
European Parliament votes against net neutrality amendments - majc2
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-34649067
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protomyth
"It is thought that many MEPs would have been reluctant to begin a process of
amending the regulation given that it might have delayed another aspect of the
rules - the abolishment of mobile data roaming charges."

That probably should have been the first paragraph of every article (8th in
this one) about these amendments. I can see why a politician would value
abolishment of mobile data roaming charges more.

~~~
mcv
How about making smaller laws? First do one abolishing the roaming charges,
and don't slow it down by attaching anything else to it. Then do another with
the net neutrality stuff.

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rudids
The problem here is that this was badly put together legislation. I don't
think the idea of net neutrality was actually debated at all in reality. The
need to abolish mobile data roaming charges in the EU was front and centre of
the needs of these MEP's constituents minds and they would not vote this down,
it would've been mad for them politically. Whoever wrote this piece of
legislation is to blame here.

I would be very surprised if this didn't come back for debate in another form
prior to it's adoption.

~~~
paol
That's not how it works. Amendments to the proposed law are voted
individually, there was never any danger of having to reject the whole law.

There were amendments to close each of the problematic loopholes regarding net
neutrality, but they didn't pass the vote.

~~~
azernik
There is if the set of legislators that are in favor of the end to mobile
roaming charges doesn't overlap exactly with the set of legislators in favor
of net neutrality. In that case, the number of people who vote in favor of the
package might be the intersection of the people in favor of the two things,
which is strictly smaller than the set of people in favor of one or the other.

Classic poison pill maneuver.

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zoner
We are experiencing speed problems to many servers. Our broadband is BT Fibre.
While accessing some sites is very fast, sometimes others are slow.

For example downloading from Bitbucket from the UK is peaking on 600kB/s, then
after a minute, it's dropping to 60kB/s, then stays there for the following 15
minutes.

The same content downloaded from one of our servers in a UK data centre stays
on 600kB/s.

I think this is a clear evidence that the service provider is cutting the
bandwidth after a minute, which is not what we paid for.

~~~
semi-extrinsic
Can you switch to Andrews & Arnold? They're a niche ISP in the UK, targeting
tech-savvy users and businesses. They give you IPv6 for free and they're
XKCD/806 compliant. (No affiliation, just a happy customer when I lived in the
UK.).

~~~
collyw
I was too cheap to use them when I was in the UK, as they cost a bit more, but
the other guys I worked with rated them really highly. I would pay the extra
for them these days.

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gerty
If you're not sure if you should be pissed at your MEP, here are the votes
(PDF): [http://bit.ly/1NydR8L](http://bit.ly/1NydR8L)

It's from page 19, Pilar Del Castillo Vera section.

~~~
tombrossman
Why hide it behind a link shortener?

Direct link is here:
[http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//...](http://www.europarl.europa.eu/sides/getDoc.do?pubRef=-//EP//NONSGML%2BPV%2B20151027%2BRES-
RCV%2BDOC%2BPDF%2BV0//EN&language=EN)

~~~
tomelders
How do you read this document?

~~~
ckarmann
For an amendment, you have three sections: the "+" section lists people having
voted for the amendment, the "-" section lists people having voted against,
the "0" section lists people having abstained

Only the surnames of the MEP are listed. They are listed inside their
political group. The two biggest groups in European Parliament are PPE
(European People's Party, centre-right) and S&D (Progressive Alliance of
Socialists and Democrats, centre-left) See this list of political groups:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_groups_of_the_Europe...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_groups_of_the_European_Parliament#Composition_of_the_7th_European_Parliament)

~~~
mercurial
Looks like the PPE and S&D didn't disappoint and voted en masse against it.
Sigh.

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siscia
At first I was very sad when I read the article.

However I hope that we, as European, could take this as a challenge and come
out with a way to completely obfuscate the web traffic, wich I believe will be
extremely important in the coming year.

We should see this as an opportunity, maybe we won't come out with the next
Netflix, but hopefully we will be able to to set the standard for privacy and
security online, so needed right now...

~~~
riskneural
Essentially, if it is not encrypted, corporations can fight for regulation to
increase the barrier to entry for rival products and services, and we know
they will. If it is encrypted, such regulations are futile.

~~~
tormeh
But only the non-paying corporations have an incentive to encrypt. The ones
that pay will either not encrypt, or they'll attach some kind of tag to the
ISP saying where the packet comes from. ISPs can safely assign all encrypted,
non-tagged packets to the slow lane.

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shmerl
So how do they explain refusal to correct obvious anti neutrality parts of
this "neutrality" legislation? By too much money from ISPs in their pockets?

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greathi
There's lots of competition in Europe, so net neutrality doesn't matter. It's
just extra government regulation in an area that doesn't need it. Think of it
as a symptom rather than a problem.

~~~
thirdsun
What about the other side? - the next potential Netflix competitor probalby
won't come from Europe with regulations like these.

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ATsch
I think this can be blamed on the strict European copyright laws more than a
lack of net neutrality, also considering that Netflix became what it is today
even without net neutrality

~~~
thirdsun
That's not what I meant - it was just an example.

The above comment only considered the perspective of an end user, saying that
due to good infrastructure and lots competition net neutrality isn't an issue.
However I'm more worried about the businesses at the other end of the line,
the content and service providers who also have to deal with ISPs. If the
market leader in a certain category can afford to buy faster lanes, it's much
harder for potential competitors to enter the market, hence the Netflix
analogy.

