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European Government Agrees On Net Neutrality Rules, With Exemptions
An anonymous reader writes: The European Union's three main legislative bodies, the European Council, the European Parliment, and the European Commision, have reached an agreement on "Open Internet" rules that establish principles similar to Net Neutrality in the EU. The rules require that all internet traffic and users be treated equally, forbidding paid-for prioritisation of traffic. However, exemptions are permitted for particular "specialised services" where the service is not possible under the open network's normal conditions, provided that the customer using the service pays for the privilege. (The examples given are IPTV, teleconferencing, and telepresence surgery.) Zero-rating — exempting particular data from traffic caps — is also permitted, but will be subject to oversight. Notably, this means (if all goes as promised) the elimination of cellphone roaming fees within the EU; however, that's been promised and delayed before.
exemptions are permitted for particular "specialised services" where the service is not possible under the open network's normal conditions
Cue a bunch of ISPs playing games with the definition of "normal conditions".
No sig today...
Don't worry. Corporate is being listened to: http://blogs.fsfe.org/gerloff/...
The European Commissioner for Digital Economy and Society will surely do the right thing.
Whoever thought democracy is about the unwashed masses, tsk.
"All animals are equal, but some are more equal than others."
The quote is outrageous, until it is actually used in earnest on a real situation.
Am I the only one that reads that list of exemptions and thinks that this is... not very neutral? QOS is fine but paying for QOS on a protocol by protocol basis? Not counting paid partner's data towards datacaps? This is net neutrality in name only IMO.
That should never have been in there. People who need guaranteed bandwidth should buy point to point reserved bandwidth, not hope that QoS works for them. We need it to a LES, and we pay about triple for the reserved bandwidth. New season of Orange is the New Black or some bullshit? No problem. It's entirely possible, and for things like this, it should be the standard.
There is no such thing as "European Government".
At first glance the new net neutrality rules looks very good. The "non-blocking" rules seems to make default and opt-out ISP porn-filtering illegal. If a site/service isn't illegal in one way or another, the ISP must not block it.
Sure, the ISP can offer various content filters as an opt in solution, leaving any such decisions to the individual where such decisions belongs, but the ISP can't "opt in" everybody, nor can any member state make any such filters mandatory.
From a free speech perspective that is a huge win on top of the network traffic net-neutrality rules.
I can't see anywhere if these rules are only binding within the EU, or if it is legal to block/throttle non-illegal sites and traffic from sites outside the EU. Does anybody know?
I suspect that for conventional services that the easy to apply rule is that if a competing ISP can deliver a service without exemptions then woe to the ISP trying to claim exemption. It's smart to keep it end-user-pays to keep the com casts from ransoming the net flixes,
Even so it's hard to see how this works automatically even under U.S. Rules. Let's assume that in a neutral world there is some advantage to be had for a better stream. Would not a Netflix competitor want to gain that? And the way they can do that is by offering to pay the consumers bill for a them to get a better connection over a private network backbone.
In a related note I just had a surprising experience with HBO Now. The picture quality and startup buffering time were massively better than I'm used to from amazon or Netflix. I'm puzzled why. In doubtful that HBO has figured out some superior codec all on their own. So this means either they are getting some privileged delivery channel or that what I get from amazon or Netflix is less than the best because they are trying to save money with lower data rates or more overloaded servers.
I should mention I have only a 6mbs Comcast connection. This it's not like Netflix and amazon are trying to serve the lowest common denominator. That connection is the lowest Comcast teir.
Finally I want to dump the odious Comcast and go to DSL but I have to sign up for a year and I'm afraid DSL might suck. Any opinions?
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
A first good law is always open to abuse. Like including the GOTO statement in the C language. Turns out, it rarely gets abused.
Telesurgery *is* a fair exception and there needed to be a place for it. When two hospitals 1000 miles apart need a link with a guaranteed latency 3 ms for *your* surgery, I'll wager you'll be glad to pay a fee to the carriers involved for absolute top priority packets.
This is a step in the right direction. Hopefully one of of many.
Yes, it's not Net Neutrality.
The news's title is poorly chosen and should be changed. Right now it's just Europa propaganda. I'm a little sad to see Slashdot spread this false information.
Here is the reaction of the Quadrature du Net, a French association fighting for net freedom:
https://www.laquadrature.net/e...
Yep that's the problem. Drilling down on this one sees how slippery this greased pig is. Example. Company zflix offers consumers a swell deal: they will pay the consumers bill for anything over their current data cap up to the number of bytes they stream from zflix. This if the consumer has a low end 1gb data cap and streams 4gb from zflix then zflix pays the differential to the consumer (at some winky wink preferred bulk rate to Comcast). The net effect is the same as if Comcast had ransomed zflix but that would be barred by the net neutral ruled while the scheme above would not.
Since consumers already can purchase different data caps and different late cues and different up down symmetries none of that shenanigans is disallowed. The only thing that saves our collective asses is possible competition for ISPs.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
"Notably, this means (if all goes as promised) the elimination of cellphone roaming fees within the EU; however, that's been promised and delayed before."
It will work. First of all, Marietje Schaake rules and will not let go; she is on top of it for years now. Second of all, "Europe/Brussels" has something to prove to European citizens, that it does useful things for them. This is one topic that is highly visible to the common people, so it is hard to ignore by the powers that be.
Bert
This actually isn't very neutral....
the text started out as something to defend net neutrality, but has ended up being on roaming and not so much care about net neutrality...
Hope our government will make greater progress as the US did in that matter
How else is one going to send the information from the robot to the surgeon, if not using some kind of connection that could possibly be interrupted?
The news is roaming tariffs between member states will be gone.
Secondly, a foreigner roaming on a mobile device should get the same network service as a local, they cannot degrade it because he is roaming.
This does not say anything about net-neutrality rules. Just about neutral mobile service.
Because you can't expect your Lord and Master the King of the Belgians et al. to be satisfied with the same speed the peasants get, can you? Back to your mealy porridge and plague and witch hunts or whatever the fuck it is you Europeans do anymore.
No it doesn't. They're two different (albeit related) things that happened to be announced at the same time. One is not a consequence of the other.
Protip: learn to read before attempting to write.
At the bottom of the
You don't know the difference between an internet connection and redundant leased lines, yet felt compelled to comment?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
This may have been an opportunity for EU to make something useful for its Peoples. But given how stupidly EU leaders manage the Greece debt crisis, I am not sure EU will exist long enough to implement net neutrality.