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Netherlands first country in Europe with net neutrality
- phatbyte 14y agoI just love European nordic countries, their mentality is like 30 years ahead of rest of the world. Plus they have awesome metal bands.
- JCB_K 14y agoThat's great, but let's get back on the topic of West-European countries, shall we? The Netherlands isn't Nordic by any stretch. Nor do they have awesome metal bands by the way.
- phatbyte 14y agoMy bad, I meant north european countries. But regarding the metal bands I still stick with the nordic countries like sweden and finland ;)
- micheljansen 14y agoIt's also not North European. Unless you consider Germany, England, Poland and Belgium to be North European, in which case half of Europe is North Europe.
- rmc 14y agoNetherlands isn't a nordic country.
- SjuulJanssen 14y agoYup 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
- deleted 14y ago[deleted]
- benwerd 14y agoI'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 working.
- MrJagil 14y ago"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?
- rmc 14y agoYou might be thinking of this http://www.reddit.com/r/darknetplan/ 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.
- wmf 14y agoThe FNF has made more progress, but still fairly bogged down in organizational busywork. http://www.freenetworkmovement.org/commons/index.php?title=FreedomTower http://www.freenetworkmovement.org/commons/index.php?title=F...
- wladimir 14y agoStill, it is useful if at least one country legislates it. It means that organizations that rely on net neutrality, or strive to achieve net neutrality through technological means, could move to that country and do their work unhindered. No bullying ISPs etc...
- Roritharr 14y agoAnother reason why Appsterdam rocks!
- septnuits 14y agoThis is great step towards a global untapped internet where people can have their freedom of speech without the need of fear of being spied upon. I hope more countries follows this example; The Netherlands proves once again that they are one step ahead in integrity-politics.
- SjuulJanssen 14y agobof(fen) wij toch ff :)
- tripzilch 14y agoYeah but what has BOF really been doing lately? They're just reporting this, it's not like we have them to thank for it. And in the mean time BREIN manages to sue Dutch ISPs into blackholing TPB. I really wonder whether my monthly donation is doing much good. I'll keep donating, but it'd be nice to see some (recent) successes.
- spurgu 14y agoMy VPS located in Netherlands just got more valuable!
- gench 14y agoThat is something. I wonder if there is a similar law to protect my Internet privacy from my boss in the Netherlands.
- digitalengineer 14y agoYour "internet privacy" is protected just fine as long as you don't use the company's network, e-mail, and laptop. And as long as you don't go sharing all your things to everybody (twitter, f-book).
- _delirium 14y agoIn a number of countries, companies don't have full rights to snoop on employees' network communications, even at work. In Denmark, I believe email is considered quasi-private. A boss can read an employee's mail, but must go through a process where the reason they need to do so is formally documented. The situation is not entirely clear even in the US: http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125859862658454923.html http://online.wsj.com/article/SB125859862658454923.html
- digitalengineer 14y agoThanks for the info! "Now, courts are increasingly taking into account whether employers have explicitly described how email is monitored to their employees. " Yes this is why all contracts have been updated. It's in most new contracts. (The 'fine print'). Best thing to do is not use the company e-mail privately (if you value your privacy that is).
- generateui 14y agoAfter it became apparent by parlement representitives they probably had to pay "chatheffing" - chattax, this law was reality quite fast. It's pretty hopefull the law passed senate unanimously.
- smutticus 14y agoThen 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.
- pgeorgi 14y agoBlackholing 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)
- speleding 14y agoIt's interesting to note that this legislation was prompted because the incumbent telco (KPN) overplayed its hand. They publicly suggested that they would price traffic from WhatsApp higher to offset their loss in SMS revenue. A public outcry ensued, law makers got involved and this is the result. Democracy doesn't always work, but when it does it's a beautiful thing.
- bonjourmr 14y agoNot sure how long telcos thought they could get away with charging so much for SMS (http://www.nickloper.com/2011/02/how-much-does-a-text-message-really-cost/ http://www.nickloper.com/2011/02/how-much-does-a-text-messag...) but now that things have changed it looks as though they thought they had other ways of making incredible profits from message transmission. Ha!
- stingraycharles 14y agoThe problem is, the money still has to come from somewhere. When income drops in one area (SMS), and costs do not go down, they'll likely have to increase pricing in another area.
- diminish 14y agothey made end up being dump pipes with low margins too.
- sjaakkkkk 14y agoTrue, these are only my individual observations, but after the legislation the prices for mobile subscriptions seem to have increased. Now almost every subscription has 'unlimited SMS' but the internet bundles are priced higher for what you get than before the regulations. However, this increase of course would also have been the case without the new laws (as you say, as people move from SMS to Whatsapp, they have to compensate). The only difference is that they now can't differentiate between different uses of the internet, but only on the amount of data you get. I don't think the net neutrality isn't such a bad thing price/economic wise. I'd rather have this clear system which might mean slightly higher prices for the average consumer than a system in which different prices for different uses of internet make calculating your actual costs more difficult. In my opinion, that would only give more opportunities to telecom providers to screw you over with little details, rules and clauses in their contracts -- something which history has shown they don't shy away from (rounding up every call duration to a full minute etc.).
- woodpanel 14y agoI've always struggled a bit with the concept of net neutrality. Leigislation should improve/secure freedom of choice. If it is about keeping providers from throttling traffic based on the traffic-source ( = prohibition of choices) I'm all for it. But what about my freedom to choose a slower connection? Or one without video chat capacities? I propably would be ok with paying half the price if my traffic has not the highest priority. When I had less income, an internet connection might have been more affordable if I wasn't forced to buy traffic capacities I didn't need. I have a couple of friends who still struggle to afford internet (sadly, the more time passes without internet access, the harder it'll get for them to ever improve on their income). Does the "net neutrality" concept differentiate between "intent of usage" and "interest of usage"? The first to me seems more important to be kept neutral. (What I mean by the latter might be better expalined with the 19th century rail-pricing systems where you had 1st, 2nd and 3rd class passengers. 3rd class was dirty, packed and propably pathoenic. But more importantly, the "3rd class" could afford the ride. )
- KoulMomo 14y agoMy understanding, and what I mean by Net Neutrality is that ISPs should treat packets that I access equally. This does not prevent ISPs from providing tiered services or instituting network caps. For example, if I get a plan that promises: 1) 5 mbs download 2) 1 mbs upload 3) 15 GB usage cap The ISP is well within it's rights to provide me with such a slow connection, as long as the packets I access on that slower connection are treated equally. Net Neutrality is not concerned with providing everyone the same internet speeds, but rather that packets are treated equally (ie throttle all packets equally, instead of discriminating against certain packets).
- woodpanel 14y agoThanks for making that a bit clearer to me. I'm still confused why/if an ISP shouldn't be able to go further with offering me a "Non-You-Tube/Grooveshark-Plan" if it would be cheaper. I guess one critical point is that my data packages should not be looked into for privacy issues. But considering your mentioned plan: You could be rewarded for not using the 5mbs bandwith constantly. So instead of looking into the data packages, using the "length of a data stream" to penalize heavy-users shouldn't be at odds with net neutrality. Right?
- antithesis 14y ago> The net neutrality law prohibits internet providers from interfering with the traffic of their users. Censoring The Pirate Bay is interfering the with the users' traffic. Does that mean the court ruling of Ziggo and Xs4all being forces to censor that site, contradicts this legislation?
- Prophasi 14y agoIn the broadest sense, net neutrality's an abrogation of companies' rights to set terms for their products and allow consumers to agree or disagree. It limits the pricing and service dynamic. Specifically for the net, it's a concession that we need gov't to wield the ultimate authority over detailed aspects of the Internet and step into many disputes between private parties if the specter of non-neutrality is raised (and of course it will be). You might think it's in your immediate favor, but voting for net neutrality isn't really voting for equal packet treatment: it's voting for government control over packet treatment, which will be turned against you in ways you haven't foreseen. Net neutrality is like saying I can't open a store w/out handicap access, even though handicapped folks have the option of a) passing by my store to another; or b) finding a way to shop at mine because it's closer and has lower prices. "Shop neutrality" would dictate that if I won't treat everyone equally - although it's clear in my terms - I just shouldn't exist. There are those who agree with this analogy, too, of course. You suppose the government should be the ultimate arbiter of what options should be on offer, rather than the entrepreneur and the market of free people? A dangerous way to look at it, I think. No, the telecoms aren't by any stretch unregulated as it is. But if that's your complaint, tackle it from that direction, not by badly regulating bad regulations.
- jordanb 14y agoIt's not regulation that causes there to be few choices among telecoms. It's the extremely high barrier to entry which is created by numerous factors, many natural. Personally I sorta agree with you though, that I would rather have regulations that seek to break down the barriers to entry. For instance, require telcom companies to connect homes to a fiber network for a flat connection/service fee, and then allow any ISP to sell those customers internet access. This is functionally like the network we had during the dial-up days. And the result was thousands of ISPs giving the typical customer dozens of choices. There was no need for government or anyone else to protect network neutrality because the market was functional, as is demonstrated by AOL finding it increasingly necessary to dismantle their walled-garden service to compete with the independent guys. There were some halfhearted attempts to give ISPs access to the COs to offer DSL service beside the local telcom, but telcoms have been successful in sabotaging it.
- thespin 14y agoHow do people in the Netherlands feel about the notion of "common carrier"? http://www.columbia.edu/dlc/wp/citi/citinoam11.html http://www.columbia.edu/dlc/wp/citi/citinoam11.html Is common carrier a useful concept for society? What do you think?
- blackman 14y agoactually the third country after chile and norway http://translate.google.com.au/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&js=n&prev=_t&hl=en&ie=UTF-8&layout=2&eotf=1&u=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.telegraaf.nl%2Fdigitaal%2F12089709%2F__Nieuwe_wet_voor_internetverkeer__.html http://translate.google.com.au/translate?sl=auto&tl=en&#...