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EU Passes Net Neutrality Rules, Fails To Close Loopholes (techcrunch.com)
An anonymous reader writes: European MEPs have voted to bring EU-wide net neutrality rules into effect next April. The rules most notably will abolish data roaming charges, a significant problem when country-hopping in Europe. Legislators hail the new rules as a major step forward, but critics point out that several major amendments failed to pass which would have closed serious loopholes in the rules. "Among the exceptions opposed by net neutrality supporters is one which allows providers to offer priority to 'specialized services,' providing they still treat the 'open' internet equally. Many had seen the exception as allowing providers to offer an internet fast lane to paying sites ... A different exception is aimed at situations where the limitation is not speed, but data usage. The EU's regulations allow 'zero rating,' a practice whereby certain sites or applications are not counted against data limits. That gives those sites a specific advantage when dealing with users with strict data caps such as those on mobile internet. Here's the full legislative text.
I tell ya: sometimes I can't figure out whether to H8 government for being repressive, or beg it for MOAR STUFF.
Get thee glass eyes, and, like a scurvy politician, seem to see things thou dost not.--King Lear
So, essentially, to make international calls cheaper for corporations (because frankly, what private citizen will need a lot of international calls, Europeans don't move routinely halfway across the continent other than US-Americans), we not only get more expensive basic cell coverage (because you don't expect telcos to foot the bill, do you?), we also get net neutrality trampled into the ground.
I can't help but feel betrayed.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Who cares if you offer a much faster speed for more money as long as everything else is on the same footing?
What people REALLY worry about are some services being *slowed*. Mind you, net neutrality doesn't address that really - but that's actually what people want when they claim they want Net Neutrally. The extra rules will herm no-one and allow for extra services people will enjoy.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
I have been running this regex on the whole internet since it's inception and it has never matched anything .* rules, succeeds in closing all loopholes"
".* passes
... The extra rules will herm no-one and allow for extra services people will enjoy.
When does regulation lead to innovation that leads to extra services.
Do you really think it's a coincidence that the internet and then cell phones and then smart phones all appeared in a few short years WITHOUT regulation? And that the only innovation from a century of REGULATED phone service was the replacement of operators with dial phones and then touch-tone phones?
Can you really imagine smart phones developing if cell carriers had been under any net neutrality-like rules? What rule would apply to streaming video? What rule would apply to SMS texts? Since none of those existed, they're be no rule to allow them to be used.
Rules and regulations de facto become barriers to entry into a market, thus protecting incumbents.
It's called regulatory capture:
Regulatory capture is a form of political corruption that occurs when a regulatory agency, created to act in the public interest, instead advances the commercial or political concerns of special interest groups that dominate the industry or sector it is charged with regulating.[1] Regulatory capture is a form of government failure; it creates an opening for firms or political groups to behave in ways injurious to the public (e.g., producing negative externalities). The agencies are called "captured agencies".
Legal scholars have pointed to the possibility that federal agencies such as the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) had been captured by media conglomerates. Peter Schuck of Yale Law School has argued that the FCC is subject to capture by the media industries' leaders and therefore reinforce the operation of corporate cartels in a form of "corporate socialism" that serves to "regressively tax consumers, impoverish small firms, inhibit new entry, stifle innovation, and diminish consumer choice".[35] The FCC selectively granted communications licenses to some radio and television stations in a process that excludes other citizens and little stations from having access to the public.
Yay "net neutrality".
Sorry, the evidence does not support trusting government to solve these kinds of issues.
It just doesn't. All the wishful believing (and it ISN'T "thinking") in the universe isn't going to change that.
Maybe, but not as much as it sucks to be you, since you're obviously a complete retard.
I embrace the Bigger Digger Trigger.
FTFA
http://techcrunch.com/2015/10/27/ep-telecoms-vote/
The devil, as ever, is in the detail.
(16) There is demand on the part of providers of content, applications and services to be able to provide electronic communication services other than internet access services, for which specific levels of quality, that are not assured by internet access services, are necessary.
Do you even English? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Run-on_sentence
Such specific levels of quality are, for instance, required by some services responding to a public interest or by some new machine-to-machine communications services.
Do you even English? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Run-on_sentence
Providers of electronic communications to the public, including providers of internet access services, and providers of content, applications and services should therefore be free to offer services which are not internet access services and which are optimised for specific content, applications or services, or a combination thereof, where the optimisation is necessary in order to meet the requirements of the content, applications or services for a specific level of quality.
Do you even English. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Run-on_sentence
Fucking A. Fucking F.
National regulatory authorities should verify whether and to what extent such optimisation is objectively necessary to ensure one or more specific and key features of the content, applications or services and to enable a corresponding quality assurance to be given to end-users, rather than simply granting general priority over comparable content, applications or services available via the internet access service and thereby circumventing the provisions regarding traffic management measures applicable to the internet access services.
Get 100% fucked.
This reads like the Microsoft "click to accept" agreement Windows users supposedly all read when they accept the Windows 10 spyware install.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iyp9fh-u4w8
In the EU at least one country already had net neutrality: The Netherlands. It was adopted in a few weeks after all major mobile providers decided to ask money based on what service you use instead of data or bandwidth.
The thing is, this legislation overrides ours. Which means we will actually lose net neutrality.
Really bad, because the current law had no loopholes. And no problems, you still get great speeds for very little money, and everyone who wants to create a new service has a guarantee the providers will treat them fairly.
Let's hope the ISPs made themselves so unpopular last time they tried letting people pay extra if they wanted to use facebook or WhatsApp that they will not try again.
These posts are a lot funnier if you just assume the poster is black.
Seeing as we're off topic... I'd not say the problem is "niggers" (of which I'm partially one - if you're using the black African as the definition) but the problem is poverty, corruption, abuse from the wealthy, and generally people. I don't actually think the problem is, as you so eloquently put it, niggers. I think the problem is people - that's the pattern I'm seeing as well as the other metrics.
As an aside: Spell check is racist! It gives me the red squiggly line of defeat when I type Obama but it has nary a problem when I type nigger.
As another interesting aside, well, interesting to me... My black heritage comes from the black people who fought on the side of the Brits during the Revolution. After the war they insisted they be allowed to take the blacks with them because they'd promised them freedom and the King's promise was kind of, sort of, important at that time. They first went to Haiti but that was short term. They were then shipped to Nova Scotia. That's where my Micmac comes from as they were all encouraged to rut like rabbits. Then, my great grandmother (a Hawksworth/Turner) moved to Massachusetts and married her a mixed race person. This led to my father who was quite a mutt by that point who married my Irish mother. This was quite a stink during those days. Especially since my mother was a Prescott. (Yes, same family.) Anyhow, those two fine, upstanding, people built me out of spare parts.
I mean, well, if we're going to go off-topic about race we might as well go all the way.
I say that to mention, again, that I'm pretty open and curious about racial differences be they cultural or natural. I've given this some thought - I've even used some of that stuff they call logic (newfangled stuff, you might not have heard of it) and I've pretty much concluded that people suck regardless of skin color. They only get worse when you throw in a lack of education, financial growth, abuse, and mistreatment. Imagine that?
See, you probably weren't expecting a semi-serious reply. However, there you have it. Yes, yes I do need sleep. When the questionnaire asks what my race is, as some are wont to do, I select the "other" option and write in "human."
"So long and thanks for all the fish."
nice for article
Internet regulation is only needed when there's a monopoly. Otherwise we can rely on competition to provide a service that people want. Each European country has its own telecoms system, which may or may not hold a monopoly. No company or cartel has control over Europe though.
Some countries might. But there's the thing; just because Europe didn't pass the full regulations, doesn't mean the individual member states can't.
Hey, I've been running it too and I just got a hit!
Oh wait...
Nevermind...
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
And much of that is the obvious intent of the law.
Moreover, charging for special access would be extortion.
This does not, of course, stop judges being arseholes ignorant of what the internet is, but the law doesn't cover every eventuality, and would be pointless to try, since lawyers will still be paid millions to find out ways to misinterpret the law in their clients' favour.
The EU directives are NOT your law. The directives are to be implemented by your lawmakers into law.
Given you already have just such a law, even going further, your current law is already in agreement with the EU directive and your law will not have to change.
What WILL have to change is the law of your neighbours, which will make your countrymen living on their border better protected against scamming unexpected bills.
..except non-EU contries which still can charge exorbitant fees.
Example: Switzerland which has many laws aligned as if it were EU member. Not the one for roaming though. I guess it's Swisscom lobbying the government, because these things bring them a lot of profit (in particular because it's also a popular tourist destination).