
The EU’s new internet rules will hurt the continent’s startups - jeo1234
http://www.economist.com/news/business/21677175-eus-new-internet-rules-will-hurt-continents-startups-multi-speed-europe
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TeMPOraL
I don't understand such articles, maybe someone can clarify the issue for me?
If a company can do Harmful Things X and Y, and then a law appears that bans
it from doing X but for some reason does not cover Y, then how is the rule
_hurting_ the victims of that company? How can reducing but not completely
eliminating harmful things actually be actively hurting?

~~~
jfaucett
Its all about loopholes actually. Lets take for example a simple law that says
all employers must give their employees health insurance. No sane person is
against people having health insurance, its just the ways companies might get
around this law that is the problem. For instance, lets say this applies to
fulltime employees, well then the company might lay people off, hire more
contractors and part-timers, then those same people have less job security,
perhaps lower wages because other laws regarding fulltime employees dont
apply, and still no health insurance.

That is essentially what this EU law boils down to: a law with lots of
loophole room for companies to exploit.

~~~
logicchains
>Lets take for example a simple law that says all employers must give their
employees health insurance. No sane person is against people having health
insurance

Given that in many countries apart from the US, health insurance is provided
by the government and/or private sector, I'd posit that there are quite a few
sane people who don't believe having employers be responsible for providing
health insurance is necessarily a good idea.

An example found by some quick Googling:
[http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2012/05/12/how-
emp...](http://www.forbes.com/sites/theapothecary/2012/05/12/how-employer-
sponsored-insurance-drives-up-health-costs/)

~~~
jfaucett
I do not live in the US, I chose a specificlly US example because most people
are probably familiar with the US system here. Regardless, if you read my
statement, it has nothing to do with whether a company/govt should or should
not provide insurance, just that "no sane person is against people having
health insurance". If someone thinks, in general, people should not have
health care services I think there is something wrong with them i.e. they are
not being sane.

A better example could have perhaps been rent ceilings in large cities, since
there are many classic examples of this loophole behavior in economics.

~~~
logicchains
Sorry, I assumed from the sentence preceding it that you meant that no sane
person would be against employers providing health insurance.

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KaiserPro
The main problem with this argument is that "net neutrality" is a poorly
defined term.

What it has come to symbolise in the states is the lack competition, and the
ability of At&t verizon and timewarner to stifle competition.

For example: the netflix fiasco.

Comcast wanted money for peering directly with netflix.

In the UK and most of Europe that sort of dick waving is very very difficult
to achieve.

Firstly because there is competition in the UK, holland, france etc., there is
more than one provider of broadband in most areas (and very very tight rules
about what the monopoly can charge.)

That means that if netflix is slow because a certain company is playing
hardball, customers will leave. So deliberately slowing down a key legal
service is going to loose you customers. Doing so in an effort to boost your
own rival will also lead to successful prosecution (unlike in the states)

Secondly here in europe, peering is cheap and easy. Places like LINX, LONAP
and the european equivalents means that peering centres are co-owned by all
the people peering. Not a Big ISP. There are still peering agreements where
money is changed hands.

Thirdly ISPs here are more than happy to have Edge caches. why? because it
cuts down on the need for peak bandwidth to non local traffic. It also cuts
down on bandwidth going other third-party connections(which again cost money).

Crucially, Not all traffic is treated the same. For the last 10 years QoS has
been applied to virtually all domestic connections. You literally cannot have
cheap broadband, with full connectivity and no traffic shaping _and_ it be
usable. To make sure that your domestic internet is usable the ISP would have
to provision your full link speed in the backhaul, to all upstream networks.

ISPs may say that they don't traffic manage, but they are 100% telling
porkies. In the UK, all ISPs have a fair use policy. This states that certain
types of traffic will be slowed during peak hours, _or_ that if you use too
much bandwidth your whole connection will be slowed.

Traffic management is universal.

------
tigerente
With "special services" insufficiently defined, this opens up a lot of
possibilities. Just today, Deutsche Telekom announced that "According to our
[Deutsche Telekom] ideas, they [startups] pay for it as part of a revenue
sharing of a few percent. That would be a fair contribution for the use of
infrastructure."

[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10472765](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10472765)

With "video conferencing, online gaming, telemedicine automated traffic
control and self-steering cars up to integrated production processes in the
industry" as examples of users needing to pay, this goes a lot further than
what has always been argued for by the commission.

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nraynaud
a UK conservative magasine against an EU action, so surprising. To them, even
if EU cured cancer it would still be wrong. Why do we see so many links of
this website here actually? Like most UK people they hate the EU, and they are
only part of it for subversion.

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signaler
'Internet' and 'rules' in the same sentence is a contradiction in terms. The
web was not designed for the kind of draconian oversight you see in the EU and
elsewhere. Anything that resembles some form of rigidity will be made less
rigid and force startups to 'think differently' and more fluid. It's a form of
present shock (as Rushkoff has coined) which people are not used to that you
see in bustling Shoreditch and other tech melting pots. You actually have
people who look like The Internet in those places with USB flash drives as
necklaces...

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dsthode
Completely unrelated to the topic, but did anyone notice that the article is
from the future? Has Oct. 31st as publication date.

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miguelrochefort
I've been saying that Net Neutrality was a bad idea from day 1. Nobody would
listen.

There you go.

Regulation is always a bad thing.

~~~
TorKlingberg
Did you read the article?

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s3nnyy
Yet another reason why I live in Switzerland, which is NOT in the EU. Read my
story here: "Eight reasons why I moved to Switzerland (to work in IT)":
[https://medium.com/@iwaninzurich/eight-reasons-why-i-
moved-t...](https://medium.com/@iwaninzurich/eight-reasons-why-i-moved-to-
switzerland-to-work-in-it-c7ac18af4f90) If you are interested in coming to
Switzerland, just shoot me a mail.

------
skimpycompiler
That's why any startup that wants business will make an Inc in the US.

It's legally much simpler to do so, and leave your offices in the cheap EU. US
Inc can employ your offices and at the same time have no people working in the
US.

US is saved by ruthless capitalism. When I see what politicians from my
country voted on I'm realizing that journalists, political science majors,
historians, spanish/english/lang language teachers, philosophers, artists and
bunch of other social scientists know much about nothing - maybe it says
something about our national universities, maybe about these science areas as
a whole, who knows. But for some reason they think they are capable of having
a career in politics, and it works.

~~~
junto

      That's why any startup that wants business will make an Inc in the US.
      
      It's legally much simpler to do so, and leave your offices in the cheap 
      EU. US Inc can employ your offices and at the same time have no people 
      working in the US.
    
      US is saved by ruthless capitalism. When I see what politicians from my 
      country voted on I'm realizing that journalists, political science 
      majors, historians, spanish/english/lang language teachers, 
      philosophers, artists and bunch of other social scientists know much 
      about nothing - maybe it says something about our national universities, 
      maybe about these science areas as a whole, who knows. But for some 
      reason they think they are capable of having a career in politics, and 
      it works.
    

Eh? Did you read the article?

It states that the US has _more_ stringent and complete controls on net
neutrality than the EU. The EU has loopholes, therefore less controlling and
protectionist (consumer) than the US.

If you want to take corporate advantage of lax net neutrality protection laws,
then you are better off utilising "ruthless capitalism" in the EU (for this
particular instance), and not in the US.

You argument is backwards.

~~~
spacecowboy_lon
And each EU country implements the directives as it sees fit and can vary
widely compare how TUPE is handled for example.

So you can expect some EU countries to play favorites with there ex PTO or
Powerful Media interests.

