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Netherlands first country in Europe with net neutrality

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21–30 of 66 posts

Re: Netherlands first country in Europe with net neutrality

#21
post #2

I'm proud of them, but the Internet is international - without broad acceptance, we run the risk of effectively having distinct National Internets with different rules and regulations. That scares me a bit, because the potential is still to have unhindered communications between anyone, anywhere. Net neutrality should be built into the fabric of the Internet through better technology - legislation clearly isn't worki…

"Net neutrality should be built into the fabric of the Internet through better technology - legislation clearly isn't working."

There was a lot of coverage about some kind of mesh network being developed in response to SOPA (reddit related?). Is it still going strong?

Re: Netherlands first country in Europe with net neutrality

#22
post #21
post #2

I'm proud of them, but the Internet is international - without broad acceptance, we run the risk of effectively having distinct National Internets with different rules and regulations. That scares me a bit, because the potential is still to have unhindered communications between anyone, anywhere. Net neutrality should be built into the fabric of the Internet through better technology - legislation clearly isn't worki…

"Net neutrality should be built into the fabric of the Internet through better technology - legislation clearly isn't working." There was a lot of coverage about some kind of mesh network being developed in response to SOPA (reddit related?). Is it still going strong?

You might be thinking of this http://www.reddit.com/r/darknetplan/ . I don't think it's ever gotten off the ground and is still people talking about it online.

Re: Netherlands first country in Europe with net neutrality

#23
post #2

I'm proud of them, but the Internet is international - without broad acceptance, we run the risk of effectively having distinct National Internets with different rules and regulations. That scares me a bit, because the potential is still to have unhindered communications between anyone, anywhere. Net neutrality should be built into the fabric of the Internet through better technology - legislation clearly isn't worki…

There are already "national Internets". This is just the nature of the beast, the Internet being mostly decentralized. And btw, when it comes to net neutrality, I don't think it's such a good idea, because I'm a firm believer in a free market and government regulations only hinder competition. Net neutrality may be a solution in the U.S. where monopolies are a bigger issue and where you don't have much choice in rega…

I wouldn't say the competition is very tough in the Netherlands, as there are also only a few large players (each with multiple brands/subsidiaries under them). Furthermore, a couple months ago, the dutch FTC put major telecom providers under review for making alleged cartel price agreements.

On a higher level, I am certainly for a free market, but don't dismiss government regulations purely because they can 'only hinder competition'. That is a very dogmatic statement as regulations aren't always 'bad'/hindering competition. No personal offense intended, but I always find the strength of belief in a purely free market for some people to be almost the same as how other people believe in religion, very idealistic and extreme. There are a lot of subtleties and nuances to free markets. Also, is pursuing a free market a goal in itself, or a means to an end in creating a 'good society'. In the latter case, other advantages of certain regulations should be considered as well.

Lastly, regarding the issue at hand, next to economical arguments, I think a large part of getting this regulation has comes from other motivations such as valuing equality and accessibility for all etc.

Re: Netherlands first country in Europe with net neutrality

#24
post #2

I'm proud of them, but the Internet is international - without broad acceptance, we run the risk of effectively having distinct National Internets with different rules and regulations. That scares me a bit, because the potential is still to have unhindered communications between anyone, anywhere. Net neutrality should be built into the fabric of the Internet through better technology - legislation clearly isn't worki…

There are already "national Internets". This is just the nature of the beast, the Internet being mostly decentralized. And btw, when it comes to net neutrality, I don't think it's such a good idea, because I'm a firm believer in a free market and government regulations only hinder competition. Net neutrality may be a solution in the U.S. where monopolies are a bigger issue and where you don't have much choice in rega…

I don't think it's such a good idea, because I'm a firm believer in a free market and government regulations only hinder competition. [...] Also under our law, you can always interrupt a contract, the only penalty being that you have to give back the subsidized amount for the remaining period

So much for believing in a free market...

Also you can not really expect ordinary people to care about stuff like this. They will gladly pay more for getting rid of net neutrality only realizing their mistake when it is too late.

Re: Netherlands first country in Europe with net neutrality

#27
post #2

I'm proud of them, but the Internet is international - without broad acceptance, we run the risk of effectively having distinct National Internets with different rules and regulations. That scares me a bit, because the potential is still to have unhindered communications between anyone, anywhere. Net neutrality should be built into the fabric of the Internet through better technology - legislation clearly isn't worki…

There are already "national Internets". This is just the nature of the beast, the Internet being mostly decentralized. And btw, when it comes to net neutrality, I don't think it's such a good idea, because I'm a firm believer in a free market and government regulations only hinder competition. Net neutrality may be a solution in the U.S. where monopolies are a bigger issue and where you don't have much choice in rega…

Telecoms are such a highly regulated market already (just to start with, you have to have paid a few hundred million for a bit of spectrum, if there's some available at all), that I don't see this extra regulation breaking it even more.

On the other hand, it's an essential bit of regulation to ensure that the market for services running over those networks works more like a free market. That is, I think you should favour this one ;)

Re: Netherlands first country in Europe with net neutrality

#28

Then why is BREIN allowed to force Ziggo to block access to TPB? I'm glad Dutch ISPs are not allowed to throttle my traffic to specific websites. But apparently blackholing it is still allowed.

Blackholing because the ISP made a contract with BREIN to do so is probably a net neutrality violation.

Blackholing because a judge ordered to is not. When disagreeing with the judge, give him better guidelines to work with (ie. change the law)

Re: Netherlands first country in Europe with net neutrality

#29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are already "national Internets". This is just the nature of the beast, the Internet being mostly decentralized. And btw, when it comes to net neutrality, I don't think it's such a good idea, because I'm a firm believer in a free market and government regulations only hinder competition. Net neutrality may be a solution in the U.S. where monopolies are a bigger issue and where you don't have much choice in rega…

I wouldn't say the competition is very tough in the Netherlands, as there are also only a few large players (each with multiple brands/subsidiaries under them). Furthermore, a couple months ago, the dutch FTC put major telecom providers under review for making alleged cartel price agreements. On a higher level, I am certainly for a free market, but don't dismiss government regulations purely because they can 'only hi…

I do agree with what you say and I'm sure that our current economic models are far from perfect and in fact there is no such thing as a truly free market, being more of an ideal that's as hard to pursue as true communism (probably because reality is too complex for such models).

I'm not being religions here. However, I do think that capitalism does work because of competition and in the context of capitalism, the worst that could happen in a market is the creation of a monopoly / oligopoly.

The context is important here. I'm against government regulations, because such legislation increases the chances of such monopolies and despite what many people think, few monopolies are "natural", with most of them being driven by legislation.

     > valuing equality and accessibility for all
Since you brought religion into discussion, you know how they say: "the road to hell is paved with good intentions". This is another way of saying that decisions based on good intentions often have unexpected and far-reaching consequences, that may actually have the opposite effect of what you're trying to do.

My problem with "net neutrality" proposals is that I haven't seen any unbiased and throughout analysis of its pitfalls from its proponents. Another problem I have is that the Net was never "neutral", so why is that an issue right now? And sure there are problems, but aren't we fixing the symptoms here rather than the cause?

Re: Netherlands first country in Europe with net neutrality

#30
post #25

I just love European nordic countries, their mentality is like 30 years ahead of rest of the world. Plus they have awesome metal bands.

Netherlands isn't a nordic country.

Yup and the Netherlands used to be ahead on some topic but it looks like we're going backwards atm. Referring to Wietpas and Brein-vs-piratebay
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