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Sir Tim Berners-Lee Makes a Last-Minute Plea To Save Net Neutrality in Europe (theverge.com)
An anonymous reader shares a report on The Verge: Sir Tim Berners-Lee, the man who created the world wide web, is calling on regulators in Europe to protect net neutrality and "save the open internet." In a letter released this week, Berners-Lee, Stanford law professor Barbara van Schewick, and Harvard law professor Larry Lessig urged European regulators to implement guidelines that would close loopholes in net neutrality legislation that the European Parliament approved in October 2015. They also called on internet users to voice their opposition online, before the public consultation period on the guidelines ends on July 18th. "Network neutrality for hundreds of millions of Europeans is within our grasp," the letter reads. "Securing this is essential to preserve the open Internet as a driver for economic growth and social progress. But the public needs to tell regulators now to strengthen safeguards, and not cave in to telecommunications carriers' manipulative tactics."
I regard EME much less as loss than as workaround needed to abandon proprietary plugins like adobe flash. Yes, EME is evil, but flash is even more evil.
One of these guys repeated lies, and one of them expressed an opinion. I'm glad to see that you equate these things.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
Well we've already lost an open web due to Encrypted Media Extensions. Do we even need net neutrality any more?
Completely different issues altogether. I can personally choose not to visit a website that uses EME, just like I personally choose not to visit a website that condones Holocaust denial and the like. If net neutrality dies, my ISP can deny me the bandwidth necessary to go to certain websites.
Here's an analogy that might help. Imagine it's about 1950 or so. EME is like a locked vending box for a newspaper stack, you have to put a quarter in the slot to be able to read a copy. Net neutrality is like a policeman that watches to make sure that some mafioso doesn't come burn all of the newspapers except for the one that pays them protection money.
Many ISPs are publicly subsidized in order to roll out Internet access to rural areas. Why should they have gotten so much of the tax payer's money in order to screw them over with censorship and racketeering?
Most people don't want "neutrality", they want priority...
Net neutrality means dumb pipe. If your bits aren't getting through fast enough, you get a fatter pipe, not restrict other peoples' traffic.
“He’s not deformed, he’s just drunk!”
Both of these guys used their positions of authority to advance terrible policy in contradiction to their claimed ideals.
Hypocrisy has many faces. Don't be an apologist for hypocrisy just because it doesn't look identical to another case of hypocrisy.
Mod up please
Even in the cities ISPs use public right of way for their access and equipment. If they had to buy/lease that land it would cost them many billions. Once companies start paying for the COMPLETE cost of doing business we won't ask them for anything.
The standard still requires "individual actors" in order to be implemented: The actual DRM is done in separate modules.
The laws preventing local ISPs/community ISP's and competition are rampant in the US. Therefore competition is stymied from the onset. Remove those barriers to competition and then what you are asking is valid.
False question. The question isn't whether bureaucrats should be allowed to shape traffic, the question is whether ANYONE but the two endpoints should be allowed to do so. Net Neutrality means exactly that NOBODY meddles with the flow of bits, which includes that ISPs are just transporters of bits and not arbitrators on whose bits go where with what priority.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
Whether your note gets heeded by EU parliamentarians is mostly dependent on how many other notes you attached to it, and what denomination those notes have.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
> Completely different issues altogether. I can personally choose not to visit a website that uses EME
Just like you can avoid public surveillance cameras by choosing not to leave your house.
Sure today EME is not widely deployed. But that's only because its not even a finished standard. It can and will be used far beyond Berners-Lee's imagination. Just like the DMCA is now regularly used to censor speech that offends powerful people and corps. It isn't just about having some restricted content, its about restructuring the web such that restricted content is at its core.
It may be greatly exaggerated but ranting about ignorant fundamentalists, regardless of "flavor of their nuttiness" is hardly racist. And for what it's worth, Christian fundamentalists aren't any better; they're just as gullible re: believing delusional horseshit and just as capable of doing tremendous evil in the name of their "god."
Another technician's response.
Again it is not about the details of the implementation.
It is about the imprimatur of legitimacy given to the mindset.
We've gone from the principle of openness at the very core of the web to a principle of restriction and control. Its doubly worse that people writing the EME standard have specifically worded it to slot into laws like the DMCA to maximize rigid legal interpretation so that tinkering and innovation will be stopped before it even gets started.
Flash with 98% adoption at one point was hardly a personal corner of the web.
"No man's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session." -- Judge Gideon J. Tucker
Maybe Tim is a pragmatist. Maybe Zontar is, too.
Il n'y a pas de Planet B.
It must suck, now that every intelligent person is just ignoring your bleats.
That's racist...
Ideologies are exactly the things that are not bigotry to judge by. Sorry about your world view, it's broken.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
They almost all use easements over private land. Same as many roads. The ISPs and power companies do pay to maintain the posts and wires.
You (the homeowner) don't get paid for easements, the original developer didn't ether. They are there because otherwise you couldn't get power to your house. It's in your self interest to allow the easements.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
QoS is allowed under every net neutrality law I'm aware of.
And it should be. VOIP packets are higher priority than torrents etc.
The problem is net neutrality has tricky implementation details. Which are now under regulatory capture.
Increasing competition would have been a much better way to fix this. Now we've got the usual suspects fucking up laws on NN.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
EU does not care about elections (Remember referendums in France, Netherland, Ireland, Greece?). Mr Junker even openly said there was no democratic alternative to EU treaties.
So why EU would care about public opinion from a public consultation? Be sure they will discard anything they did not want to hear.
It is because we have things like EME that net neutrality is important.
EME in itself is not bad, it is just another DRM system that can be used by content providers. Those who don't want to use it don't have to use it, and this is where net neutrality comes in : it makes sure that content providers who chose not to use it get their fair share of bandwidth.
Sorry, but what "capital" are you talking about?
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.