Slashdot Mirror
UK May Kill the EU's Net Neutrality Law
An anonymous reader writes "The U.K. government is planning on vetoing the E.U. legislation that enforces net neutrality under the guise of 'won't anyone think of the child pornography blocking?' again. From the article: ' It’s a surprising turn of events. Just last month, the European Parliament voted to place the principles of net neutrality into law. However, before it becomes law throughout Europe, each member country must also pass the legislation. On Thursday, the British government indicated it may veto it instead. At issue is a new provision that critics argue would restrict the British government’s “ability to block illegal material.” The amendment made it so that only a court order would allow for the banning of content, and not a legislative provision, as originally proposed, according to RT. “We do not support any proposals that mean we cannot enforce our laws, including blocking child abuse images,” a government spokesperson told BuzzFeed.'"
The British government does not want anything which has to do with the EU, especially when it comes to human rights. Lately, they opposed the European human rights declaration. Now that! They do not want to tax their financial sector, so they can pay back all the money the states had to spend to stabilize the economy. If they really do not want to be in the EU. Then fuck off and leave. If the only interest is a trade union. We can negotiate one. But please do not hold back the other nations. Thanks.
It looks like the whole UK as part of EU is causing lots of issues on both sides.
In general I'm for the union, but if a single country can keep on causing problems for majority and if that single country is genuinely displeased with common rules by which others would like to abide, then re-evaluation might be in order.
Are there any benefits that a random British person could point out, that are the result of UK being in the EU?
Cheaper cars (EU rules ban charging extra for right hand drive), and I've been able to live and work in Germany, North Holland and Belgium. Also, electrical goods come with a plug already fitted, and I can head across the channel for cheap drinks.
You are ignoring the history. The internet watch foundation (IWF)started off as an attempt to target child abuse hosted in the UK. Not even a government action. It was the police that made it clear to a group of ISPs that they would do something if child abuse image weren't removed from certain UK servers. Thus ISPs set of the IWF was set up to handle reports and forward them for take-down.
The UK's filtering system has an even odder history. Neither the government nor the police asked for it. BT decided to develop the system (cleanfeed) pretty much of their own imitative then pressure the other ISPs into setting up something similar.
None of this was sold as protecting children since it was never sold. Until the IWF blocked an image on wikipedia public awareness of their activities was pretty much nill.
No, they'll be affected.
I can move to any country in Europe with the same rights to work and government services as a native. I can travel across EU borders freely, bringing goods with me without restriction. I can shop anywhere in Europe and have it delivered without having to handle import charges or duty fees. Soon I will be able to use my mobile across Europe without paying extortionate import charges. My government is one of the most influential players in the creation of regulations for products and services for the largest trade block on the planet, ensuring we have a say in regulations that could adversely affect my employer. I can receive healthcare for free anywhere within the EU if I need to while travelling.
I'm sure there are others but those are the ones that come to mind.
Many of those ISPs are just reselling BT bandwidth. If BT throttles certain sites all these will be effected.
BT do not resell bandwidth to the Internet, it operates a packet switching network over ATM that connects you to your ISP. You ISP connects you to the Internet and might filter or throttle some sites. BT does not look inside the ATM packets that travel over its network and so does not throttle some traffic - in theory anyway.
BT also operates as an ISP which is probably where the confusion lies.
The UK government may talk about wanting to block child porn and terrorist sites and other "filth" (as they put it) and how the EU law wont let them continue to do so. What they dont talk about is that the laws that prohibit the blocking of child porn etc would ALSO prohibit the blocking of piracy-related websites like The Pirate Bay and remove a big tool that the copyright holders (in the UK at least) have been attempting to use to curb access to pirated content.
10k foot
Really? That's almost two miles of wire. No-one notices that stuff going missing? Can't the tech be fired for this indefensible waste of resources, not to mention deliberately worsening a customer's service out of petty personal spite?
Maybe I think too much of 'the system'...
Plus, if the tech didn't like that customer, surely they'd want to avoid going back on account of connection issues...
You've got to understand how these things work. There are DSA's every 30k feet (or less) in a telecom network. That's the limit of DSL so they need a DSA every 30k feet. DSL requires equipment in each DSA. Recently they've come up with DSA's that are just small unmanned boxes but anything built prior to a few years ago was a building... usually about the size of a construction trailer. They are plain, steel buildings with no address or signs. These make a natural place for the phone company to store things... like wire. You're mad at a customer? You've got Cat5 hanging on the wall... you just run it over to the spool hanging on the wall and then back to their card. Without close inspection or trying to use the wire you'd not even notice it. I saw it a few times, so it was clearly something that techs did there when they were mad.
In other cases they don't even try to hide it. After I worked for ATT I worked for a CLEC that operated inside ATT's territory. So we had colo's in AT&T's DSAs. The wires that crossed from their side to ours literally connected to big spools hanging on the cage before coming into our cage. We could clearly see what they were doing, and there was nothing we could do about it. But that wasn't hatred for the customer, that's because we weren't union and they considered us "scabs" Or at least that's what I surmised from the sign hanging next to the spool that said "scabs" on it. When we complained, they took the sign down. But not the wire. ;-) Eventually ATT got the FCC to let them raise the rates they charged CLECs to the point that we just dumped that side of the business and I moved on. There's not really a CLEC industry anymore because of the rate increases and the ILECs making it as difficult as possible.