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.'"

Comments

what makes illegal things illegal

[marcello_dl]

Is a blockage going to help the ultimate objective, that is to stop crime? Does it not drive criminals underground in many cases?
Oh wait, stopping crime is not the ultimate objective, control of communication is. Go ahead.

Re:what makes illegal things illegal

[Anonymous Coward]

Many countries need to do a 180 on censorship laws or anything considered "regulation" of internet content because "no blocking of legal content" is the same as "block all torrents, porn and questionable photoshops"

I think that is the wrong way to think about it.
If you really want to stop censorship you have to teach people that censorship isn't about preventing some people from speaking their opinion, it is about preventing you from hearing it.
Everyone is free to say what they want, as long as no-one is there to hear it.

When people realize that censorship exists, not to stop the nutjobs from having their ideas, but because you can't be trusted to select what thoughts to accept and what to reject we might see people thinking of censorship as something bad.

Censorship is as close as we get to thought control with current technology.

Re:what makes illegal things illegal

[currently_awake]

The way to stop child porn isn't censorship, it's to follow the smut back to its source and arrest the perverts. Anything else is just hiding the problem.

Re:UK EU more problems than solutions?

[Anonymous Coward]

EU laws limit, to some extent, the damage the British government can do.
Plus, I get to move around within Europe without worrying about work permits.

Re:Good

[Charliemopps]

My problem is that BT owns the copper line going to my house, and it is broken. It only works for voice, ADSL2 can barely scape 5Mb/sec with constant drop-outs. BT don't care, they only guarantee that the line works for voice.

In other words I have only one ISP available to me: Virgin. I am tempted to try BT Infinity since apparently they replace most of the wiring, but only if I can cancel it within a month if it proves unusable.

So, I work in the industry... but in the US. So I'm not positive how your field techs do things but I can give you the advice I'd give here.

A lot of times, it's hard for the tech to know what's up. You complain about drop-outs and slow speeds. The Tech shows up, and it tests good. Techs like to fix stuff, that's why they're in the industry. So saying they don't care likely isn't accurate. But DSL issues can be incredibly difficult to diagnose and a lot of consumers use services that are garbage and then blame it on their DSL. So they have to deal with a lot of bogus issues and likely think you're another one.

If I were you, I'd get a notebook and keep a log of when the line stops working, and what is going on when that happens. The classic example is what we here call a "Wet line" You have older twisted pair that works well when dry, but the insulation has cracked and when it rains water literally gets into the insulation and causes the inductance of the wire to change. It's not a strait short, if it were the card would fail or error. But the change in inductance will make the signal flutter all over the place. Generally this problem comes and goes with the rain. It takes a while for the water to seep in so it usually starts a few hours after the rain starts and then it takes a while for the line to dry out, so it will last a while after the rain stops. This makes it very hard for the customer to make the connection in their head. If you figure out that your outages are in fact related to the rain, then your next step is to convince the techs. Now you could just flat out say that... but your best bet is to get the tech out WHILE its raining. Even if he's a complete tool, if he plugs in his test set and it fails, he's going to have to do something about it. So figure out when it's going to rain for a few days strait and then call your trouble ticket in. Therefor increasing the likelyhood of a failure when they test.

There are plenty of other issues that are similar. So if its not the rain, just keep track. Does it happen every friday at 8pm? Maybe your DSA is congested. Is it only in the mornings? Only when its bellow freezing? etc... all this will help them diagnose the problem. Try to predict when the problem will happen based on the data you collected, then try to get the tech there when you suspect it will. If you can, schedule an appointment and show the tech your data. If you can't schedule an appointment, write the tech a letter and leave it hanging on your NID (where your telephone line enters your house)

Make it nice and friendly. Over here, I've literally seen AT&T techs install 10k foot spools of wire between a customers card and their house out of spite. So ticking off the tech is not a good idea.