are inside your head
There is Kroes and a number of others who want to keep the internet free, so it can defend democratic values and such.
And then there are those who are bought by lobbyists, and who support the ISPs as well as the music/movie industry and wish to tie it down and control it, in the name of The Economy and Profit.
It's a good thing that Neelie Kroes is quite a big shot in the EU government (the "European Commission digital agenda vice-president" is important in this matter)...
Actually not. Hosting copyrighted content and the infringement is dealt with according to law. But this does not mean that legitimate uses of bittorrent should suffer. There is nothing hypocritical about this. Just common sense.
Not everything in the EU is roses and sunshine, but this is right and I welcome the effort.
Before you start accusing the Netherlands or the EU over being overzealus about this, consider that these laws were a response to the biggest mobile internet provider in the Netherlands announcing plans to block WhatsApp access, and only allow access to it to those who payed up, after people stopped text-messaging in droves in favor of WhatsApp. This didn't come out of the blue, and I personally feel stopping this sort of thing is a good(tm) thing.
Just finished reading Neelie Kroes' speech an I really like it. Good to see that an influential politician has a long-term vision of how the internet has evolved and into which direction it should go.
You can read the speech here and also leave your comments on specific sections: http://commentneelie.eu/speech.php?sp=SPEECH/13/498
She has an exemplary track record of protecting the consumer, the common man, and hitting at corporate interests that try the opposite.
Because the already existing Dutch example was mentioned we can assume the EU rules would follow a similar path and that's again a sign for a consumer-friendly ruling.
When the ruling is consumer friendly it will be a bonus for all, not just the single company that wants to bent the rules it's own way for profit.
Although Europeans have to remain vigilant about the various restrictions set on public speech, via the Internet or any other means, there is a wide agreement among many Europeans not all needs to be allowed.
Europeans will typically sooner accept a restriction set by a democratically elected legislature than by a commercial entity.
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."