8 ms·

European Parliament votes against net neutrality amendments

160 points by majc2 11y ago

protomyth 11y ago
"It is thought that many MEPs would have been reluctant to begin a process of amending the regulation given that it might have delayed another aspect of the rules - the abolishment of mobile data roaming charges." That probably should have been the first paragraph of every article (8th in this one) about these amendments. I can see why a politician would value abolishment of mobile data roaming charges more.
- JorgeGT 11y ago
  Bundling very different laws into one package is an old trick. You wouldn't vote against the "Keyhole-Spying & Non-Puppy-Killing Act" right? In this case telcos were against losing those sweet roaming charges so at least they got several exemptions from net neutrality in the process.
- pgeorgi 11y ago
  Julia Reda claims that the regulation doesn't even achieve that: https://juliareda.eu/2015/10/european-parliament-delivers-neither-net-neutrality-nor-an-end-to-roaming/ https://juliareda.eu/2015/10/european-parliament-delivers-ne... (last paragraph)
- mcv 11y ago
  How about making smaller laws? First do one abolishing the roaming charges, and don't slow it down by attaching anything else to it. Then do another with the net neutrality stuff.
  - deleted 11y ago
    [deleted]
greathi 11y ago
There's lots of competition in Europe, so net neutrality doesn't matter. It's just extra government regulation in an area that doesn't need it. Think of it as a symptom rather than a problem.
- thirdsun 11y ago
  What about the other side? - the next potential Netflix competitor probalby won't come from Europe with regulations like these.
  - ATsch 11y ago
    I think this can be blamed on the strict European copyright laws more than a lack of net neutrality, also considering that Netflix became what it is today even without net neutrality
    - tormeh 11y ago
      It's a long way to single market, it's a long way to home The process has been really slow...
    - thirdsun 11y ago
      That's not what I meant - it was just an example. The above comment only considered the perspective of an end user, saying that due to good infrastructure and lots competition net neutrality isn't an issue. However I'm more worried about the businesses at the other end of the line, the content and service providers who also have to deal with ISPs. If the market leader in a certain category can afford to buy faster lanes, it's much harder for potential competitors to enter the market, hence the Netflix analogy.
    - some1else 11y ago
      Netflix could not become what it is today without net neutrality.
- JupiterMoon 11y ago
  Really in the UK this isn't that true. Bear in mind that you are usually locked into an 18 month contract. Also bear in mind that lots of people don't live in cities.
  - walshemj 11y ago
rudids 11y ago
The problem here is that this was badly put together legislation. I don't think the idea of net neutrality was actually debated at all in reality. The need to abolish mobile data roaming charges in the EU was front and centre of the needs of these MEP's constituents minds and they would not vote this down, it would've been mad for them politically. Whoever wrote this piece of legislation is to blame here. I would be very surprised if this didn't come back for debate in another form prior to it's adoption.
- PythonicAlpha 11y ago
  > Whoever wrote this piece of legislation is to blame here. But just that is politics! I heard that now for years, that this is the best practice approach, that is used in many countries: Put together one bad rules with one or two good laws. And when you want to be sure, that the whole package will be voted for, just put some poison-pill in -- something that will bring up (stupid) voters up against those people that vote against it. What we get: We get cheaper roaming but may lose the future (the US is already so much ahead of Europe, when it comes to online-services and online-startups). This really is old Europe! (I as European would even say stupid Europe!)
  - walshemj 11y ago
    That's why you have amendments.
- paol 11y ago
  That's not how it works. Amendments to the proposed law are voted individually, there was never any danger of having to reject the whole law. There were amendments to close each of the problematic loopholes regarding net neutrality, but they didn't pass the vote.
  - azernik 11y ago
    There is if the set of legislators that are in favor of the end to mobile roaming charges doesn't overlap exactly with the set of legislators in favor of net neutrality. In that case, the number of people who vote in favor of the package might be the intersection of the people in favor of the two things, which is strictly smaller than the set of people in favor of one or the other. Classic poison pill maneuver.
siscia 11y ago
At first I was very sad when I read the article. However I hope that we, as European, could take this as a challenge and come out with a way to completely obfuscate the web traffic, wich I believe will be extremely important in the coming year. We should see this as an opportunity, maybe we won't come out with the next Netflix, but hopefully we will be able to to set the standard for privacy and security online, so needed right now...
- riskneural 11y ago
  Essentially, if it is not encrypted, corporations can fight for regulation to increase the barrier to entry for rival products and services, and we know they will. If it is encrypted, such regulations are futile.
  - tormeh 11y ago
    But only the non-paying corporations have an incentive to encrypt. The ones that pay will either not encrypt, or they'll attach some kind of tag to the ISP saying where the packet comes from. ISPs can safely assign all encrypted, non-tagged packets to the slow lane.
- izacus 11y ago
  What would that accomplish? The way telcos already attempted to do that is to assign higher priority to services (like IPTV) of preferred partners (or of course their own). Encryption just means that your companies service gets traffic shaped into oblivion.
gerty 11y ago
If you're not sure if you should be pissed at your MEP, here are the votes (PDF): http://bit.ly/1NydR8L http://bit.ly/1NydR8L It's from page 19, Pilar Del Castillo Vera section.
- tombrossman 11y ago
  Why hide it behind a link shortener? Direct link is here: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//NONSGML%2BPV%2B20151027%2BRES-RCV%2BDOC%2BPDF%2BV0//EN&language=EN http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//...
  - tomelders 11y ago
    How do you read this document?
    - ckarmann 11y ago
      For an amendment, you have three sections: the "+" section lists people having voted for the amendment, the "-" section lists people having voted against, the "0" section lists people having abstained Only the surnames of the MEP are listed. They are listed inside their political group. The two biggest groups in European Parliament are PPE (European People's Party, centre-right) and S&D (Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, centre-left) See this list of political groups: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_groups_of_the_European_Parliament#Composition_of_the_7th_European_Parliament https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_groups_of_the_Europe...
      - mercurial 11y ago
        Looks like the PPE and S&D didn't disappoint and voted en masse against it. Sigh.
- rbanffy 11y ago
  This is awful to read. We need a tool to make votes clear and searchable. Is there a database of them someplace we could query?
zoner 11y ago
We are experiencing speed problems to many servers. Our broadband is BT Fibre. While accessing some sites is very fast, sometimes others are slow. For example downloading from Bitbucket from the UK is peaking on 600kB/s, then after a minute, it's dropping to 60kB/s, then stays there for the following 15 minutes. The same content downloaded from one of our servers in a UK data centre stays on 600kB/s. I think this is a clear evidence that the service provider is cutting the bandwidth after a minute, which is not what we paid for.
- semi-extrinsic 11y ago
  Can you switch to Andrews & Arnold? They're a niche ISP in the UK, targeting tech-savvy users and businesses. They give you IPv6 for free and they're XKCD/806 compliant. (No affiliation, just a happy customer when I lived in the UK.).
  - collyw 11y ago
    I was too cheap to use them when I was in the UK, as they cost a bit more, but the other guys I worked with rated them really highly. I would pay the extra for them these days.
- witty_username 11y ago
  Maybe Bitbucket is throttling? I mean it's a possibility.
  - Mimick 11y ago
    That's the most likely, since that comment stating that they are downloading a big content.
- fauigerzigerk 11y ago
  Why would BT throttle bitbucket of all things? They don't have a competing service and bitbucket's share of BT bandwidth must be negligible.
shmerl 11y ago
So how do they explain refusal to correct obvious anti neutrality parts of this "neutrality" legislation? By too much money from ISPs in their pockets?

160 points by majc2 11y ago

"It is thought that many MEPs would have been reluctant to begin a process of amending the regulation given that it might have delayed another aspect of the rules - the abolishment of mobile data roaming charges." That probably should have been the first paragraph of every article (8th in this one) about these amendments. I can see why a politician would value abolishment of mobile data roaming charges more.

JorgeGT 11y ago
Bundling very different laws into one package is an old trick. You wouldn't vote against the "Keyhole-Spying & Non-Puppy-Killing Act" right? In this case telcos were against losing those sweet roaming charges so at least they got several exemptions from net neutrality in the process.
pgeorgi 11y ago
Julia Reda claims that the regulation doesn't even achieve that: https://juliareda.eu/2015/10/european-parliament-delivers-neither-net-neutrality-nor-an-end-to-roaming/ https://juliareda.eu/2015/10/european-parliament-delivers-ne... (last paragraph)
mcv 11y ago
How about making smaller laws? First do one abolishing the roaming charges, and don't slow it down by attaching anything else to it. Then do another with the net neutrality stuff.
- deleted 11y ago
  [deleted]

greathi 11y ago

There's lots of competition in Europe, so net neutrality doesn't matter. It's just extra government regulation in an area that doesn't need it. Think of it as a symptom rather than a problem.

thirdsun 11y ago
What about the other side? - the next potential Netflix competitor probalby won't come from Europe with regulations like these.
- ATsch 11y ago
  I think this can be blamed on the strict European copyright laws more than a lack of net neutrality, also considering that Netflix became what it is today even without net neutrality
  - tormeh 11y ago
    It's a long way to single market, it's a long way to home The process has been really slow...
  - thirdsun 11y ago
    That's not what I meant - it was just an example. The above comment only considered the perspective of an end user, saying that due to good infrastructure and lots competition net neutrality isn't an issue. However I'm more worried about the businesses at the other end of the line, the content and service providers who also have to deal with ISPs. If the market leader in a certain category can afford to buy faster lanes, it's much harder for potential competitors to enter the market, hence the Netflix analogy.
  - some1else 11y ago
    Netflix could not become what it is today without net neutrality.
JupiterMoon 11y ago
Really in the UK this isn't that true. Bear in mind that you are usually locked into an 18 month contract. Also bear in mind that lots of people don't live in cities.
- walshemj 11y ago

rudids 11y ago

The problem here is that this was badly put together legislation. I don't think the idea of net neutrality was actually debated at all in reality. The need to abolish mobile data roaming charges in the EU was front and centre of the needs of these MEP's constituents minds and they would not vote this down, it would've been mad for them politically. Whoever wrote this piece of legislation is to blame here. I would be very surprised if this didn't come back for debate in another form prior to it's adoption.

PythonicAlpha 11y ago
> Whoever wrote this piece of legislation is to blame here. But just that is politics! I heard that now for years, that this is the best practice approach, that is used in many countries: Put together one bad rules with one or two good laws. And when you want to be sure, that the whole package will be voted for, just put some poison-pill in -- something that will bring up (stupid) voters up against those people that vote against it. What we get: We get cheaper roaming but may lose the future (the US is already so much ahead of Europe, when it comes to online-services and online-startups). This really is old Europe! (I as European would even say stupid Europe!)
- walshemj 11y ago
  That's why you have amendments.
paol 11y ago
That's not how it works. Amendments to the proposed law are voted individually, there was never any danger of having to reject the whole law. There were amendments to close each of the problematic loopholes regarding net neutrality, but they didn't pass the vote.
- azernik 11y ago
  There is if the set of legislators that are in favor of the end to mobile roaming charges doesn't overlap exactly with the set of legislators in favor of net neutrality. In that case, the number of people who vote in favor of the package might be the intersection of the people in favor of the two things, which is strictly smaller than the set of people in favor of one or the other. Classic poison pill maneuver.

siscia 11y ago

At first I was very sad when I read the article. However I hope that we, as European, could take this as a challenge and come out with a way to completely obfuscate the web traffic, wich I believe will be extremely important in the coming year. We should see this as an opportunity, maybe we won't come out with the next Netflix, but hopefully we will be able to to set the standard for privacy and security online, so needed right now...

riskneural 11y ago
Essentially, if it is not encrypted, corporations can fight for regulation to increase the barrier to entry for rival products and services, and we know they will. If it is encrypted, such regulations are futile.
- tormeh 11y ago
  But only the non-paying corporations have an incentive to encrypt. The ones that pay will either not encrypt, or they'll attach some kind of tag to the ISP saying where the packet comes from. ISPs can safely assign all encrypted, non-tagged packets to the slow lane.
izacus 11y ago
What would that accomplish? The way telcos already attempted to do that is to assign higher priority to services (like IPTV) of preferred partners (or of course their own). Encryption just means that your companies service gets traffic shaped into oblivion.

gerty 11y ago

If you're not sure if you should be pissed at your MEP, here are the votes (PDF): http://bit.ly/1NydR8L http://bit.ly/1NydR8L It's from page 19, Pilar Del Castillo Vera section.

tombrossman 11y ago
Why hide it behind a link shortener? Direct link is here: http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//NONSGML%2BPV%2B20151027%2BRES-RCV%2BDOC%2BPDF%2BV0//EN&language=EN http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//...
- tomelders 11y ago
  How do you read this document?
  - ckarmann 11y ago
    For an amendment, you have three sections: the "+" section lists people having voted for the amendment, the "-" section lists people having voted against, the "0" section lists people having abstained Only the surnames of the MEP are listed. They are listed inside their political group. The two biggest groups in European Parliament are PPE (European People's Party, centre-right) and S&D (Progressive Alliance of Socialists and Democrats, centre-left) See this list of political groups: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_groups_of_the_European_Parliament#Composition_of_the_7th_European_Parliament https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_groups_of_the_Europe...
    - mercurial 11y ago
      Looks like the PPE and S&D didn't disappoint and voted en masse against it. Sigh.
rbanffy 11y ago
This is awful to read. We need a tool to make votes clear and searchable. Is there a database of them someplace we could query?

zoner 11y ago

We are experiencing speed problems to many servers. Our broadband is BT Fibre. While accessing some sites is very fast, sometimes others are slow. For example downloading from Bitbucket from the UK is peaking on 600kB/s, then after a minute, it's dropping to 60kB/s, then stays there for the following 15 minutes. The same content downloaded from one of our servers in a UK data centre stays on 600kB/s. I think this is a clear evidence that the service provider is cutting the bandwidth after a minute, which is not what we paid for.

semi-extrinsic 11y ago
Can you switch to Andrews & Arnold? They're a niche ISP in the UK, targeting tech-savvy users and businesses. They give you IPv6 for free and they're XKCD/806 compliant. (No affiliation, just a happy customer when I lived in the UK.).
- collyw 11y ago
  I was too cheap to use them when I was in the UK, as they cost a bit more, but the other guys I worked with rated them really highly. I would pay the extra for them these days.
witty_username 11y ago
Maybe Bitbucket is throttling? I mean it's a possibility.
- Mimick 11y ago
  That's the most likely, since that comment stating that they are downloading a big content.
fauigerzigerk 11y ago
Why would BT throttle bitbucket of all things? They don't have a competing service and bitbucket's share of BT bandwidth must be negligible.

shmerl 11y ago

So how do they explain refusal to correct obvious anti neutrality parts of this "neutrality" legislation? By too much money from ISPs in their pockets?