
Your freedom online is threatened by an EU proposal.  - themichael
http://savetheinternet.eu/en/
======
bowlofpetunias
Net neutrality has become law in the Netherlands after a public outcry about
the traffic discrimination plans of the major mobile providers.

The issue is no longer only known to an obscure minority, and this in a
country where the mood is very strongly against relinquishing any more
autonomy to the EU.

In other words: if the EU attempts to nullify Dutch net neutrality (this
proposal would override Dutch law), there will likely be a considerable
backlash.

The EU explicitly revoking our online freedom could be the final nail in the
coffin for Dutch support for the EU.

~~~
PeterSmit
Bullshit. The Netherlands is never ever stepping out of the EU (of which it
was a founder btw), it would be economic suicide.

For everyone outside The Netherlands: Net neutrality was instated after the
largest telecom provider wanted to count Whatsapp messages as SMS messages.
This lead to public outcry.

------
higherpurpose
I'm disappointed that this site for such an important issue doesn't even seem
to work very well when trying to contact your MEP. It doesn't even recognize
my country, and then it picks MEPs at random from multiple countries. If they
didn't have something very reliable, they could've just showed you a list of
countries to select your own, and then pick the MEPs which you want to e-mail
(or all at once).

Also, these EU organizations don't seem nearly as organized as the US ones
(although the US ones aren't that great at this either). I found out about
this _the same day_ the EU Parliament had to vote on this like a month ago.
Fortunately, they canceled the vote back then. Then I heard absolutely nothing
about it until _yesterday_ , again a day before the vote.

These organizations need to do a better job at keeping the public updated on
these Internet issues. We need an EFF of Europe.

~~~
laumars
It's not just that, the colour scheme used on the site is so jarring that it
makes reading the content an unpleasant experience (and that's assuming you
even take it seriously as it looks almost like a prank site).

In the end, I gave up and read the comments on HN to try and work out what the
issue was. And I'm someone who's very keen to keep updated on issues like
these, so I can't imagine how many casual visitors they'll lose because of
this.

------
spindritf
Is it about net neutrality ("all packets were created equal") or is it about
censorship (by which I mean government actions like court orders to block
sites and filters)? Or is it somehow about both?

Why is it the DEATH OF THE INTERNET AS WE KNOW IT when it's a new regulation
that doesn't go as far as they want in the net neutrality direction? And all
they want are some adjustments?

The idea of banning specialised services functionally identical to those on
the Internet means banning all specialised services because you can provide
arbitrary services over the Internet. Including TV and telephone which is what
cable providers here usually sell in addition to Internet access.

Honestly, I don't really understand the issue at hand. Is there a concise,
less agitating explanation somewhere?

~~~
kolme
I think you're taking this too lightly, to be honest.

That's _exactly_ the point of the Internet: it offers arbitrary services.
Banning stuff because it could compete with other services you offer is
opening the door to the internet being crippled on all ISPs.

That's seriously terrifying.

~~~
spindritf
That's my complaint about this site: who's banning what? I just checked, VoIP
works on the same coax that my ISP uses to provide telephone services.

~~~
pdpi
It's increasingly the case that internet, tv and telephone services are
provided by a single company over a single set of infrastructure. Because
those service providers have a vested interest to protect the commercial
viability of their own offerings (specifically, the TV and telephone
packages), there is an incentive to limit the internet service's viability as
a replacement for TV and telephone services. Such limitations allow ISPs to
engage in text-book antic-competitive behaviour by directly hindering their
competitors, and, arguably, the "specialised services" language would allow
them to do just that by treating competitors as a specialised service, and
differentiating the service conditions (e.g. by throttling the bandwidth
offered).

Additionally, using the specialised service language, services like, say,
Youtube, Facebook, Netflix or iTunes can pay ISPs to be treated as a a
specialised service, offering a better-than-standard experience (lifted
traffic limits, increased bandwidth). Such a treatment is sure to be pretty
damn expensive, and raises a very tall hurdle that new entrants in those
markets must jump if they want to compete with the incumbents on even ground.
This is, once again, highly anti-competitive.

~~~
icebraining
There's also an incentive - competition - to provide services that people
actually want over their own offerings. For example, here in Portugal, mobile
provider(s?) are offering unlimited mobile data for services that compete with
SMS, like WhatsApp, Viber, Facebook Messenger, Skype, etc.

Personally, I'm not ideologically opposed to net neutrality legislation, but
I'd rather identify why is competition not preventing ISPs from violating it,
and what can be done to strengthen it. I'm getting somewhat tired of laws that
are just trying to fix the problems created by other laws, like those which
grant privileges to certain economic groups (not that I'm saying this is the
case).

------
tigerente
The vote by the Parliamentary Committee on Industry, Research and Energy
already took place today:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7421545](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7421545).

The committee voted against strict network neutrality, and for the possibility
of differentiated "specialized services". The bill now goes to the European
Parliament for vote.

------
luisivan
I'm an advisor to the vicepresident of the European Commission Neelie Kroes,
she is in charge of the Digital Agenda and it seems that she helped to put
this forward.

Although I'm in her group of Young Advisors (we're 25), I didn't know about
this until today.

I just sent an email to the other advisors and to some people of the European
Commission to see what's up. They're always talking about how to improve net
neutrality so I can't understand what's going on here.

Anyway I'm really angry about this shitty law killing net neutrality. This is
kind of shocking.

If this law passes, I'll seriously ask myself if I want to continue in my role
as an advisor.

------
pedrocr
This came up on reddit's /r/portugal and I had a look through their points to
figure out what was going on. The legislation is here:

[http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/newsroom/cf/dae/docu...](http://ec.europa.eu/information_society/newsroom/cf/dae/document.cfm?doc_id=2734)

Their 5 points:

 _1) We don 't want a two-tiered Internet, all data should be treated equally.
Article 19 of the European Commission’s Telecoms Single Market proposal must
be deleted._

It's a tough article to read but as far as I can tell it says the opposite.
That any ISP can operate in any part of the EU.

 _2) Private companies cannot be judge, jury and police over online content.
Article 23.5.a. of the European Commission’s Telecoms Single Market proposal
must to be deleted._

23.5.a. just says that one of the few exceptions that allow filtering is
"implement a legislative provision or a court order, or prevent or impede
serious crimes". That last "or" may be poorly interpreted I suppose and I
don't know who gets to say what's a "serious crime". Other than that it seems
reasonable.

 _3) Europe won the Nobel peace prize – The European Commission’s credibility
on human rights issues shouldn 't be jeopardized by engaging in the same type
of internet censorship that Europeans critique elsewhere in the world._

This isn't a demand of any sort, just a political point.

 _4) The current definition of "specialized service" (Article 2.15) increases
costs and risk to internet users, and must be changed or deleted._

I can't really see the problem with this. Once you've set rules that you can't
filter/degrade service, letting your users hire specialized services on top
doesn't seem out of order. I suppose the risk is that if there isn't enough
competition "proper access to Netflix" may become a "specialized" service.

 _5) Article 23, “Freedom to provide and avail of open internet access,” must
replace "shall be free" with "have the right" to protect internet users from
online discrimination._

This on I don't get. Maybe in legal-speak this makes a difference. I only went
through the rest of this very lightly but it seemed to go in the right
direction.

------
motters
The main problem here is ISPs as a bottleneck. Longer term we need to figure
out how to bypass the bottlenecks, which seem to be increasingly acting as
points of political control and surveillance. Such a project would need to
have a legal and technical side to it. On the legal side there would need to
be an area of radio bandwidth reserved for public internet. On the technical
side you need mesh networking software and hardware. There is likely to be an
evolutionary path between the internet we have now and something which is less
dependent upon ISPs.

~~~
higherpurpose
To bypass ISPs we need to democratize the ISPs and decentralize them some
more. Perhaps in the future, I could get Internet in France from a German ISP
that has solar-powered drones or balloons over France, or a satellite.

The longer term goal should be to create meshnets, so we can give Internet to
each other.

Direct censorship of stuff might not even be the biggest threat, though, but
traffic shaping. We could avoid direct censorship if we build more P2P
systems, which can't be "taken down". However, they probably could be
throttled to a crawl, if the ISP is allowed to shape traffic and discriminate
against the type of traffic they choose. Bitcoin for example can't be
censored, but it can be made unusable.

~~~
julie1
The bottleneck is due to the 95th percentile way of billing and the fact big
content provider don't buy the bandwidth equally for everyone. Normally you
peer (free exchange), if and only if you have almost as much in as out. If you
have clearly more input coming to your AS than output, you are supposed to buy
your internet transit, else your behaviour is parasitic.

Yes google buys internet transit, but not in Europa, they expect the users to
pay for their free services when they are not north american, and they provide
the "free VoIP" services this way.

Google, amazon are the problems, they don't assume the cost of their services
and make it stand inequally amongst the users. Google is killing the cost
model of ISP.

In this condition, how do you expect a sustainable free internet if you
destroy the business model of ISP ?

~~~
julie1
gosh, I made some mistakes on peering. but it does not change the big picture.
Sorry.

Peering is just opened to anyone, and people prefer peering to buying. So
people prefer to have the less possible amount of traffic leaving their AS.

[http://www.peeringdb.com/view.php?asn=15169](http://www.peeringdb.com/view.php?asn=15169)

They peer quite a lot even in Europa, it is a good move when you want to
become an ISP.

Still they consider it is the ISP to support most of the cost of the
dimensioning of the pipes. Without returned value.

Pfiou, good idea to double check.

------
coldcode
Our freedom online is threatened by every government, even those not our own.

------
bad_user
This sounds terrible. On the other hand I'd like to know what's the status quo
right now in Europe. For example, are ISPs required to not block or restrict
access to online services?

~~~
nyrina
I know the Danish courts has ordered Danish ISPs to block The Pirate Bay, so I
doubt the status quo is that ISPs are required not to block online services.

~~~
higherpurpose
Yes, but according to this, ISPs may decide _themselves_ to block stuff,
without any court orders. This is something MPAA has been pushing for a long
time with ACTA, TPP, and apparently with this, too.

They want to bypass the judicial system, so they can censor stuff en masse,
like they do with Google/Youtube and their automated takedowns, but since it's
at the ISP level, probably at a much larger scale and in a more comprehensive
way.

------
fellowshipofone
Does this proposal (and Article 19 specifically in it) create a worse status
quo that we have today in Europe?

------
steeve
Serious question: Why do we have to fight this every year? Why haven't they
(the lawmakers) learn?

~~~
Istof
Because businesses won't give up a chance to get more profits in. Since
lobbying is legal, politicians won't give up either.

------
javiermares
How was the SOPA strike organized? We need another one, pronto.

------
cLeEOGPw
Well, I have sent email to a member from my country. Although it might be too
late for this vote. Hope it affects his view anyway or at least rises a
question or two.

------
facepalm
On the one hand I think firms would just have to compete on offering as many
services as possible. On the other hand I suppose if the offer is "10$ a month
for free streaming of all Hollywood movies and free porn, and 10$ extra to get
access to some opinions on the internet you might not agree with anyway", many
people might opt for saving the 10$.

------
ehartsuyker
To someone who knows more than me, how can a US citizen who just moved to the
EU help fight this?

------
yiedyie
Why is not possible to have alternative internetworks?

~~~
chrisBob
It is. It is just hard. The SIPRNET is the only big one I am aware of. Plus
you can't tweet,email mom, Facebook stalk, or check HN from an alternative
network until someone adds that functionality for you.

