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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.
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
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.
That's because rulers cannot keep pace with innovators. Indeed, last year's leaked document naively noticed "a simplified principle-based approach, in order not to inhibit innovation and to avoid technological developments making the regulation obsolete". A rather self-discrediting stance, which just add[s] confusion for freedom of communication and online innovation, according to European Digital RIghts.
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
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.
>When does regulation lead to innovation that leads to extra services.
Always, and without exception.
Anything that creates an inconvenience creates the possibility of selling people a way to avoid that inconvenience.
Here in my country for example there are several companies that make their money from offering a very simple service: standing in government office queues for you.
You need to renew your car license and don't want to spend half the day waiting to get helped - you give them the paperwork and some money, they go do it and deliver the new license disk right to your home.
Some government offices even started adding a special priority lane for them -since each staff member who gets to the front has dozens of applications to handle and that way they don't hold up the other lanes where people are coming one at a time.
Even something as simple as "slow queues" created a business opportunity which somebody innovated a service to get around.
Now how VALUABLE these services are is debatable - the broken window fallacy concept would say "not much if anything" but you weren't asking for services that would be valueable regardless of regulation and the broken window fallacy is frequently over-applied.
I'm not sure it's true that it applies in this case at all. It would only be a valid example, I think, if the purposes of the regulation were not ALSO valuable. Licensing cars for use on the road is not a proposition without merit. So making that easier on consumers (especially those whose time are particularly valuable) is not without value.
Putting food on somebody's table while you're at it is a not insignificant bonus.
My reading here is that these EU regulations were done with a degree of stupid that makes the name utterly inappropriate and they are adding no value and utterly ignored the whole POINT of having them in the first place.
So with that considered, it's definitely more in the broken window region - but make no mistake, if people get annoyed, somebody will find a way to make money out of reducing that annoyance.
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *