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."
WHAT? (Score:3, Interesting)
I read this yesterday on nu.nl and I think it's completely ridiculous. The hotels (and my hospital I found out yesterday, and McDonalds and many many other places) can offer WiFi because they have a deal with a provider. Isn't that enough? I thought the Opta was there for the consumer but now I am not so sure anymore.
Re:Not fully correct (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Free country? (Score:2, Interesting)
Anytime you deal with people, any societal superstructure such as a country, will have downsides and upsides. Europe has never respected freedom of speech to the level the US does, otoh, they are better in healthcare and the like, imo.
As with anything, it depends what you want in life. Some days, I'd like to move to Antarctica.
Re:Clearly the answer is more government intervent (Score:3, Interesting)
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.
Re:WHAT? (Score:3, Interesting)
I read this yesterday on nu.nl and I think it's completely ridiculous.
Me too.
The hotels (and my hospital I found out yesterday, and McDonalds and many many other places) can offer WiFi because they have a deal with a provider. Isn't that enough?
(tongue-in-cheeck.. or only half-of? Not quite sure yetmyself, but I reckon that's the position of govs in the near future)
No, it is definitely NOT enough: if you provide transport-service you are an ISP (you do provide some Internet service; nobody says somebody is an ISP if and only if only if it provides email or Web hosting on top of transport services).
This means every person (organisation or not) that can act as a point-of-control-and-prevention will be, sonner or later, forced to assume all the obligations of an ISP (responsible how their property/service is used - or abused). As the time passes, for govs and such it is more the control and less about taking care of their citizens.
If one sees as common-sensical [arstechnica.com] that consumers (in the Joe Average category) which let their WiFi router opened are responsible for any nastinies carried over their connection (.e.g. downloaded/uploaded copyrighed music or KP, even if potentially only by piggybacking/wardriving [arstechnica.com]), I don't see why HotSpot providers [eweekeurope.co.uk] should not.
Hotspot Wirelesses will have to change (Score:3, Interesting)
I happen to be typing this from a Dutch Hotel.
This particular one has free wireless, and there is no way to identify a particular system accessing the net to a room. In fact, without staying here I could still probably sit in the car park or hotel lobby and access the internet from there. There's even a PC in the lobby with anonymous access from it.
Granted it does use a "Hotspot" login page (just need to check a checkbox and click login), so I suppose that could be modified to have someone provide a room number or PIN etc...
Changing the way things work though will invariably be a pain though, especially if you need to access the Internet over the weekends and the authentication system breaks down or something else goes wrong... (as seems to be quite common with the systems in many hotels). Reception tend to look at you with rather blank faces when this happens, and it usually isn't fixed until a weekday.
Re:Free country? (Score:3, Interesting)
Mind that:
Option 2 is already implemented. (and i refer to the old US health insurance: its horror when compared to how free countries support their citizens health)
Option 1 is merely a "test trial" thrown against ten large hotels because OPTA has its job to do.
On this situation:
I view this as a protest against a bad law on what makes someone an internet provider. Perhaps a chess move in something that doesn't aim to make Hotels an ISP, but to make it so actual ISP's can't hide behind the same walls (like holes in a vague law) as hotels do. I can't ever imagine hotels beng labeled as ISP's, and i believe everyone (including OPTA and the Hotels) would enjoy knowing what they're supposed to do and what not.
Disclaimer; i am dutch.
Re:Free country? (Score:4, Interesting)
I am not sure if they do the same in other EU countries, but in Denmark we just ignore the data retention regulation. It is common for apartments blocks to have their own intranet with shared internet essentially making them ISPs. When the regulation came out a few years ago there was a large panic on how to possibly abide by it. Fortunately all the large ISPs prepared the systems to do it, but never implemented them, the official stanze is: We are not going to implement these systems until forced to, and with no one else following the regulations, no one wants to be the first.