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UK May Kill the EU's Net Neutrality Law

Posted by samzenpus on from the hanging-on-by-a-thread dept.

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.'"

7 of 341 comments (clear)

  1. Why are they in the EU again? by prefec2 · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    1. Re:Why are they in the EU again? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Informative

      The UK contributes more to the EU then it gets back in rebates and grants combined, so you're "they like receiving money" claim is nonsense.

    2. Re:Why are they in the EU again? by jonwil · · Score: 5, Informative

      Its not just human rights, the UK have strongly resisted joining Schengen migration laws and allowing free movement of people and goods between the UK and other EU countries.

      I think the other EU countries need to start getting together and saying to the UK that they need to either adopt ALL of the EU rules (including the Euro, Schengen, Net Neutrality, human rights etc etc) or get out of the EU completly and fend for themselves.

      But the UK will never adopt things like Schengen because it would remove customs and import checks at UK borders (including airports, seaports and the Channel Tunnel crossings) and make it almost impossible to stop the flow of cheap booze, cheap fags, illegal immigrants and all the other stuff you see on those "UK border agency" TV shows from comming into the country.

    3. Re:Why are they in the EU again? by Anne+Thwacks · · Score: 5, Informative
      The main disadvantage of joining the Euro is that it is much harder for the politicians to cook the books. The Germans have a particular detestation of cooked books, since they nearly starved to death as a consequence of a particularly bad episode. The Greeks (amongst others) are currently discovering that cooking the books results in a diet of cooked books, and its not very tasty. However, they have not yet realised that "it was the cook wot done it".

      You appear to have had a bit too much Kool-ade.

      --
      Sent from my ASR33 using ASCII
  2. Re:UK EU more problems than solutions? by 91degrees · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  3. Re:what makes illegal things illegal by geniice · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

  4. Re:Good by Alain+Williams · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.