Dutch Hotels Must Register As ISPs 152
hankwang writes "The Dutch telecommunications authority OPTA has announced that Dutch hotels must register as internet providers (original version, in Dutch) because that is what they formally are, according to Dutch laws. It is well possible that once hotels are officially internet providers, they will also have to abide by the European regulations on data retention and make efforts to link email headers and other data traffic to individual hotel guests. Could this also happen in other European countries? This is probably not likely to lead to a more widespread adoption of free WiFi services in hotels."
Free country? (Score:2, Insightful)
I remember things like this whenever someone criticizes the US and suggests that I move to a free country. Netherlands has often been on that supposed list of "free countries."
Clearly the answer is more government intervention (Score:0, Insightful)
After all, isn't it trendy to hate on libertarians these days?
Re:Not fully correct (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not fully correct (Score:4, Insightful)
This is probably not likely to lead to a more widespread adoption of free WiFi services in hotels.
Now, since when is it in the core competence of a hotel to provide IT services?
Never.
Sure, have it available, provide it as a service to guests, but the hotels themselves don't offer the service, they outsource. Just like they do with the water, telephones, power, and everything else. If you actually LOOK at the default home page that your average hotel provides, you'll find a logo in the corner someplace indicating who the real service provider is. Hint: it's never the hotel unless it's some ratty shathole where the owner tries to save a few bucks by buying a couple of routers at the local Best Buy and sneaking a consumer DSL line.
In any real sense, this will have almost no effect on hotels with 3 or more stars. It might have some impact on the cheap independents.
Re:Not fully correct (Score:3, Insightful)
On the other hand, in my experience, the hotels with the DSL line and a Netgear base station tend to have more reliable service (albeit slower) than those unholy captive-portal-based services.
Re:Not fully correct (Score:3, Insightful)
The OPTA has said that they are not sure yet if the hotels are ISP's.
I'm sure the hotels could fight the ruling.
What about all the other places that provide some form of WIFI? Cafe's? Libraries? Surely a cafe owner doesn't have to go through the same messing about that an ISP would? How would they afford all the tech know-how to be able to keep logs and bits of everyone who wanders into their business and asks for a latte while holding a laptop?
In other news.. (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Clearly the answer is more government intervent (Score:2, Insightful)
Libertarians stand for privatized oppression. Most other parties stand for government-supplied oppression. Does anyone actually stand for freedom nowadays?
Retention of E-mail headers? (Score:5, Insightful)
The majority of the guests are not going to use the borrow the SMTP server that the hotel uses.
They are typically going to HTTPS to some webmail account.
Good luck getting the headers out of that.
If the hotel has a NAT-ted network, what are they supposed to log? Which 192.168.x.y address had a particular evil-doing port number at a particular time, and match that t a guest?
Europeans are going daft.
Re:Clearly the answer is more government intervent (Score:2, Insightful)
I'm amazed how little your comment resembles reality. Libertarians, and also the TEA party crowd (though they are not exactly the same) favor a smaller government all the way around. Sure, there are some who, for instance, hate recreational drug use. However, as they favor less government, they don't want the government to restrict it. On the other hand, on the left leaning side, some might not like people to have firearms, and yet they also don't want government regulation there.
The Libertairians and the TEA party voters don't agree on how to wield the mighty arm of the law, they agree that it should be weakened. They believe that instead these things should be decided on a state, or community level, but not on the national level. They certainly wouldn't push for the regulations you speak of, and controling communications is right out.
Just looking at your comment history. Quite a few gems in there.
This one about you wanting hollywood movies to have no immorality and have biblically themed messages is hilarious.
http://slashdot.org/comments.pl?sid=1806598&cid=33775058 [slashdot.org]
Now i'm not saying you in particular feel the need to push your viewpoint on others but there are plenty of Libertarians who do. They want to control the internet so that it fits their idea of morality. This has become the new meaning of Libertarianism. It's the opposite of what it should mean and it's unfortunate but the fact is Libertarianism, thanks to the religious right, is now an ideology that wants to control the lives of others. Your typical religious censorship nuts are quite representative of the Libertarian movement.
Re:Clearly the answer is more government intervent (Score:3, Insightful)
Unfortunately, while he was probably just trolling, a lot of people genuinely believe that the TEAbaggers are either small-l or big-L libertarians. It's hard to say who has the worst marketing department between the Libertarian Party, the North Koreans, and NAMBLA.
For the record, here's how you tell the difference: the L/libertarians were the ones bitching about government overreach during the last administration. The Tea Partiers are the ones who were perfectly content until a President of the Wrong Color was elected.
Comment removed (Score:3, Insightful)
With the same reasoning... (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Not fully correct (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe that is exactly what they are after. Proper ISPs are already required to retain a bunch of info and data about their clients so that internet wiretaps can be traced back to individual subscribers. But what use is that if any criminal can grab a netbook and wander into a hotel or bar to go online anonymously? My guess is that if this notion holds up in court, hotels will be required to hand out individual Wifi access keys rather than provide a single one to all of its guests. What other point would there be in requiring the hotel to retain internet traffic that is already retained at the hotel's ISP?
And what about bars, cafe... perhaps they will outlaw public WiFi at some point. I don't think they actually will go that far, but it would not surprise me in the least, and I am certain a proposal to that effect will comet to table in parliament at some point in the near future. Remember, this is the Netherlands, a country that does more wiretapping than the rest of Europe combined. A country that now allows city mayors to issue search warrants without aproval from a judge and even without any prior suspicion of criminal activity. A country that is slowly making sure that we are never anonymous anywhere.
Dutch people have a deep, deep trust in their government. Perhaps it is because that same government "allows" us more freedoms than most other countries enjoy. When the government then asks "Papieren bitte!", most people shrug and state "I have nothing to hide". But it takes a good many turns of the thumbscrews before you'll feel the clamps squeezing your thumbs, and a few more turns before it starts to hurt. But by then it's too late to pull your thumb out of the device.
Re:Clearly the answer is more government intervent (Score:3, Insightful)
TEA party crowd (though they are not exactly the same) favor a smaller government all the way around. Sure, there are some who, for instance, hate recreational drug use. However, as they favor less government, they don't want the government to restrict it.
What Tea Party figurehead has come out against government restrictions on drugs? Has any speaker at any Tea Party event even brought this up?
No. The Tea Partiers are only against government restrictions on rich white christian folk.