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Leaked Documents Show EU Council Presidency Wants To Impair Net Neutrality
NotInHere writes: The advocacy group "European Digital Rights" (EDRi) reports on leaked documents proposed by the Presidency of the council of the EU (currently held by Italy), which plans to remove vital parts from the telecommunications package that introduced net neutrality. The changes include removing the definition of "net neutrality" and replacing it with a "reference to the objective of net neutrality," which EDRi says will impair any ability to enforce it.
Also, the proposed changes would allow ISPs to "block, slow down, alter, degrade or discriminate" traffic in order to meet "obligations under a contract with an end-user to deliver a service requiring a specific level of quality to that end-user." EDRi writes that "[w]ith all of the talk of the need for a single digital market in Europe, we would have new barriers and new monopolies."
The council of the EU is one of its two legislative chambers. The EU parliament can now object or propose further changes to prevent the modified telecommunications package from passing.
Also, the proposed changes would allow ISPs to "block, slow down, alter, degrade or discriminate" traffic in order to meet "obligations under a contract with an end-user to deliver a service requiring a specific level of quality to that end-user." EDRi writes that "[w]ith all of the talk of the need for a single digital market in Europe, we would have new barriers and new monopolies."
The council of the EU is one of its two legislative chambers. The EU parliament can now object or propose further changes to prevent the modified telecommunications package from passing.
Yet another asshole politician hellbent on fucking over people (in general) and probably enriching himself in the process.
Chas - The one, the only.
THANK GOD!!!
Not to miss your obvious sarcasm, but it's a bit like saying "get your own road".
Infrastructure is complicated, because you aren't going to be able to make your own road going from A to B without crossing property owned by the existing A to B magnate, unless you're willing to put up with some really inefficient routes. And you've almost doubled the real cost of roadways(i.e. how much initial and annual cost the roads require).
Contrary to the neo-liberal perspective, some problems just can't be hammered out by competition.
"Jockey of Norfolk, be not so bold. For Dickon thy master is bought and sold." -- Shakespeare. Seriously, are there any politicians left who are NOT corrupt?
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
In some ways, I believe that the state of communications, globally, has already become monitored/recorded by governmental intervention, after what I witnessed through the federal system (See My Bio). The idea of bringing this down to the ISP level seems to be irrelevant with respect to what already exists. However, the purpose of purchasing access to the internet is to have a dedicated stream that is not capped. Those countries that allow this will fall behind the others.
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artlu.net
Coming soon from ISPs: Legalese buried deep in your contract with them that essentially states "We [the ISP] have the contractual obligation to muck with any website as we see fit whenever we want to do so."
They're contractually obligated to slow down your Netflix speeds because they really wanted to and the contract means they are now obligated to slow down Netflix.
My sci-fi novel, Ghost Thief, is now available from Amazon.com.
And owners of networks impair competition across those networks.
If you're anti-net-neutrality, then you're pro-monopoly-abuse of the existing free market of services accessible over the internet.
Why should we care about the owners of the network?
The internet is fundamentally a natural monopoly.
As such it should absolutely be treated as such which means utilty type regulations.
The owners aren't the ones you should be concerned, rather it's the users and consumers.
It's really simple: If you are against Net Neutrality, you are against the internet that you currently enjoy in its present state.
Net Neutrality is about preserving and protecting the current ideal status quo that companies at least pay lip service to.
Blocking Net Neutrality is about fundamentally changing the internet as you know it, to turn it into nothing more than walled garden ala AOL and Compuserve of old, where your "internet" is little more than a slightly fancier cable channel with predetermined content. Such a thing fundamentally kills and and restricts the marketplace and exchange of ideas, of thoughts, of communication, of trade and economic possiblity that current exists, and ensures that all potential profits will go to the established ISPs, and no unapproved upstarts shall be allowed to exist.
The internet is possibly one of the greatest achievements in human history in terms of communication. It fosters communication and free speech on a scale never before known by humanity. Across borders, across cultures, across the globe, and (hopeuflly, potentially) across the stars. That openness, that freedom, must be protected.
And protecting means Net Neutrality.
If you oppose NN you advocating for the destruction of one of humanity's greatest triumphs, and one of the biggest liberators of the little guy.
The guy who said the election was rigged won the presidency with the second-most votes.
No, VoIP 911 calls shouldn't get priority. You know that "all circuits are busy" message that you sometimes get on POTS systems? That shows that resources are not infinite on it. Your POTS 911 call gets no more priority than a tween girls' inane conversation. And yet society hasn't burned down.
It can and hopefully will be the same for VoIP 911 calls over a neutral Internet. In fact it will be better - the call metadata is small enough that it should get through regardless, so emergency services will know you tried to call and therefore need some kind of help and to call you back. That won't happen right now if there are too many tween girls on the phone and you try to call 911.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
If you want net neutrality the only way to do it is to crowd source the Internet, the connectivity between the oceans cannot be done by one individual or a small community, but what if the community crowdsource and fund a public ISP owned and governed the same way it's currently done with the open source projects. The Open Internet Alliance Foundation which will exist solely from what each person is willing to give away and will not exist for profit and which will allow for many profesisonals to contribute with their skills and knowledge. Smaller communities and neighbourhoods or even cities can have their own infrastructure or even several for redundancy. The end of greedy ISPs and controlling governments. Didn't we have enough already they turned the entire planet into one gigantic prison.
"Why do I get the feeling that'll work just about as well as, "From each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs." Probably because you aren't approaching this issue from an even remotely serious technical perspective.
Let's say that emergency VOIP is a big enough concern to warrant an exception. Why not first establish a general rule that only allows for emergency VOIP calls to be prioritized, and that any other prioritization results in the CEO of the ISP being punched in the throat?
This is my signature. There are many like it, but this one is mine.
There should be no VOIP 911 calls, for just about the same reason as nuclear missile launch commands should not be transmitted over the Internet.
Car analogy: You shouldn't use Microsoft Windows to control the electronic braking system of your car.
Is that what we're currently getting? Then hell yes.
Are you saying 1000 spam and 100 worthwhile things is worse than 100* spam and 10 worthwhile things?
*because no filtering will ever be perfect
Unity? Screw that: XFCE. Slashdot Beta? Screw that: SoylentNews. Australis? Screw that: Pale Moon. UX developers DIAF
I am paying the toll to get on this shinny 6 lane highway only to discover that the exit to New York city is back up for miles because the city refuses to pay them for a large exit. What do I care how many lanes the highway has or how fast it can get me to Jersey city, what I am paying for is to get to my destination the fastest possible.
There's two flavors of net neutrality. There's the dumb network flavor in which networking devices receive and forward packets in a FIFO manner. Then there's the smart network flavor in which networking devices receive and forward packets based on what grouping and type they fall under so that QoS can be preserved for latency sensitive applications. The Internet, in the US, is mostly operating under a combination of both dumb and smart networks at this time and lot of the issues that people "claim" are violating the principles of net neutrality are not. There's been some minor filtering going on related to protocols that are known to be frequently used for illegal purposes but the majority of issues at this time are related to bandwidth which has nothing to do with net neutrality.
"Lack of speed can be overcome. In the worst case by patience." --Znork
EU Council presidency has probably no opinion on the matter. Like every other members of the council they probably do not know precisely what this is about. They are just following the advice of a random lobbyist that told them it would create jobs and improve economy.
Strawman much? Network neutrality isn't about treating every packet equally. It's about requiring routing policies which are neutral as to the provenance of a packet: not allowing any third party to derive competitive advantage from the routing policy. It's fine to drop DDOSes, prioritize VoIP, delay BitTorrent, as long as this is done without regard for whose traffic it is: prioritizing ACME's VoIP traffic over Yododyne's is not fine. It isn't necessary to frame network neutrality as a free speech issue: it's more to do with antitrust law, IMO. The mere fact that a botnet wishes to send me packets doesn't mean that I am required to receive them. It is fine for a network operator to drop malicious traffic, either upon the recipient's request, or on its own initiative.