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France's Telecom Regulator Thinks Net Neutrality Should Also Apply To Devices
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The ARCEP, France's equivalent of the FCC in the U.S., wants to go beyond telecommunications companies. While many regulatory authorities have focused on carriers and internet service providers, the French authority thinks Google, Apple, Amazon and all the big tech companies also need their own version of net neutrality. The ARCEP just published a thorough 65-page report about the devices we use every day. The report says that devices give you a portion of the internet and prevent an open internet. "With net neutrality, we spend all our time cleaning pipes, but nobody is looking at faucets," ARCEP president Sebastien Soriano told me. "Everybody assumes that the devices that we use to go online don't have a bias. But if you want to go online, you need a device just like you need a telecom company."
Now that net neutrality has been laid down in European regulation, the ARCEP has been looking at devices for the past couple of years. And it's true that you can feel you're stuck in an ecosystem once you realize you have to use Apple Music on an Apple Watch, or the Amazon Echo assumes you want to buy stuff on Amazon.com when you say "Alexa, buy me a tooth brush." Voice assistants and connected speakers are even less neutral than smartphones. Game consoles, smartwatches and connected cars all share the same issues. The ARCEP doesn't think we should go back to computers and leave our phones behind. This isn't a debate about innovation versus regulation. Regulation can also foster innovation. "This report has listed for the first time ever all the limitations you face as a smartphone user," Soriano said. "By users, we mean both consumers and developers who submit apps in the stores."
Now that net neutrality has been laid down in European regulation, the ARCEP has been looking at devices for the past couple of years. And it's true that you can feel you're stuck in an ecosystem once you realize you have to use Apple Music on an Apple Watch, or the Amazon Echo assumes you want to buy stuff on Amazon.com when you say "Alexa, buy me a tooth brush." Voice assistants and connected speakers are even less neutral than smartphones. Game consoles, smartwatches and connected cars all share the same issues. The ARCEP doesn't think we should go back to computers and leave our phones behind. This isn't a debate about innovation versus regulation. Regulation can also foster innovation. "This report has listed for the first time ever all the limitations you face as a smartphone user," Soriano said. "By users, we mean both consumers and developers who submit apps in the stores."
Everyone should have equal access to advertise to Facebook readers. All YouTube videos should be treated equally. Also all search results and ad placements should be handled equally, with no extra charge for preferred placement.
If we don’t get Media Neutrality, companies will have to pay extra to connect with the specific users they want to advertise to. It’ll be the end of the Internet!
Funny....I've never had to use Apple Music on my Apple Watch, and I listen to music at the gym nearly every morning.
Light travels faster than sound. This is why some people appear bright until you hear them speak.........
Unfortunately, these problems were created by design. Android and iOS operate under different operating systems. One has a headphone jack, the other doesn't (so brave, much wow). Game consoles have exclusives and their own game stores and even online environments (XBox Live, etc.). Even digital movie retailers have this problem, only somewhat ameliorated by efforts like Movies Anywhere. Music retailers are still locked into this because of Apple Music and other questionable music stores, file formats, and other services.
This is all BY DESIGN. It's meant to extract as much money from consumers and advertisers as possible. More stores = more dollars to pull from advertisers marketing to each store, even if it hits the same set of eyes on each store. More stores = more places the same consumer might have to purchase the EXACT SAME digital asset, just within a different walled garden or app so that it'll play on whatever device the consumer is using today.
It's the least efficient way for intellectual property to operate, yet it's "okay" because it's not in the physical world. People would be out with pitchforks if lightbulb manufacturers came out with a new socket every 5 years, and each socket only worked with one specific manufacturer's bulbs. That's exactly what the digital scene is like right now. You are stuck with one socket and one digital manufacturer, and it sucks.
Competition is great, but lack of standards and openness is terrible. It's even worse when it's exploited for commercial gain at the expense of society and the economy.
So, someone with a Razr should sue Supercell for not making Clash of Clans compatible with a 2004 non-smart phone? How do you determine what must be supported by whom? Does this mean that Halo for PS4 is on the way? Or is this just for Android/Apple?
And what about Windows Mobile. Is this to the point of forcing everything onto Window's platform? If so, this isn't an Apple/Android thing, but a massive handout to MS.
Learn to love Alaska
Regulation can also foster innovation
False.
How about emergency phone calls? Are they going to stop booting people from the cell towers to prioritise emergency calls?
"Regulation can also foster innovation."
How does that work exactly? Name one case where that is true.
What is true is that regulation invariably directs competition within a narrowly defined sphere, that protects a handful of winners that define the boundaries of that sphere (if they can call device faucets I can call technical capabilities spheres).
What appears to be "innovation" is goldfish swimming prettily to different regions of the sphere, not knowing the true expanse of what would have been possible had not the walls been there to stop them from reaching farther to begin with.
To put that tortured analogy into a more concrete example - what is the end result of "Net neutrality" applied to devices. Why look, mandates that all applications must be based on a Java VM. I wonder who wins most in that world?? Hmm.
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
When I read this at first I thought, "Hmm... interesting idea." But, my devices aren't blocking me from accessing the net. I browse with web browsers that follow the HTML and other standards so everything is available. I happen to use Safari on the MacOS and iOS but I also have many other browsers which I sometimes use for testing my web pages to see how they load. Frankly, it is really the responsibility of the content developer (webmaster) to make sure their sites are accessible to as many users as possible which is pretty simple by following the standards.
So, no, this is not needed. I call it overregulation.
Users frequently get what they deserve by buying into fads and brands rather than paying attention to and evaluating the decisions companies are making that they *CHOOSE* to buy from. There are options in many cases. Certain companies have features you might feel like you need- but you probably don't- and certainly aren't worth the cost of losing your freedom. If you want freedom and choice you don't go to Google or Apple or Microsoft. You go to companies like ThinkPenguin, Aleph Objects, and Mini Free. These companies and the people behind them are actually working to give you choice and you spit in the face of freedom every time you hand over your money to the Amazons, and the Googles, and the Apples, and the Microsofts, and the Ubers of the world. These three companies are the companies that spring to mind when I think freedom and choice and they are trying to get you [back, or I would say back, but we never really had control] control over what are suppose to be your devices and if you ignore that then you deserve what comes next. Democracy depends on freedom and when you don't stand against copyright and censorship and control you will not have a world which is desirable to live in. You will have not just a communist authoritarian system, but a system that dictates every movement you make.
Wait until he learns about programming languages...
In the mean time, all client/server communication should accept all standards: xmlrpc, json, rest, and whatever competing standard I forgot.
ID: the nose did not occur naturally, how would we wear glasses otherwise? (apologies to Voltaire)
I always thought that even something like Apple's requirement for app developers to use https instead of plain http violates net neutrality at least in spirit. The gatekeepers like Apple and Google effectively act as Internet service providers to their app developer community because there is this hard, mandatory separation inside the device between the access provider (the OS and system services) and the actual endpoint of the communications link (i.e. the application). If a real ISP, say a DSL service provider, blocked all its customers' network traffic except TLS, everybody would agree that that violates net neutrality rules. When a mobile OS provider does the same thing, the effect is quite similar.
And then you can speculate how long Apple or Google will still allow *any* non-SSL traffic, for example custom non-HTTP protocols, to pass through: A chat app that downloads ad banners via https and then sends chat messages using an unencrypted custom protocol would effectively circumvent the spirit, if not the letter, of Apple's "https only" rule. So you can bet that they're going to try and close that "loophole" too, which would then have many of the same negative side effects like stifling innovation that "real" net neutrality violations have.
Also all search results and ad placements should be handled equally
When I search for something, how fair is is that only things with names similar to the words I searched for are displayed? Maybe that Sponge Bob pajama set identifies as a router or fire extinguisher. Who are you to say only Linksys or Cisco can join in the private club of my search results, you RACIST search engine. Let every search return all results possible, and it better all be first page!
"There is more worth loving than we have strength to love." - Brian Jay Stanley
This is a fine example of the pattern of corporations hating nothing more than an actually free market, and of regulation actually making a market more free.
I would even argue, that all regulation that made markets less free was directly created by corporations themselves, to strangle their competition, while conveniently being able to blame "the government" for "regulation". But I doubt there's even a single law nowadays that isn't completely and 100% created by corporate lobbyists. Which nowadays is the same as politicians. Or TV "experts" for that matter. So one should argue that what people think of when they say "government" doesn't even exist anymore. "Corporate oligarchy" would be more correct.
And for the record: Neither do I hate the concept of organizing for the purpose of doing business. Let alone of doing business in general. I just have the hypothesis that any organization that is so far above Dunbar's number that even the number of groups goes beyond Dunbar's number, is so anonymous, that it naturally makes people unable to feel empathy or act like normal social human beings, and the system starts to naturally favor and select for psychopaths (aka "sociopaths"). Also, I think that in such a shark tank, a corporation, even if staffed with only good people, is forced to act that way, or will just get weeded out by survival of the fittest.
Besides: The entire point of a democratic government, is to give everyone an equal voice, as opposed to letting the upper class rule. Be it royalty, church, or corporations. So the government, if it actually is one, is precisely OUR voice in the matter. OUR part in the balancing of the market. And hence essential to a free market.
It is not so much regulation, as it is OUR arm in this arm wrestling of power.
Now the question is, how to acquire such an actual democratic government... Preferably not by just replacing it with a new ruling class, nor by harming anyone and hence becoming what one despises ...
Itâ(TM)s slashdot, where people barely read the summary, let alone the linked article.
And definitely not the linked article that is a 60+ page document.
Iâ(TM)m guessing itâ(TM)s been written by lawyers, because itâ(TM)s full of errors of fact, revisionist history, cherry picked biased interpretations of facts.
As an example:
Itâ(TM)s true the mobile phone platform market is dramatically less diverse than 10 years previously. Weâ(TM)ve redistributed from the majority of the worldâ(TM)s phones being Nokia, to the majority being Google, except for the top tier of the market, which is between 50% and 90% Apple , depending on where you want to draw that line in the sand. And in that top tier, Apple harvests over 50% of the total market revenue.
And they did that from a 0% base 10 years previously.
That usually mean the pre-existing market was inefficient , with high barriers to entry, or you just got invaded by aliens.
What has changed , thanks to the work Apple and Google have done, is lower the barrier to entry for software development has plummeted in cost. You used to have to pay millions of dollars for SDK access to an old school phone platform, and today itâ(TM)s at worst a few thousand to buy an appropriate development machine.
Thatâ(TM)s an elimination of an Everest sized friction point, which the article pretty much pays off.
The underlying tenant is that everything should be open and interoperable is naive in the extreme - some things can and should be, but standards do not evolve quickly, and they are really hard to nail in terms of interoperability .both of these things stifle innovation.
eg it would not surprise me if the authors are some of the numpties that backed ECMAâ(TM)s OOXML âoestandardizationâ where 2/3 of the standard boils down to âoeproduce the same output as Office 95â which is proprietary, binary and inscrutable.
Iâ(TM)m not saying there arenâ(TM)t things worthy of regulators looking at - eg BMWâ(TM)s charging a subscription service for a capability that has no ongoing cost is aggregious and should be illegal behaviour
There is stuff worthy of getting looked at, but theyâ(TM)ve drawn the line way too far to the left and tried to justify it with lies & misrepresentation.
All the big players try to make their own market places and control what is sold there. In other words, they are trying to circumvent free market and make their own sandboxes of nonfree markets.
That does not benefit us therefore it is our duty to stop it.
We could just forbid browsers and devices to send stuff like user agent strings.