EU May Not Unify Its Data Protection Rules After All

jfruh writes: One of the EU's selling points is that it provides a single regulatory apparatus for the entire European market — but this isn't the case for everything. Data protection laws, for instance, provide a confusing thicket of different regulations across the continent, and now, much to the frustration of large American Internet companies, it seems that a plan to consolidate these rules under a single EU agency are coming apart. In other EU news, reader Presto Vivace points out that German Chancellor Angel Merkel has spoken out against net neutrality. She said, "An innovation-friendly internet means that there is a guaranteed reliability for special services. These can only develop when predictable quality standards are available."

Comments

Understandable given the nature of the EU

[Registered Coward v2]

The EU is very much a group of independent countries that have agreed to work together on many issues but have not been willing to give up sovereignty to the point where an EU law has supremacy over local laws. A a result, EU rules tend to be a lowest common denominator with individual countries adding on their own requirements. That's not unexpected since the EU is not a country like say the US where there is a federal system that has sway over the individual states, district and territories that make up the US; where there is agreement the EU works well and but individual countries still have the real power in the union and there still is a very distinct nationalism at play in the political and economic dynamics. That's not necessarily better or worse than other models but just a reflection of how the EU came into being.

Re:Special service available!=net neutrality viola

[gcnaddict]

Everyone who doesn't have a personal stake in the game is naturally inclined to act recklessly. See the decade-ly cycles of recession and depression economies slip into when markets (housing, finance, oil, whatever) forget that someone else's money is still of value and not to be treated with total abandon.

The decisionmakers at ISPs don't have a piece of skin in this fight because they have special classes of access just as a benefit of being where they are within their companies, and they stand to make more personally from making profit-minded decisions. For these reasons, there's very little personal incentive to uphold the moral high ground because the decisions don't have an immediate negative impact on them. They might feel it once they retire and/or if they go to a different industry, but that's after they've made their profit, and it's long after their short-term decisionmaking window.

It's just human nature. We haven't had this trait bred out, and it's doubtful we as a species ever will. The only way to counter short-sighted thinking is by shortening the mental leap between short-sighted decisions and long-term consequences, which is what everyone fighting for net neutrality is trying to demonstrate right now by citing live examples of where a lack of enforcement has already gone wrong (T-Mobile Unlimited Music, Netflix v. Comcast/VZ, etc.)

Thanks Momma Merkel!

[Rhywden]

Let's not forget this statement of Momma Merkel comes from the same woman who stated that the "Internet is virgin territory" merely a year ago.

She simply does not understand internet issues and thus promptly falls back on an industry-friendly position.