UK ISP and Mobile Networks Snub Net Neutrality Pledge 51
nk497 writes "UK ISP Virgin Media and two of the largest mobile networks, Everything Everywhere and Vodafone, are among the high-profile absentees from a new voluntary code of conduct on net neutrality, set to be unveiled tomorrow. The code requires those who sign it to give users access to all legal content and not to discriminate against content providers on the basis of a commercial rivalry — but Virgin has refused to sign because it isn't tough enough. 'These principles remain open to misinterpretation and potential exploitation so, while we welcome efforts to reach a broad consensus to address potential future issues, we will be seeking greater certainty before we consider signing,' a company spokesman said."
Re:It isn't tough enough because it isn't mandator (Score:4, Interesting)
Indeed, but the UK (to me in my short lifetime) seems to work like this: We offer them something voluntary to sign up to which basically gives them far more freedom if they all agree.
Failure for everyone to agree generally leads to something becoming an official guideline; and then a law eventually if they still don't get in line.
Re:It isn't tough enough because it isn't mandator (Score:5, Interesting)
1) It creates a barrier to entry for new websites. They don't need to just technically match the competition, they also need to pay the ISPs not to throttle them.
2) It's easy enough to say that changing ISP will work, but that's only the case if net biassedness doesn't become required for ISPs to survive as a business. It is possible that every ISP would end up having to strike deals with sites in order to be able to charge something in the same ballpark as the competition.
3) If (2) happens, then I could definitely foresee the problem for consumers where it is impossible to get a single ISP with acceptable connections to all the sites you'd want to visit. Imagine if one condition of the BBC's bias agreement was that you weren't allowed to have a similar agreement with Netflix; one condition of Sky's agreement was that you couldn't have a similar agreement with the BBC; one condition of Netflix's agreement was that you couldn't have a similar agreement with Lovefilm (which would mean Amazon)... can you see where this would end up? Customers being forced to sign up to several different ISPs in order to get good connections to all major sites.
Re:It isn't tough enough because it isn't mandator (Score:5, Interesting)
It's not even a net neutrality pledge anyway. It's got far far too many get-out clauses that ISPs can use as an excuse to not enforce net neutrality on their network.
Still, at least some ISPs such as Virgin and Vodafone had the decency to admit outright that they wont sign the pledge because they wont even enforce a semblance of network neutrality. I'm not sure if that makes them better or worse than the ones who signed it pretending they care about net neutrality when they know full well they intend to use any of the many get-out clauses when it suits anyway.
Re:The reason Virgin won't sign... (Score:2, Interesting)
It's nowhere near as bad as the Internet wants to believe. If you're trying to leech a couple of hundred GB, or are running a seedbox 24/7, then yeah you can expect to get your bitch-ass throttled. On the other hand I can download an episode of Breaking Bad in under two minutes (I.e. maxing my 20Mb connection) and they don't even notice.