Victory for Net Neutrality in Europe

As always, devil is in the details.

If you look at the fine print in the published "Guidelines for implementing Net Neutratily" [1] linked in the article you will see that there are 3 exceptions to the rule (a,b,c). Being "c" the one that should fear us most:

EXCEPTIONS

  a) "comply with Union legislative acts (...)

  b) preserve the integrity and security of the network, of services provided via that network, and of the terminal equipment of end-users;

  c) prevent impending network congestion and mitigate the effects of exceptional or temporary network congestion, provided that equivalent categories of traffic are treated equally.

This last one ruins the whole law. And this is not what me as European wanted. ISPs won :(

[1] http://berec.europa.eu/eng/document_register/subject_matter/...

[EDIT] typos

Next fight : That ISPs advertise the minimum guaranteed bandwidth and are banned from advertising the maximum theoretical number.

Then only we could measure that they do offer the same bandwidth with Netflix and Vimeo as they advertise. Net neutrality at its best.

Edit: Of course the number will be very low because they have to (God forbid!) provision their network to serve this bandwidth to all customers during peak hours. But what we're looking for is not a huge number - we're looking for a number that allows meaningful comparison with competitors.

Facebook tried to introduce "Free Basics" in Angola after its failed attempts at doing so in India. Good to see similar efforts being made in Angola to educate about Net Neutrality as well. Maybe they can use some takeaway from the above ruling.

Source: http://motherboard.vice.com/read/wikipedia-zero-facebook-fre...

"It has to be noted with regret that it was not our digital Commissioner Günther Oettinger who listened to the people and defended an internet not biased towards big corporate interests [...]"

That would hardly have been expected: in the first six months of being a Commissioner, Oettinger met with two NGO representatives but with 44 corporate lobbyists [1].

[1] http://www.spiegel.de/wirtschaft/soziales/guenther-oettinger...

It encourages me to see that the European court at least has some people on it that seem to understand that net neutrality is in fact a human rights issue.

And this is why Brexit is so heart-breaking. I'm surrounded by people in my personal life who think it's a fantastic idea, but they're not the most... informed? Likewise for local politicians.

(Side note to my rant: I have this theory that the rise of the iPhone, and the fact that it is such a big part of people's lives now, has fooled regular folks into believing that they're experts on technology. I have no more than anecdotal evidence for this).

I strongly suspect that local legislators will see no conflict whatsoever with scrapping these laws when the exit finally comes, and it saddens me that I'm surrounded by a lot of people that will be cheering when it happens.

This is from a real conversation I had this week:

"What it boils down to is do you want to have us control our own laws and decisions and borders, or have to take orders from some bureaucrat in Brussels that doesn't understand us?"

Yes, I would rather have decisions made by people in Brussels that understand what they're doing.

Disappointingly little concrete information of what's in now, anyone knows how to read these things and skimmed the original text? I heard that EU "net neutrality" is disappointlngly vague. I see providers offering free data for things like Spotify, which, in my understanding, is exactly what net neutrality should prevent.

Bravo EU! Sure I see that there are plenty of commented caveats, but coming within 24 hours of a 14 billion dollar retroactive tax bill for one of the world's most opportunistic tax dodgers, I cannot help but have good faith towards this announcement. Here is the only bloc, globally, that actually seems to care about individuals versus corporations, with unequivocal and demonstrated evidence of said motivations. I've been fed a diet of "useless, corrupt, 'Brussels' bureaucrats" ever since I moved to Britain (which, as an aside, today disgracefully tried to woo AAPL with the anti-tax red carpet). But all I actually see, is a bunch of people, bureaucrats perhaps, but who are trying to look out for me . Today I say, Hurrah EU! Thank you Julia Reda.

I once heard an interview with the Economist digital editor Tom Standage where he claims (at 5:45 into the interview) that net neutrality is the wrong thing to focus on, and the important thing is just making sure there is more competition between the telcos. Can someone more familiar with this issue tell me if this argument is correct?

https://www.podcat.com/podcasts/i63zqo-untether-tv-mobile-st...

I don't understand how it's "progress" to move decisions from a small number of bureaucracies to a single, less accountable bureaucracy.

These were the guidelines from November 2015

http://eur-lex.europa.eu/legal-content/EN/TXT/PDF/?uri=CELEX...

Irish phone companies are also doing the same:

Meteor http://www.killbiller.com/blog/2016/6/16/free-facebook-insta...

Eir: https://www.siliconrepublic.com/life/eir-meteor-mobile-socia...

How about Clothing neutrality? :)

Any thoughts on Obama handing over the DNS directory to the UN?

For your convenience, here's just the text "in the boxes" (the Recitals), from http://berec.europa.eu/eng/document_register/subject_matter/...

These are the first 9, the other 10 are here: https://gist.github.com/daveloyall/a1112bb70412d77bebc809090...

Recital 1 =========

This Regulation aims to establish common rules to safeguard equal and non-discriminatory treatment of traffic in the provision of internet access services and related end-users’ rights. It aims to protect end-users and simultaneously to guarantee the continued functioning of the internet ecosystem as an engine of innovation.

Recital 2 =========

The measures provided for in this Regulation respect the principle of technological neutrality, that is to say they neither impose nor discriminate in favour of the use of a particular type of technology.

Recital 3 =========

The internet has developed over the past decades as an open platform for innovation with low access barriers for end-users, providers of content, applications and services and providers of internet access services. The existing regulatory framework aims to promote the ability of end-users to access and distribute information or run applications and services of their choice. However, a significant number of end-users are affected by traffic management practices which block or slow down specific applications or services. Those tendencies require common rules at the Union level to ensure the openness of the internet and to avoid fragmentation of the internal market resulting from measures adopted by individual Member States.

Recital 4 =========

An internet access service provides access to the internet, and in principle to all the end-points thereof, irrespective of the network technology and terminal equipment used by end-users. However, for reasons outside the control of providers of internet access services, certain end points of the internet may not always be accessible. Therefore, such providers should be deemed to have complied with their obligations related to the provision of an internet access service within the meaning of this Regulation when that service provides connectivity to virtually all end points of the internet. Providers of internet access services should therefore not restrict connectivity to any accessible end-points of the internet.

Recital 5 =========

When accessing the internet, end-users should be free to choose between various types of terminal equipment as defined in Commission Directive 2008/63/EC (1). Providers of internet access services should not impose restrictions on the use of terminal equipment connecting to the network in addition to those imposed by manufacturers or distributors of terminal equipment in accordance with Union law.

Recital 6 =========

End-users should have the right to access and distribute information and content, and to use and provide applications and services without discrimination, via their internet access service. The exercise of this right should be without prejudice to Union law, or national law that complies with Union law, regarding the lawfulness of content, applications or services. This Regulation does not seek to regulate the lawfulness of the content, applications or services, nor does it seek to regulate the procedures, requirements and safeguards related thereto. Those matters therefore remain subject to Union law, or national law that complies with Union law.

Recital 7 =========

In order to exercise their rights to access and distribute information and content and to use and provide applications and services of their choice, end-users should be free to agree with providers of internet access services on tariffs for specific data volumes and speeds of the internet access service. Such agreements, as well as any commercial practices of providers of internet access services, should not limit the exercise of those rights and thus circumvent provisions of this Regulation safeguarding open internet access. National regulatory and other competent authorities should be empowered to intervene against agreements or commercial practices which, by reason of their scale, lead to situations where end-users’ choice is materially reduced in practice. To this end, the assessment of agreements and commercial practices should, inter alia, take into account the respective market positions of those providers of internet access services, and of the providers of content, applications and services, that are involved. National regulatory and other competent authorities should be required, as part of their monitoring and enforcement function, to intervene when agreements or commercial practices would result in the undermining of the essence of the end-users’ rights.

Recital 8 =========

When providing internet access services, providers of those services should treat all traffic equally, without discrimination, restriction or interference, independently of its sender or receiver, content, application or service, or terminal equipment. According to general principles of Union law and settled case-law, comparable situations should not be treated differently and different situations should not be treated in the same way unless such treatment is objectively justified.

Recital 9 =========

The objective of reasonable traffic management is to contribute to an efficient use of network resources and to an optimisation of overall transmission quality responding to the objectively different technical quality of service requirements of specific categories of traffic, and thus of the content, applications and services transmitted. Reasonable traffic management measures applied by providers of internet access services should be transparent, non-discriminatory and proportionate, and should not be based on commercial considerations. The requirement for traffic management measures to be non-discriminatory does not preclude providers of internet access services from implementing, in order to optimise the overall transmission quality, traffic management measures which differentiate between objectively different categories of traffic. Any such differentiation should, in order to optimise overall quality and user experience, be permitted only on the basis of objectively different technical quality of service requirements (for example, in terms of latency, jitter, packet loss, and bandwidth) of the specific categories of traffic, and not on the basis of commercial considerations. Such differentiating measures should be proportionate in relation to the purpose of overall quality optimisation and should treat equivalent traffic equally. Such measures should not be maintained for longer than necessary.

any thoughts on Obama handing over the DNS directory to the UN?