Threat To Net Neutrality In Europe 147
Narcissus writes to tell us that the European Parliament is planning a vote in the Industry, Transport, Energy (ITRE) committee that could reintroduce amendment 138 (currently amendment 46) which deals with safeguards to user rights on the internet and graduated response schemes. There are several online campaigns trying to drive awareness and action already but there is limited time to act. "The Council may propose a compromise version of amendment 138/46 that is completely neutralized, or that may even become the opposite of the original by allowing the 'three strikes' scheme instead of preventing it. According to the latest negotiations, am.138/46 wouldn't anymore be an article (that must be transposed by Member States in their law) but a mere recital that has just indicative value. It is urgent to contact the members of the ITRE committee to advise them to reject compromise with the Council that failed to respect the intent of the original amendment. The best would be once again to approve the amendment."
maybe, maybe not (Score:1)
Re:maybe, maybe not (Score:5, Insightful)
Call back later? Wrong answer. Once the amendment's passed, it's too late to call your representative. We Americans have discovered this from personal experience wherein today's proposal suddenly passes the Congress tomorrow, and now we're stuck with the law. Too late to whine after it's a done deal.
NOW is the time to call your reps.
Re:maybe, maybe not (Score:5, Insightful)
Yes. The vote hasn't happened yet.
Generally speaking its best to raise awareness of an important vote before it happens, so that you can contact your representatives and make it clear what you expect them to do. You know, so that your representatives actually represent you. Believe it or not democracy doesn't have to happen with elected officials doing what they want while you mutter under your breath, you are allowed as a citizen to actually participate in the process by making your opinions clear to those people who make the vote.
Re:maybe, maybe not (Score:5, Informative)
For all the Dutch people here (part of the EU), mail this to the NOS News at nosbinnenland@nos.nl to send your press tips and raise awareness.
The NOS news has been reporting on censorship last week with that local newspaper... I am sure some of you will remember, so they will express interest in this too.
Hint at the Australian censorship as to why 'child-porn' blocking went instantly into censorship of Wikileaks and Wikipedia among other legitimate websites. You can alos find that block-list on Wikileaks.
If more people than just me tip them about it via email then I am sure they will air it tommorow!
Don't think that some one else will already do that beauce usualy no-one does because they think "ah a lot of people will read this so I don't have to"!
Re:maybe, maybe not (Score:5, Insightful)
And if they don't get what they initially wanted, they'll try another law, and if that doesn't go through, they'll try another law... Until they finally manage to come up with the perfect timing when nobody is paying attention and it goes through.
That or they'll just declare that it's in effect, they can get away with that more and more these days. It's not like voting them out would change anything.
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The encouraging thing is that we seem to be part of the same 'movement'. People really are waking up nowadays... And paying attention. Keep up the good fight.
Give it Up! (Score:5, Insightful)
As long as carriers can set their own policies for traffic carried across networks that they own, Net Neutrality is a dead topic.
Free Enterprise dictates that the carriers have the right to price services according to market demand. If your carrier starts adopting tiered pricing or starts prioritizing your traffic in ways that it sees fit, then let your feet do the walking to another carrier.
Free Markets do eventually work their way around to providing the services people want for the price they're willing to pay.
Re:Give it Up! (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Give it Up! (Score:4, Insightful)
I have at least 3 hard-wired choices to my home, both high speed. There's at least 4 3G wireless carriers I can deal with so I think I do have some choice at least where I'm at, so YMMV. I do agree that there needs to be a healthy market though but why then do we in the US give monopolies to companies that just run cables to your house or buy a set of frequencies? To give them incentives to build out the infrastructure. I believe that that system needs to change a bit and only allow them full monopoly power over that investment for a certain period of time.
If you look at Time Warner's recent "Tiered" evaluation flop you can see that people can and do influence these decisions as well.
Re:Give it Up! (Score:4, Informative)
Everyone in Belgium has three choices too. They're Belgacom, Belgacom in disguise and Belgacom in a different disguise.
This is completely illegal under EU law, which is made less than ten minutes walk from Belgacom's HQ.
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Around here the choice of broadband providers is limited to two--cable or telco. Both are regulated monopolies. If both of them started filtering, I would have basically no recourse.
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Yes and no. Do those networks cross land that they own?
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I have Cable, Fiber and Twisted Pair all going across my "Easement" on my land. The Easement was granted in my Deed to the City so yes there's a civic responsibility to allow for valid utility concerns to use that Easement to provide services for the community. That doesn't however prohibit multiple companies from putting in their own cabling infrastructure just becase somebody else did it already. The providers have paid the city, paid the contractors and bought the cable and fiber. They own that infra
Re:Give it Up! (Score:5, Insightful)
Yeah, because free markets did such a good job with the banking industry.
The rational equilibrium model of the free market fundamentalists has gone tits up. Move on, and wise up. Collusion, misinformation, and group think are quite capable of doing for the IT sector what they have done for the financial sector.
There needs to be citizen participation in both politics and economics. Economies are not worthwhile aims in themselves, they are merely tools we use to coordinate society - whenever they don't work for people, we should seek to change them.
Re:Give it Up! (Score:5, Interesting)
>>>Yeah, because free markets did such a good job with the banking industry.
Not a free market. It's controlled by the *monopoly* called the Reserve Bank, which is itself controlled by the Congress, which mandated in the mid-1990s that banks must hand-out "no money down" loans. That eventually led to the housing crisis. That is not a free market. That's an oligarchy of 535 men.
A true free market would not have a Reserve Bank setting interest rates, but instead have interest rates that are set by each independent bank, and these rates would move up-and-down with supply-and-demand. Furthermore Congress would allow banks to decide for themselves who qualifies and who does not qualify for loans, based on income.
Yes that means some would hear the word "no". Oh well.
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> which mandated in the mid-1990s that banks must hand-out "no money down" loans.
Care to back this up?
Also, that is a theory, which is totally new to me. And frankly, even assuming that might be the case, I fail to see how "no money down" loans can lead to the sub-prime crisis.
The canonical explanation which blames bad risk assessment (banks, rating agencies) seems much more plausible to me.
> A true free market would not have a Reserve Bank setting interest rates,[...]
The Fed is only setting the inter
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>>>The Fed is only setting the interest rate at which banks can borrow from other banks. Your interest rate and that of mortgages are decided by your bank in competition with other banks.
And those rates are typically tied to the Fed rates. In fact my credit card contract states, "Federal Reserve Prime Rate + 10.9%". I don't have a mortgage but if I did, I'm sure it would have a similar clause if it was the variable-type mortgage. That's not a free market, but a controlled market where the centra
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The wikipedia article on CRA [wikipedia.org] shows no sign of a requirement of "No money down" loans. It also states, that only certain banks were regulated by the CRA, and interestingly:
While correlation may not be causation, no correlation is a fairly good indicator for no causation.
> A
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And it also sounds more plausible to most economists - it just sounds implausible to rabid libertarians and neoliberals who are emotionally invested in the idea of perfect markets. To them, the idea that markets are not the ideal means to communicate economic information (the risk of a loan being defaulted, for example) is quite literally a heresy.
You can't get them to admit they are wrong, bu
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No libertarian thinks the market is purpose...er, perfect. They simply think it's better than the alternative of government control. Like the current crisis where the government is artificially propping-up bad businesses. That is the wrong approach, and the proper approach is to let those businesses go bankrupt, and then the pieces can be sold off to healthier businesses.
The free market is basically natural selection in action - yes there are hard times and yes some organisms/ businesses don't survive, b
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I stopped reading when you invoked natural selection as a political guideline rather than a scientific phenomenon.
Appealing to 'nature' is intellectually dishonest, illogical, and as history shows us - downright dangerous. Nature does a lot of things, doesn't mean we should imitate them.
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your idea is completely broken because under your idea a bank could make known bad loans and barrow on margin (thats what fractional reserve banking is all about) from other banks in a circle until then all go down at once and the CEOs take the cash. This is basically what happened.
The problem with zero regulation is that it creates a boom and bust cycle where the banks repeatedly give you a lolli-pop and then slam a pineapple up your ass. And zero regulation is impossible with a modern system, it will alwa
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>>>The US has had a boom and bust cycle of every 20 years until the great depression.
And after. The Depression ended sometime around 1951-52, and then we had a boom that lasted twenty years until the 1970s bust... then we had another boom starting in 1981 that lasted until 1999 which is another twenty plus-or-minus a few years. You miscategorize the situation if you think the cycle stopped.
As for the rest of your post, it's confusing what point you were trying to make, but you appear to be under
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A true free market would not have a Reserve Bank setting interest rates, but instead have interest rates that are set by each independent bank, and these rates would move up-and-down with supply-and-demand.
Historically that has always resulted in bank failures and bank runs and the loss of the savings of many thrifty people.
Without some regulation, either through malice or incompetence, a bank is going to screw its customers out of their money because someone thought they could take a risk they could not (l
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So what you're implying is that if I make an investment to provide services to you I shouldn't have domain over the Ts&Cs? If that's the case then I won't make the investment and let the government build out that infrastructure.
If I see a market that I can provide value to and make a profit then I'll invest in that market. Whether that's Internet Services or Widgets. If there's no possibility for profit or fear for over-regulation and minimalization of my investment then I can find other alternatives
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You're forgetting the billions given to you on the agreement that you'd build out the infrastructure in the first place. Conveniently forgetting.
Apparently it's socialism only when money flows to someone who isn't you.
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What you say is true, but there is an overall flaw in this slashdot topic.
There is a big difference between a 'threat to net neutrality' and an approach to dealing with 'graduated response' to ILLEGAL ACTIVITIES.
Net Neutrality doesn't mean its ok to pirate software and music - it means that you will have open access to information. This is akin to freedom, wherein you can own knives, guns, ropes, and poisons, but you are still responsible for legal acts you might do with them. It isn't a loss of freedom
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What if NAMBLA had an opinion about making love to young boys but started molesting them before they made the act legal? They would be convicted and restricted.
I think copyrights are at the discretion of the owner. If an owner wants to capitalize on a product instead of share it freely in culture, it is theirs and they, as I believe, have that right to restrict. I am sure in you're capable of understanding where an artist may want to control the use of their work.
Your point is well placed, though. I pr
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But at what point are you becoming a criminal? Is it going to be illegal in the future to even criticize your government? That happens in Australia... you'll just be getting banned. No, not you, but your website(!). You'll still be able to check it out, but no-one else will be able to so you're not even beinbg informed! That's scary...
By the way, I am so glad people still make normal hip-hop instead of "Fsck those b*tches yo, n shit" gangster-(c)rap. God I hate that! And what most artists still don't unders
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You make a really good point about the abuse of the system and draconian politic. I agree that such abuses should not be allowed. Are the Australians too sated to do whats right for themselves and revolt? Maybe as a whole they are still too free and happy to truly care. I have noticed that in our world absent of ideals, masses are quite satisfied with the best piece of shit they can find. In this case the Australians are probably more glad not to be a somalian resorting to piracy.
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I don't agree with how the RIAA operate, nor many of the ways they do their work. But the RIAA doesn't just make a judgement; they are required to go through the same legal processes that any other legal representative of a victim must go through. Furthermore, conviction requires the RIAA to compel the court with sufficient evidence.
Fortunately their shady methods have been brought to light so they will definitely need much more solid evidence before a court.
Also take note that this must happen to someon
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Yes and in the intervening centuries the people are stuck with state-sanctioned monopolies.
Good thing we don't live now.
European Parliament Elections very soon... (Score:5, Insightful)
Send a clear message that this nonsense will not be tolerated... to help make an intelligent decision when voting in European elections, see:
http://www.laquadrature.net/en [laquadrature.net] [laquadrature.net]
Check out the Political memory resource:
http://www.laquadrature.net/wiki/Political_Memory [laquadrature.net] [laquadrature.net]
especially the "List of recorded votes" section to see who voted for what - before you reward them with your vote for them.
Also of interest, the Telecoms Package section: http://www.laquadrature.net/wiki/Telecoms_Package [laquadrature.net] [laquadrature.net]
URGENT: Two days to help Catherine Trautmann prote (Score:5, Informative)
Bad form to reply to own post, but I just saw this related news item at http://www.laquadrature.net/en [laquadrature.net]
URGENT: Two days to help Catherine Trautmann protect EU citizens.
Paris, April 20th 2009 - The Council of the EU is strongly pushing Catherine Trautmann - rapporteur of the main directives of the "Telecoms Package" - to accept a useless, neutralized version[1] of amendment 138. This amendment, opposing to "graduated response - or "three strikes" â" schemes, has been overwhelmingly adopted by the European Parliament in its first reading on September 2008, and is crucial for safeguarding EU citizens' rights and freedoms. La Quadrature du Net calls European citizens to urge their MEPs seating in ITRE committee to support the rapporteur by refusing any compromise neutralizing amendment 138 (now renumbered 46) on April 21st vote.
[1] The Council wants to make it a merely indicative recital instead of an article that Member States must transpose into their law
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Meh... only bad form on bulletin boards which have an "edit post" feature. Slashdot decided not to allow editing of posts (most likely because it would be too powerful of a tool for trolls) so it's all good here.
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Industry, Research and Energy (ITRE) committee Members contact details (Including emails), by country: http://www.laquadrature.net/wiki/MEPs_ITRE [laquadrature.net]
Two clicks and a quick email/phone call to "urge [your] MEPs seating in ITRE committee to support the rapporteur by refusing any compromise neutralizing amendment 138 (now renumbered 46) on April 21st vote.".
(Thanks to Shawb for pointing out it is not bad form to reply to own post :)
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>>>Check out the Political memory resource:
Cool. We need a website like this for the United States' Congress and the 50 State Legislatures.
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It's about free speech, which even for you should weigh heavier than your job, the inflation and the safety of your family.
What if you get abused by your employer but are unable to say anything about it, or even warn others from accepting positions there? What if the government imprisons your family but you are unable to voice your protest?
Nothing weighs heavier than free speech and freedom of expression. Internet should be a free, uncensored, unmonitored channel of communication that adheres to no rules.
Th
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Yeah, man! Stick it to the telcos!
alright idiot. then be a slave. (Score:2)
they will guarantee your job, they will guarantee your children's job, they will make sure you eat food.
but you and your children will do what they want, forever.
go get yourself fucked in your own little serfdom. this is not the europe i want.
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Are they? The least worse type? I disagree. The Athenian Democracy killed itself through foolish decisions made by the demos (the people). Are the modern Euro-American democracies heading down the same path, a ship of state led by the ignorant masses? Furthermore is democracy truly "liberty" or is it just another form of tyranny wherein the larger 51% squash the smaller minority underfoot.
I can think of a government that is better than a democracy:
A Republic that borders on the edge of anarchy (no gov
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If you think I was endorsing anarchy, then English must not be your first language. I said nothing of the kind. Re-read what I wrote, and this time try to pay attention. ;-)
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I don't think you should be on the edge of anarchy, for the same reason that there are government in the first place.
OK so maybe you and I can live a good life. OK so maybe a lot of other people who actually think for themselves can too, but the majority is still ruled by instinct!
Group behavior, looking at girls chests instead of their eyes, etc. don't fit in this liberty picture at all.
I like your ideals very much, but I can also see the simple and sad truth that most people amongst us just need to be put
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>>>OK so maybe a lot of other people who actually think for themselves can too, but the majority is still ruled by instinct!
(1) Too bad. (2) I think you underestimate your fellow human beings. The U.S. lived on the edge-of-anarchy (minimal government) from 1789 to 1900 and almost everyone survived just fine. People took care of themselves and enjoyed being free of parental interference by the politicians.
Now we have a nanny state, and it seems you can't do anything without government interferenc
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> Personally I'm more interested in voting for people who can keep me in a job, keep inflation low, keep me and my family safe and prospering in the future.
We are getting close to Godwin's law.
> Being able to download copyrighted stuff without paying is WAY down the list of things of importance, if it even makes the list at all.
Re:European Parliament Elections very soon... (Score:4, Insightful)
>>>voting for people who can keep me in a job, keep inflation low, keep me and my family safe and prospering in the future.
What you're looking for is not "politicians" but "parents", and since I presume you are not a child, my advice is that you need to "put away your childish things" and stand on your own two feet as an adult. The purpose of the government is not to babysit you and/or raid your neighbors wallets like Daddy Soprano & give you their money (which I call theft of labor). The purpose of government, to quote the founder of the Democratic Party, is to "prevent one man from harming another. And that is all the government should interfere." - Thomas Jefferson.
Another person, not sure who, said "A government powerful enough to give everything you need is also powerful enough to take everything you have. Including your property, your liberty, or your life." Just ask the American citizens who President FDR forced into concentration camps. FDR had become so powerful, he was able to imprison millions of Americans with just a word from his lips, like a living reincarnation of the Roman Emperor and completely contrary to the Supreme Law of the Land.
The bigger the government becomes, the smaller your liberty becomes, until you might as well be living like a child, who must constantly ask permission. I don't want to live in such a society.
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Here's a link for non-Americans who may not know about this [wikipedia.org].
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Lets be pragmatic about it.
1. Without regulation, monopolies will eventually form and once at the top they will leverage their position to increase barriers to market entry. They will also manually set arbitrary prices and wages and therefore be no better than communism.
2. Humans won't wait 10 years through an economic depression. They'll either turn to crime because they feel that society in general screwed them or they'll join or vote for radical political alignments in order to push change. You can chast
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1. When monopolies form, they do not last. Either new companies emerge to offer lower prices than the monopoly's prices, or new technologies emerge to break the monopoly (CDs replaced by downloadable songs, for example), or both at the same time. You mentioned Standard Oil... well that held a monopoly for maybe ten years, but then the monopoly eroded due to new companies emerging in Texas and the monopoly was broken. There was no need for government interference.
>>>Jefferson never foresaw Stan
Stop it. (Score:5, Insightful)
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Don't do crime, don't get your freedoms limited. Life isn't as hard as you're pretending it is. Follow the law or change the law, but in the end it is important to know that a repercussion for a convicted criminal is not the same as limiting freedoms.
What do you suppose we do with criminals? Nothing?
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When the mere act of sharing a NSL Letter with my lawyer is treated as a crime, when the mere act of having a FlashMob party with my friends at the local Pub becomes a crime, when the mere act of refusing to pay taxes on blank CD/DVDs AND paying a fine to local RIAA for downloading music to my PC becomes a crime, when the congressmen and MPs who were elected by me refuse to listen to me and instead obey the diktats of Moneybags and pass an act that makes it a crime to high-five my friends at school, when t
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You pretend to care enough, but you don't. If you did you would do something about this supposed corrupt activity and revolt. Instead you'll sit back and be pacified by all the good things your government does for you and wait for someone else to throw the first stone.
Get real, get reality. Do crime, you get convicted and deal with the consequences. If you want the laws changed, quit crying to me about it and actually go do something about it. You're the guy upset about the way laws incriminate --- its
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I just posted about this. Great job at getting your post in early so it gets seen.
There is no relationship between eventually banning a criminal from the internet, and limiting access to information.
This whole damn slashdot posting needs to be modded OFFTOPIC since the subject matter and the headline have nothing in common.
I'll be damn pleased if criminals on the internet eventually get their access cut off. We do these same things in the rest of the civilized world. It doesn't mean your freedoms are bei
Your industry talking points have been noted (Score:2)
Enoguh with your tired propaganda. Sharing is not a crime. Destroying the internet for the benefit of coke snorting, whore fucking, disgusting music industry execs ought to be one.
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Enoguh with your tired propaganda. Sharing is not a crime. Destroying the internet for the benefit of coke snorting, whore fucking, disgusting music industry execs ought to be one.
Cry a river. It won't change shit about THE LAW. And until you man up and do something to actually change those laws, you'll get charged and convicted for what your opinion disagrees with. NAMBLA has an opinion too, but I hope they won't start making love to young boys until they get our country to accept their ideas.
I'm not talking propaganda, I'm talking about reality. I am totally happy with banning people who do crime on the internet from using the internet over a 3-strikes 'graduated response'. If
Talk about missing the point (Score:2)
We're changing the law right here. That's what we are doing with the fine people at LQDN. In any case, I'm more than capable of doing whatever it takes not to be disconnected, me and all my high end pirated software.
Yes, I admit it, all my software is PIRATED. I downloaded it for free on the internet! Sue me! I can even give you the name and addresses of the copyright holders, even better, I'm going to GIVE YOU copies of ALL my software. For free. Oh my god I'm such a thief. Surely the makers of that softwa
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I'm not hiding from anything. Lol.
Be a good boy and man up to your words. ACTUALLY do something instead of sitting on slashdot pretending like your complaints will make a difference.
My guess is that you are actually too satisfied by the other good things your government provides and that you would rather enjoy that stability than do what is necessary to achieve your proposed goals. I'll be watching the news, waiting for ninnies like you to man up and do something about all this hustling and bustling you
What kind of idiot are you? (Score:2)
I've been calling MEPs, meeting with my MP, writing a tech memo at the request of another, doing research and doing writeups for our advocacy group's wiki, fixing up websites and so on and so forth.
WTF are you rambling about?
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And when you get ignored, then what? You'll go back under the bed and write pissy poems and get all worked up telling your girlfriend about how upset you are... lol.
All this discussion, beside the fact that banning criminals != threatening net neutrality. It means criminals get banned. I sure hope child porn and spammers get banned from access. I hope malware producers and black-hat hackers bet banned.
I didn't get ignored, you moron (Score:2)
My MP reused one of my argument in the assembly, another, and he, along with the few main opponents, thanked us for our contributions; in fact they all met [I couldn't attend due to a last minute obligation] with the few MPs in a bar after the surprise vote of the 9th
I sure hope child porn and spammers get banned from access.
And I want cancer to be cured. I'm going to get a law passed to make cancer illegal. It's gonna be as useful as what you're defending here.
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I guess we'll see if you actually get ignored or not based on the outcome.
Its a shame that you've so recklessly implied laws do not have meaningful outcomes. I'm sure the child pornographers and spammers that have already been busted, to-date, would disagree with your blatant misrepresentation of reality. If you felt that laws do not actually serve such purpose, what are you so upset about? Aren't you, according to your implication, immune to recourse for your actions?
Unfortunately for your silly idea ab
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Your argument has some weight, but has nothing to do with the fact that this article is a completely wrong and misrepresents what net neutrality actually is.
Do crime on the net, get banned. Its the same way in the real world. If you want the laws changed so you're not a criminal anymore, do it the right way by revolution or amendment --- talking shit on slashdot and conveniently pretending that laws don't exist won't get you anything but convicted and banned in the end.
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The end of the Golden Age of the Internet (Score:5, Insightful)
It's quite clear to me that the end of the Golden Age of the Internet is drawing near.
The internet has finally drawn the attention of the huge money and power brokers of the world. These people are going to make sure that the Internet serves their ends as much as possible.
Oh, there will be the few geeks who know how to set up a proxy to secure a tiny bit of anonymity until one of the Big Fish get wind of you and get interested in tracking you down, but for the most part, all connections are going to be monitored. They are going to know who's on each end of every communication channel, and they are going to know what is being communicated, and to a large extent, they will control it. Whether it's priority transmission speeds, bandwidth capping, or outright censoring, there's too much money at stake on the Internet now to leave the playing field "neutral".
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Correct. Like "per gigabyte" pricing. It seems entirely logical that grandma should only pay $7 a month for her minimal usage, while I pay $100 a month for my heavy downloading. I'm using more electricity therefore I'm costing the ISP more money. It's only natural that I should pay more overall.
Of course, if I did have to pay $100 that means I'd download less, probably moving to smaller files like 150 megabytes instead of the 1.5 gig HD videos. So it's a reinforcing paradigm where higher prices encoura
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They'd have more to lose in a system like this. Their costs for operation remain pretty much the same from month to month (just maintaining a network that already exists), but they could lose a whole lot of money just because people didn't feel like downloading the latest youtube sensation. Not only that but peak times would pretty much remain peak times and any "bottlenecks" would still get bumped into. They'll continue to set policies that affect the top 10% (many of whom are taking advantage of the sy
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>>>They'd have more to lose in a system like this.
Then what are we worried about? Even if they pass the per-gigabyte pricing, they'll quickly self-correct and go back to the old flat-rate model, rather than lose money.
>>>Bandwidth Ratio's are much less of a threat to "Net Neutrality"
I don't know what that is.
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Usage is not the only cost to an ISP. If you download .001GB per month but spend four hours every month on the phone with their tech support the usage is minimal compared to the support cost.
I'm sure there are plenty more examples of other costs. No way can they charge just by GB - at least not anywhere near their actual GB cost.
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That's true, but most companies don't charge for tech support. If for example I started calling my electric company for hours on end, and asking for assistance converting my bulbs to compact fluorescent lights, they would not assess me a fee. They'd keep charging me the same 8 cents per kilowatthour they've always charged, and consider the tech support as part of their "cost of doing business". i.e. Good customer service.
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People have predicted the end of net neutrality and the internet for years. It still hasn't happened, and it's because of places like Slashdot.
Re:The end of the Golden Age of the Internet (Score:5, Interesting)
It's less clear to me that this is the case.
You think Google is going to put up long with some idiot provider charging customers an extra $20/month to allow access to *.google.com/*
You think Google is going to share it's ad revenue with consumer ISPs? I'm just using Google as an example, but multiply this by all the big businesses out there.
Time Warner, Comcast, Charter, AT&T, Verizon, etc are all competing with each other using different technologies. Within the next 5 years or so you'll have fiber-class wireless connections available to your homes.
You really think every single player is going to be able to pull their head out of their butts long enough to coordinate something as complex as tiered internet?
Competition is going to keep net neutrality a reality until the basics fundamentally change. You may have the odd player who tries to nickel and dime their customers by over regulating their networks, but it'll be the minority, and there will be options.
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Oh no, the big bad moneymen are here to they'll rape and pillage our Internet and there's nothing we can do to stop them. The end is near! Boo-hoo. If you don't like the way the wind is blowing, stand up and fight against it you fucking pussy. You're not helpless so stop acting like you are.
That probably sounds like a troll but I'm so sick of hearing the defeatist attitude of people who could actually prevent these things if they stopped whining about them for five minutes and stood up for their supposed be
Good luck with that. (Score:2)
If you wish to expend your life energies fighting the billions of dollars at stake here, good luck with that.
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Oh, there will be the few geeks who know how to set up a proxy to secure a tiny bit of anonymity until one of the Big Fish get wind of you and get interested in tracking you down, but for the most part, all connections are going to be monitored. They are going to know who's on each end of every communication channel, and they are going to know what is being communicated, and to a large extent, they will control it.
I suspect if it becomes a large problem for a large set of people, then people will start encr
Why would they want to... (Score:4, Insightful)
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The answer is obvious. They don't want us getting stuff for free. They want us to borrow even more money, go even deeper into debt, and buy more DVDs, CDs, and books. It's all about the $$$.
Bandwidth Exceeded (Score:2, Informative)
Hosted in the US ... sigh (Score:2)
I don't know wtf they were thinking, hosting in Europe is cheap, typically with unlimited traffic.
ITRE MEP contact info (Score:2)
Contact information for the MEPs on the ITRE committee [laquadrature.net] (along with their original votes on the first reading of the amendment).
Cheesed Wife (Score:2, Funny)
I told my wife about this while lying on the couch this evening...she got so pissed off that she emailed all 100 Euro MP's in for Germany in 3 hours...nice, now if she was only this keen in bed ;(
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She most really love her ipod.
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I told my wife about this while lying on the couch this evening...she got so pissed off that she emailed all 100 Euro MP's in for Germany in 3 hours...nice, now if she was only this keen in bed ;(
You're lucky she's not. If she could take on 100 Euro MPs in 3 hours in bed, she'd *kill* you.
The public will not like this (Score:4, Interesting)
If this even get close to being passed, mainstream media will have a field day, especially given that most UK tabloids despise Europe in its entirety already.
Perhaps this is a ploy to stimulate high street sales amirite?
The real web pages (Score:2)
Here is the law text from europarl.
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=TA&language=EN&reference=P6-TA-2008-0452 [europa.eu]
Press release.
http://europa.eu/rapid/pressReleasesAction.do?reference=IP/07/1677&format=HTML&aged=0&language=EN&guiLanguage=en [europa.eu]
More information.
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/news/expert/infopress_page/058-52901-089-03-14-909-20090330IPR52900-30-03-2009-2009-false/default_en.htm [europa.eu]
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Here is the law text from europarl.
http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?type=TA&language=EN&reference=P6-TA-2008-0452 [europa.eu]
Could somebody point me to the relevant bits? I read through the text, but I can't seem to find where it says anything about three strikes or mandatory web filtering (as claimed by the Blackout Europe campaign), other than the basic idea that the end user must be advised of any traffic control policies.
Threat? (Score:2)
I live in the UK and it's well beyond threat. Carter (and I wont refer to him by his full title of Lord because he's undeserving of it) has already given the green light for companies to do whatever the fuck they want and totally disregard net neutrality despite OFCOM previously announcing that they would protect it.
I guess it depends where you are in Europe, but certainly in the UK the Labour government has already outright written off the idea of net neutrality.
A lot of ISPs here have been using DPI to ma
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