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The European Parliament just dealt a major blow to net neutrality

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On Tuesday afternoon, the European Parliament voted against all amendments to a package on the European single market for electronic communications — raising fears among activists, tech companies, and NGOs that the proposals as they currently stand fail to properly protect net neutrality.

[...]

The proposals ostensibly uphold the net neutral principle, but internet activists are concerned that they contain multiple loopholes, and do no such thing.

There is a provision that allows for preferential treatment for "specialised services," for example. This might be used for self-driving vehicles or medical data, but there are fears that this exemption is too broadly defined, and may be abused.

For more information the source article can be found here:

The European Parliament just dealt a major blow to net neutrality

In an effort to implement Net Neutrality, the EU Parliament has managed to do the exact opposite by not clarifying the wording of certain parts of the agreement, the amendments asked to clarify and close these potential loopholes.

All of the amendments were rejected and the Net Neutrality proposal was accepted as is, potentially leaving ISP free to offer zero rating on certain types of traffic and throttle traffic in anticipation of congestion.

It's even worse for countries in the EU (such as my own, The Netherlands) where their own stricter Net Neutrality regulations are now overruled by the ones proposed by the EU, although (and I am not sure about this) it might be possible to implement additional regulations on top of the ones set by the EU.
 

daxy

Member
It's an EU 'regulation' (right?), so it's open to national governments to decide how to implement these new rules. This does not exclude them from being stricter, as long as it's within the the spirit and outlines set by the Commission. So, if you're worried about ISPs working through loopholes, your government needs to address this through the nationally implemented measures under this regulation. If the exemptions are formulated vaguely, it doesn't necessarily need to lead to looser regulation as long as it's specifically defined in the national context. I do expect the EU Court of Justice to set some clarifying precedents in the coming years that will decide the standards at an EU-level more elaborately.
 

Funky Papa

FUNK-Y-PPA-4
I just realized that Pilar del Castillo, minister of culture and education under José María Aznar's fetid second mandate, was the rapporteur (read: the person who drafted the new ruleset).

Spanish corruption and the European People's Party: two awful flavours that taste even worse together.
 
So, this is final or can there be a second round? If the former, then basically we can only hope our governments have a say in how to implement it in their countries, as daxy says?
 

Nokterian

Member
I just realized that Pilar del Castillo, minister of culture and education under José María Aznar's fetid second mandate, was the rapporteur (read: the person who drafted the new ruleset).

Spanish corruption and the European People's Party: two awful flavours that taste even worse together.

I am sad and disappointed by this and the corruption level at an all time high..this will end the internet everywhere. Slow and fast lanes..awful prices...

This is not how the internet works and now corporations have more power then the consumer.
 

S¡mon

Banned
It's an EU 'regulation' (right?), so it's open to national governments to decide how to implement these new rules. This does not exclude them from being stricter, as long as it's within the the spirit and outlines set by the Commission. So, if you're worried about ISPs working through loopholes, your government needs to address this through the nationally implemented measures under this regulation. If the exemptions are formulated vaguely, it doesn't necessarily need to lead to looser regulation as long as it's specifically defined in the national context. I do expect the EU Court of Justice to set some clarifying precedents in the coming years that will decide the standards at an EU-level more elaborately.
I live in The Netherlands with very strict net neutrality rules and our government is actually against this legalisation.

The EU regulation contains all kinds of loopholes for ISPs to block and throttle Internet traffic. We are forced to take over and put these loopholes in the Dutch net neutrality laws.

Basically, no one here is happy with the new net neutrality rules (some see it as 'as yet another thing forced upon the (Dutch) people by the EU').
 

Condom

Member
politicians reeeally want to see the French Revolution repeat in the 21st century...
Yeah or people can vote for non-establishment parties. Instead most Europeans vote like cowards.

Pirateparties, the United left and Greens etc. They are there but don't get enough votes to be a real power in the EP.
 
It's an EU 'regulation' (right?), so it's open to national governments to decide how to implement these new rules. This does not exclude them from being stricter, as long as it's within the the spirit and outlines set by the Commission.

Sounds like you're confusing regulations with directives.
 

Funky Papa

FUNK-Y-PPA-4
Quality differentiation on the Internet has long been common practice. Users can decide for themselves the level of service they want, and what this service is worth to them: additional storage space for e-mails, for instance, costs extra, just as do enhanced search functions on Xing and LinkedIn, or videos in HD instead of SD quality. In future there will also be the option of booking a service with assured quality in exchange for a few more euros. Quality differentiation is by no means a revolution on the Internet, but natural development.

Opponents of special services claim that small providers can't afford this. The opposite is true: Start-ups need special services more than anyone in order to have a chance of keeping up with large Internet providers. Google and co. can afford server parks all around the world, to bring content nearer to their customers and thus improve the quality of their services. Small companies cannot afford this. If they want to bring services to market which require guaranteed good transmission quality, it is precisely these companies that need special services. By our reckoning, they would pay a couple of percent for this in the form of revenue-sharing. This would be a fair contribution for the use of the infrastructure. And it ensures more competition on the Internet.
Motherfucker.

I feel incredibly bad for thinking that any holes in the original proposition would get fixed before approval. We just got done dirty. It's hard to believe their masks would come off this easily.
 

SigSig

Member
It only took a single day, guys. One day was enough to prove all critics right. It's incredible, really.
http://www.telekom.com/media/management-to-the-point/291728

Where is the defense force now?
It's because of the "this won't be a big deal, they won't do that, get rid of your tinfoil hat guys lol"-crowd this shit keeps happening. Maybe just shut your face if you have no idea what you are talking about, it was the exact same thing with mass surveillance.
Also fuck Telekom and fuck the way their PR guys handle this situation on Twitter, blatantly lying and downplaying the issue, going as far as ridiculing people (customers).
 
Opponents of special services claim that small providers can't afford this. The opposite is true: Start-ups need special services more than anyone in order to have a chance of keeping up with large Internet providers. Google and co. can afford server parks all around the world, to bring content nearer to their customers and thus improve the quality of their services. Small companies cannot afford this. If they want to bring services to market which require guaranteed good transmission quality, it is precisely these companies that need special services. By our reckoning, they would pay a couple of percent for this in the form of revenue-sharing. This would be a fair contribution for the use of the infrastructure. And it ensures more competition on the Internet.
Ahahahahah fuck off with this bullshit.
 

Zaph

Member
Motherfucker.

I feel incredibly bad for thinking that any holes in the original proposition would get fixed before approval. We just got done dirty. It's hard to believe their masks would come off this easily.

Unbelievable. "Hey, small companies can't afford the upfront cost of CDN infrastructure that allows them to bypass as much of our shitty network as possible, so we'll help them out by taking a percentage of all their revenue to use the slightly-less-shitty part instead! Aren't we nice? Lets just ignore the fact our customers already pay us to maintain the shitty infrastructure."
 

ElTorro

I wanted to dominate the living room. Then I took an ESRAM in the knee.
This is all a load of bullshit.

Internet connections should be financed by end-consumer plans. ISPs just are annoyed by the costs of infrastructure investments and the tough price wars in that market. Instead of increasing the prices on end-consumer plans—which they likely cannot sustain thanks to said price war situation—they now want to put the burden of increasing prices on service providers.

And fuck the businesses of small enterprises and startups who deliver bandwidth- or latency-sensitive services via the internet in the process.
 
I´m fucking livid over here. And not just because of the fuckery going on. As if that alone isn´t enough, those assholes have the BALLS to be like "It´s better for you guyz, we know what´s good for you".

The damn nerve of these isps. We run out of internet. Pls more money.

Instead of expanding and updating their infrastructure with the money they earn, at crazy high profitability, which should be their fucking job, they´re just giving you the middle finger and hope idiots who are too stupid and gullible buy it.

And those fucks in the parlament are either bought off, or are damn degenerates who should have no place in making any decisions that affect other people.

Fuck yall.
 
The notion that start-ups need to pay ISPs to keep up with the big companies is hilarious. Better pay up, because it would be a shame if something happened to their data during the transmission, right?
 

iamblades

Member
The EU's complete incompetence when it comes to regulating the internet would be amusing if it weren't so scary.

Try to protect privacy, kill free speech instead, try to protect net neutrality, kill it on accident.
 
In principle I agree that certain services should have priority. For example, we should give emergency services a priority so that when a major catastrophe strikes, they won't be hindered by the network congestion.

But giving individual companies priority? Ugh. I'm praying that the "specialised service" -argument applies to categories, not individuals. Meaning, if Netflix gets "specialised service" -tag, all video streaming services get that tag (even Netflix competitors). That's only way this is going to work. And I pray that's how it will work.
 

Funky Papa

FUNK-Y-PPA-4
Telefónica just came in to support the vote. Coupled with that D-Telekom's piece, you can imagine that some grand fuckery is inbound.

Thanks, Satan.

Well, it might be good that this is happening so fast. The sooner ISPs start testing the laws, the quicker we'll see how well the laws actually hold up in court. Because there's no way this isn't going to court.

I pray there's a way to undo this mess at the European Court of Justice or some other place.
 

Neo C.

Member
It's sad how little interest this important topic gets, but that's also the reason why the rich can get away almost always.
 

cabot

Member
It's just one of those issues that's not easy to digest in a soundbite, so the vast majority of people lose interest quickly.

The only way it'll ever be picked up by the average punter is when they see crummy quality netflix streaming on their fiber connections
 

Tugatrix

Member
crooked muthf*ckers

This is the kind of things that happen when you let the EPP controlling the European Union Parliament
 

Acosta

Member
The funny thing is that the fuckers thought they were voting for the "end of roaming taxes", given that both went into the same vote (?). And even that is full of caveats in favor of operators.

Stupid, ignorant, corrupted or directly evil, I don't know what is worse.
 

Funky Papa

FUNK-Y-PPA-4
The funny thing is that the fuckers thought they were voting for the "end of roaming taxes", given that both went into the same vote (?). And even that is full of caveats in favor of operators.

Stupid, ignorant, corrupted or directly evil, I don't know what is worse.

Nah, they knew perfectly well what they were voting. Amendments were proposed and then they were rejected. The end of roaming fees (which is not even that comprehensive) was used to save face, since many Europeans are familiar with those but unfamiliar with the concept of net neutrality.

It was a clear case of using the end of roaming fees for cheap PR points while sneaking in the background something really bad that most people don't quite understand. The Parliament being the Parliament, they were either corporate puppets (Pilar del Castillo) or voted along party lines, which is another way of saying that they followed whatever it was mused to the ears of the party leadership.

Sheer fuckery.
 
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