Serious question: Why do we have to fight this every year? Why haven't they (the lawmakers) learn?
Your freedom online is threatened by an EU proposal.
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Re: Your freedom online is threatened by an EU proposal.
#32Serious question: Why do we have to fight this every year? Why haven't they (the lawmakers) learn?
Because businesses won't give up a chance to get more profits in. Since lobbying is legal, politicians won't give up either.
Re: Your freedom online is threatened by an EU proposal.
#33Net neutrality has become law in the Netherlands after a public outcry about the traffic discrimination plans of the major mobile providers. The issue is no longer only known to an obscure minority, and this in a country where the mood is very strongly against relinquishing any more autonomy to the EU. In other words: if the EU attempts to nullify Dutch net neutrality (this proposal would override Dutch law), there w…
Bullshit. The Netherlands is never ever stepping out of the EU (of which it was a founder btw), it would be economic suicide.
For everyone outside The Netherlands: Net neutrality was instated after the largest telecom provider wanted to count Whatsapp messages as SMS messages. This lead to public outcry.
Re: Your freedom online is threatened by an EU proposal.
#34The main problem here is ISPs as a bottleneck. Longer term we need to figure out how to bypass the bottlenecks, which seem to be increasingly acting as points of political control and surveillance. Such a project would need to have a legal and technical side to it. On the legal side there would need to be an area of radio bandwidth reserved for public internet. On the technical side you need mesh networking software…
Some people try to address this issue in Europe and especially in France.
I strongly recommend anyone interested to take a look at the DIY ISP project [1]. There is also a map [2] showing existing initiatives and a previous thread on HN [3].
Re: Your freedom online is threatened by an EU proposal.
#35Re: Your freedom online is threatened by an EU proposal.
#36Well, I have sent email to a member from my country. Although it might be too late for this vote. Hope it affects his view anyway or at least rises a question or two.
Re: Your freedom online is threatened by an EU proposal.
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
That's my complaint about this site: who's banning what? I just checked, VoIP works on the same coax that my ISP uses to provide telephone services.
It's increasingly the case that internet, tv and telephone services are provided by a single company over a single set of infrastructure. Because those service providers have a vested interest to protect the commercial viability of their own offerings (specifically, the TV and telephone packages), there is an incentive to limit the internet service's viability as a replacement for TV and telephone services. Such limi…
There's also an incentive - competition - to provide services that people actually want over their own offerings. For example, here in Portugal, mobile provider(s?) are offering unlimited mobile data for services that compete with SMS, like WhatsApp, Viber, Facebook Messenger, Skype, etc.
Personally, I'm not ideologically opposed to net neutrality legislation, but I'd rather identify why is competition not preventing ISPs from violating it, and what can be done to strengthen it. I'm getting somewhat tired of laws that are just trying to fix the problems created by other laws, like those which grant privileges to certain economic groups (not that I'm saying this is the case).
Re: Your freedom online is threatened by an EU proposal.
#38Re: Your freedom online is threatened by an EU proposal.
#39I'm an advisor to the vicepresident of the European Commission Neelie Kroes, she is in charge of the Digital Agenda and it seems that she helped to put this forward.
Although I'm in her group of Young Advisors (we're 25), I didn't know about this until today.
I just sent an email to the other advisors and to some people of the European Commission to see what's up. They're always talking about how to improve net neutrality so I can't understand what's going on here.
Anyway I'm really angry about this shitty law killing net neutrality. This is kind of shocking.
If this law passes, I'll seriously ask myself if I want to continue in my role as an advisor.
Re: Your freedom online is threatened by an EU proposal.
#40Is it about net neutrality ("all packets were created equal") or is it about censorship (by which I mean government actions like court orders to block sites and filters)? Or is it somehow about both? Why is it the DEATH OF THE INTERNET AS WE KNOW IT when it's a new regulation that doesn't go as far as they want in the net neutrality direction? And all they want are some adjustments? The idea of banning specialised se…
As a starting point, if and as these services are becoming as necessary as other "utilities", and inasmuch as providers are screaming about and claiming issues of "expense" and revenue and whatall...
Let's, as we do for other utilities (at least, in my country), make them lay it out on the table.
Open your books. What are the real revenues and expenses.
We've all (again, in my country) watched our bills rise and rise, while some of us at least read about consistent, continuing drops in the price of backhaul/trunk capacity, as just one example of what we perceive as a fairly apparent dichotomy.
The practice to this point, has been that the consumer pays for access to those trunks, and hosts pay for their access, and the companies involved live off of that. Now, they want to collect collect twice? They want to pick and choose and charge "premiums" to "prioritize"?
Where is the basis for any of this, in actual, cold, hard numbers? Until this is presented, I'm not even willing to have the conversation.
AND... for one, I don't believe it actually exists -- or need exist. It is varying shades of what I will qualify on the farther end as extortion. It is not of necessity, it is of convenience and greed on the part of those who increasingly seek to hold the reins ever more firmly and exclusively, now that "the Internet" is big business and not merely "some geeky corner".
Finally, as varying flavors of "expert" in this field and topic, we carry I think some societal obligation as well as personal and professional interest, in seeing that this doesn't happen.
Many of our own lives and careers have been substantially enriched and enhanced by the relatively open digital ecosphere we have experienced.
When the same old... "bullies", frankly, show up to try to dominate it for their own interest and gain. It's up to us to keep it out of their hands, and to ensure that the next generation of technology is yet more resistant to that "same old same old".
This is not about shirking responsibility -- and there are responsibilities involved, serious ones including legitimate needs and approaches to e.g. security.
It is about properly identifying it, amidst a clamour of often disingenuous self-interest. And identifying proper, effective, and practical approaches. About empowering, once again, the participants and community themselves. As I see it.