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The EU’s new internet rules will hurt the continent’s startups

economist.com

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Re: The EU’s new internet rules will hurt the continent’s startups

#21

Post by spacecowboy_lon »

junto wrote: post #14
skimpycompiler wrote: post #9

That's why any startup that wants business will make an Inc in the US. It's legally much simpler to do so, and leave your offices in the cheap EU. US Inc can employ your offices and at the same time have no people working in the US. US is saved by ruthless capitalism. When I see what politicians from my country voted on I'm realizing that journalists, political science majors, historians, spanish/english/lang languag…

That's why any startup that wants business will make an Inc in the US. It's legally much simpler to do so, and leave your offices in the cheap EU. US Inc can employ your offices and at the same time have no people working in the US. US is saved by ruthless capitalism. When I see what politicians from my country voted on I'm realizing that journalists, political science majors, historians, spanish/english/lang languag…

And each EU country implements the directives as it sees fit and can vary widely compare how TUPE is handled for example.

So you can expect some EU countries to play favorites with there ex PTO or Powerful Media interests.

Re: The EU’s new internet rules will hurt the continent’s startups

#22

Post by jacobush »

kuschku wrote: post #16
germanier wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the same pattern as always: If the EU does something positive, then "your countries government worked really hard for that". If it's something people think critical of, blame the evil EU and deny your involvment. An often cited example in Germany is Regulation (EC) 244/2009 which bans classical light bulbs. Always blamed on the EU. What nobody tells you, is that it was proposed by then-minister for environment G…

And, as a German: EC 244/2009 led to lots of LED manufacturers trying to push their products and competing, leading to 8W 1200 Lumen warm-white LED light bulbs being available for less than 15€ by now everywhere. In my family, before the regulation we had several light bulbs and mercury-bulbs from IKEA which were expensive, but now we switched to these LEDs and have better light at lower cost. (At $0.40 per kWh Germa…

Fences: neatly ignoring that a lot of the countries not building fences don't actually WANT fences around the EU.

Re: The EU’s new internet rules will hurt the continent’s startups

#24

Post by vvvv »

TeMPOraL wrote: post #17
germanier wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's the same pattern as always: If the EU does something positive, then "your countries government worked really hard for that". If it's something people think critical of, blame the evil EU and deny your involvment. An often cited example in Germany is Regulation (EC) 244/2009 which bans classical light bulbs. Always blamed on the EU. What nobody tells you, is that it was proposed by then-minister for environment G…

And all the bullshit that UK's tabloids like to write, than then gets regurgitated by the regular press in the mainland. Things like "straightening bananas", "reclassifying snails as fish", "declaring juice to be a juice" - every time I actually went to check the actual regulations, they made absolute, perfect sense. But the press misrepresents it to mock the EU and thus general population believes EU is just bunch o…

I feel that this is such an important topic. The EU is an easy target for blame shifting, the opponents are so much more vocal and the union itself may be under threat in not too distant future.

I think it needs better marketing and PR, and for us, individual pro-EU citizens to not allow our local politicians to divert attention from their incapabilities.

Re: The EU’s new internet rules will hurt the continent’s startups

#25

Post by skimpycompiler »

germanier wrote: post #13
skimpycompiler wrote: post #9

That's why any startup that wants business will make an Inc in the US. It's legally much simpler to do so, and leave your offices in the cheap EU. US Inc can employ your offices and at the same time have no people working in the US. US is saved by ruthless capitalism. When I see what politicians from my country voted on I'm realizing that journalists, political science majors, historians, spanish/english/lang languag…

If you operate an independent Office of a foreign company in Germany (what your suggestion boils down to) you have to abide by almost the same laws that would apply if you had been incorporated in Germany. I assume it's the same in most other countries. Only huge companies can get around this by operating in many different countries and actually having employees in each of those.

You don't have to. You have an office in Germany, you work for the office in the US. Both companies are entirely unrelated, only thing that bonds them is a contract for doing the work. You are outsourcing the stuff from US company to yourself in Germany.

What US company is selling, or doing, isn't something EU would control.

Re: The EU’s new internet rules will hurt the continent’s startups

#27

Post by KaiserPro »

The main problem with this argument is that "net neutrality" is a poorly defined term.

What it has come to symbolise in the states is the lack competition, and the ability of At&t verizon and timewarner to stifle competition.

For example: the netflix fiasco.

Comcast wanted money for peering directly with netflix.

In the UK and most of Europe that sort of dick waving is very very difficult to achieve.

Firstly because there is competition in the UK, holland, france etc., there is more than one provider of broadband in most areas (and very very tight rules about what the monopoly can charge.)

That means that if netflix is slow because a certain company is playing hardball, customers will leave. So deliberately slowing down a key legal service is going to loose you customers. Doing so in an effort to boost your own rival will also lead to successful prosecution (unlike in the states)

Secondly here in europe, peering is cheap and easy. Places like LINX, LONAP and the european equivalents means that peering centres are co-owned by all the people peering. Not a Big ISP. There are still peering agreements where money is changed hands.

Thirdly ISPs here are more than happy to have Edge caches. why? because it cuts down on the need for peak bandwidth to non local traffic. It also cuts down on bandwidth going other third-party connections(which again cost money).

Crucially, Not all traffic is treated the same. For the last 10 years QoS has been applied to virtually all domestic connections. You literally cannot have cheap broadband, with full connectivity and no traffic shaping and it be usable. To make sure that your domestic internet is usable the ISP would have to provision your full link speed in the backhaul, to all upstream networks.

ISPs may say that they don't traffic manage, but they are 100% telling porkies. In the UK, all ISPs have a fair use policy. This states that certain types of traffic will be slowed during peak hours, or that if you use too much bandwidth your whole connection will be slowed.

Traffic management is universal.

Re: The EU’s new internet rules will hurt the continent’s startups

#28

Post by tormeh »

vvvv wrote: post #24
TeMPOraL wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And all the bullshit that UK's tabloids like to write, than then gets regurgitated by the regular press in the mainland. Things like "straightening bananas", "reclassifying snails as fish", "declaring juice to be a juice" - every time I actually went to check the actual regulations, they made absolute, perfect sense. But the press misrepresents it to mock the EU and thus general population believes EU is just bunch o…

I feel that this is such an important topic. The EU is an easy target for blame shifting, the opponents are so much more vocal and the union itself may be under threat in not too distant future. I think it needs better marketing and PR, and for us, individual pro-EU citizens to not allow our local politicians to divert attention from their incapabilities.

Of course, the EU is much stronger than its PR suggests because of this: National leaders really like it, although semi-secretly, so when push comes to shove the EU is surprisingly resilient.

It does feed the perception that the EU is undemocratic, though, which may be harmful over time.

Re: The EU’s new internet rules will hurt the continent’s startups

#29

Post by s3nnyy »

Yet another reason why I live in Switzerland, which is NOT in the EU. Read my story here: "Eight reasons why I moved to Switzerland (to work in IT)": https://medium.com/@iwaninzurich/eight-reasons-why-i-moved-t... If you are interested in coming to Switzerland, just shoot me a mail.
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