Earlier quoted context omitted.
> If there is 'a lot of competition' - it makes cartel-like or colluding behaviour among carriers difficult, thereby facilitating de-facto net-neutrality. I don't see the point. If Google decides to pay to providers to speed up Google content. How having more carries solves the problem? Is not even worse as then Google will have more power to bring carriers to its side? What will happen with little content providers?…
> If Google decides to pay to providers to speed up Google content. The Internet doesn't work that way. If Google wants their services to work better at particular ISP they pay for bigger pipes to the ISP and/or install content caches at the ISP and everybody is better off.
Victory for Net Neutrality in Europe
171–180 of 181 posts
Re: Victory for Net Neutrality in Europe
#172Earlier quoted context omitted.
Really, who is going to challenge the difference between Netflix and torrents. Both video. Both serve the end user in the same way. But nobody will challenge it because nobody is in charge of torrents. This kills neutrality completely. There is no way those ruling over this know where to draw the category lines properly.
Well for one, torrent's not a video format. Let alone a streaming video service. And anyhow, FCC did exactly that; they went after Comcast for throttling torrents for no reason. And throttling torrents just because they're torrents is clearly not permissable by this clause by BEREC either; all it allows for is temporary and exceptional traffic shaping in case of congestion, provided it's done nondiscriminatorily. Whi…
That sounds fine, until you realise there is always congestion at prime time.
Suddenly, you've got throttling allowed against one person's service and not another, because "categories".
This is not neutral.
Re: Victory for Net Neutrality in Europe
#173Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's exactly my point though. It's not the same category, but it IS a competing service playing on an unfair playing field. Leveling the playing field for people playing the same game is all fine and dandy, but it completely fucks over disruptive innovations challenging the status quo in a different category. How about this one, people watch less TV than they did ten years ago, a lot of that time is now spent using…
> It's not the same category, but it IS a competing service playing on an unfair playing field. It really isn't. Netflix isn't a protocol, and if you're using torrents as a drop in replacement for Netflix you're breaking copyright law in any case. You can't argue that you use torrents as a competing service without implying you're breaking the law.
That's kind of irrelevant. I was simply using torrents as an example.
The problem with the category thing is that it makes your passtime more important than my passtime. And suddenly the passtime that pays the most is going to get preferential treatment.
This hurts innovation and companies that want to disrupt current services with a different verticle.
Category based throttling sounds like a good idea but it simply is not neutral and will fail us.
Re: Victory for Net Neutrality in Europe
#174Earlier quoted context omitted.
Human right: neutral communications Nice thing: iPhone 6+ Human right: freedom of movement Nice thing: Maserati See the difference? --- As for your second part about localization of politics, the tyranny of the majority is much more severe in hyper-local settings. Global issues like human rights cannot be entrusted to local governments whose local majorities are prone to divisiveness and discrimination.
>See the difference? Not really. I understand that you've differentiated between tangibles and concepts (and I probably should've said a "good law" instead of a "nice thing" to prevent this obvious conclusion), but the concepts can be moved up to exclude most tangibles. For example, perhaps "smooth, comfortable transportation" is a human right just as "neutral communications" are. In this case, budget transport carri…
You're inadvertently falling into the slippery slope fallacy with a bit of a strawman mixed in. Nobody has said that "smooth, comfortable transportation" is a human right. Human rights cover the basic dignities required to function in society, which can change over time. Due to the ubiquity of the Internet, it is reasonable for neutral communications to become a human right.
---
W.r.t. urban vs. rural communities and localized politics, those communities are less homogeneous than you seem to think. It's not terribly uncommon for people to find themselves trapped in a rural community when their personalities and values are more suited to an urban community, but they can't afford to move until they become adults and save up money, which may never happen.
There are floors of dignity below which no human should be allowed to fall, and allowing every rural community to set its own standards for human rights only makes sense if everyone in those communities has total freedom and means to leave, and total awareness of the other options available to them. Think of isolated, repressive fundamentalist or polygamist communities, for example (not that every fundamentalist or polygamist group is necessarily repressive, but it is certainly common).
Re: Victory for Net Neutrality in Europe
#175Earlier quoted context omitted.
Ironically, the same issue is exactly why I, as a citizen of the Netherlands, support leaving the EU. Because even at this point, Net Neutrality is still less well protected by the EU than it was under our own national legislation. I cannot in all good conscience support a union that has the power to undermine our civil rights. If Brits don't want those civil rights, that's their choice. Brussels is not a force for g…
I agree with your general sentiment, but wonder where you get the idea that Britain is somewhat backward when it comes to civil rights. Whilst challenges to civil rights will continue to exist and be resisted, it should be noted that the European Convention on Human Rights was influenced by the UK's approach to civil rights: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/European_Convention_on_Human... If you have concrete examples…
The UK's continuing contempt for the unanimous ruling of the ECHR in Hirst v United Kingdom would be one good point.
Likewise the continued push for mass surveillance (see: DRIPA, the defunct Draft Communications Data Bill and the seemingly inevitable Investigatory Powers Bill) is another - the most recent legislative attempts have been to make legal what the state has been doing illegally for many, many years. What worries me is that there is no common-law right to privacy in English law; our modern privacy rights stem almost exclusively from the ECHR and the EU.
The recent clampdown on the rights of trades unions is a third example. Despite an historic low number of days lost to industrial action, the government has been making it much harder to legally strike, or even to _fund_ trades unions (for example, imposing high thresholds on ballots and attempting to remove the option of payroll funding for union membership).
Re: Victory for Net Neutrality in Europe
#176How about Clothing neutrality? :)
Re: Victory for Net Neutrality in Europe
#177Earlier quoted context omitted.
Well for one, torrent's not a video format. Let alone a streaming video service. And anyhow, FCC did exactly that; they went after Comcast for throttling torrents for no reason. And throttling torrents just because they're torrents is clearly not permissable by this clause by BEREC either; all it allows for is temporary and exceptional traffic shaping in case of congestion, provided it's done nondiscriminatorily. Whi…
That sounds fine, until you realise there is always congestion at prime time. Suddenly, you've got throttling allowed against one person's service and not another, because "categories". This is not neutral.
prime-time congestion is hardly exceptional then, so that shouldn't qualify.
Re: Victory for Net Neutrality in Europe
#178Earlier quoted context omitted.
copyright law is in fact harmonized on EU level, by the EU copyright directive. Not that it could be substantially different already by Berne convention on a global level.
Curiously enough, Switzerland is one of the two european countries where making a copy of a copyrighted work for private use is not illegal.
hmm, wiki mentiones that private copies are actually usually allowed in the EU, with the exception of the UK, and a regular reason given for blank media levies many countries have. But that's rather different from online distribution of one's copies.
I think they have some notion of "commercial scale" filesharing to prosecute things like pirate bay, not sure how that works legally. But that too is a different matter, as they don't even share any copies of anything, just metadata, and lately not even that, but merely links.
The real question is whether any of this has any relevance for "pirated" media streaming or downloading being actually legal; not tolerated or thought too minor to warrant the privacy violation of revealing the person behind the IP or any loophole like that, but actually legal.
Honestly, I'd love to hear more about this.
Re: Victory for Net Neutrality in Europe
#179Any victory for socialist "Net Neutrality" is a loss for Internet Freedom.
This is supposed to be about keeping the medium itself impartial. When we converse in person, the medium (air) doesn't discriminate. Let's have a 'Net like that. What are you talking about?
You are trusting Hitler and Stalin to keep the Internet free.
http://reason.com/archives/2014/05/18/net-neutrality-nonsens...
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_neutrality#Arguments_again...
Re: Victory for Net Neutrality in Europe
#180Earlier quoted context omitted.
copyright law is in fact harmonized on EU level, by the EU copyright directive. Not that it could be substantially different already by Berne convention on a global level.
Curiously enough, Switzerland is one of the two european countries where making a copy of a copyrighted work for private use is not illegal.
Switzerland is not a member of the EU.