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EU Government Privacy The Internet

EU May Not Unify Its Data Protection Rules After All 55

Posted by Soulskill from the that-sounds-super-helpful dept.
jfruh writes: One of the EU's selling points is that it provides a single regulatory apparatus for the entire European market — but this isn't the case for everything. Data protection laws, for instance, provide a confusing thicket of different regulations across the continent, and now, much to the frustration of large American Internet companies, it seems that a plan to consolidate these rules under a single EU agency are coming apart. In other EU news, reader Presto Vivace points out that German Chancellor Angel Merkel has spoken out against net neutrality. She said, "An innovation-friendly internet means that there is a guaranteed reliability for special services. These can only develop when predictable quality standards are available."
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EU May Not Unify Its Data Protection Rules After All More

EU May Not Unify Its Data Protection Rules After All

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  • Special service available!=net neutrality violated (Score:4, Interesting)

    by drolli ( 522659 ) on Saturday December 06, 2014 @10:47AM (#48537861) Journal

    IP packets had a TOS field from in the beginning. IP v6 has this again. I am fine and appreciate prioritization/TOS if:

    * ISP explicitly list these classes of traffic in their Terms
    * Everybody (no matter if google or a 1 person specialized SW shop) can buy priority traffic on the backbone with a specific latency/reliability class
    * Traffic/Capacity is traded only trough a open market (tick exchange), with no "secret deals"
    * Costs for traffic appear separately on the bills of the customers - even if the overall product is free.
    * The "last Mile" is a deal between the Customer and *his* ISP. Cross financing the last mile from other businesses should be considered as abuse of a vertical monopoly.

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Anonymous Coward

      Yeah, give them an inch. See where that ends.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      When I shop for an ISP (INTERNET service provider), I shop based on data throughput (and monthly capacity, which in my case is quasi-unlimited, in the sense I can go full throttle 24/7).

      I want Internet access. Not AOLnet (remember their walled garden?), not comcastnet, not ATTnet. I already PAID them. They should not be demanding further tolls.

      If the telecoms don't like it, fine, stop advertising as ISPs and advertise as COMPANY_X_Net and leave it at that. Because fuck it, this isn't about net neutralit

    • Look, people, we found the person who still believes in the fairness of a capitalist market place!

      Your suggestions have one fatal flaw, there is zero chance to actually policy that. Provided that any politician had any interest in doing so in the first place.

    • Re: (Score:2)

      by AmiMoJo ( 196126 ) *

      Everybody (no matter if google or a 1 person specialized SW shop) can buy priority traffic on the backbone with a specific latency/reliability class

      The problem is that the price will be so high that only established companies will be able to afford it. Start-ups will need to raise massive amounts of extra capital just to buy in to the fast lane.

      It will also give ISPs an excuse for providing crap service. "Sorry, SuperDuperVideo didn't pay us, so you can't watch their streams." At the moment if YouTube starts to stutter people complain to their ISPs about the poor quality of their service, and the ISP in obliged to upgrade their network or lose customer

  • Understandable given the nature of the EU (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Registered Coward v2 ( 447531 ) on Saturday December 06, 2014 @11:02AM (#48537913)
    The EU is very much a group of independent countries that have agreed to work together on many issues but have not been willing to give up sovereignty to the point where an EU law has supremacy over local laws. A a result, EU rules tend to be a lowest common denominator with individual countries adding on their own requirements. That's not unexpected since the EU is not a country like say the US where there is a federal system that has sway over the individual states, district and territories that make up the US; where there is agreement the EU works well and but individual countries still have the real power in the union and there still is a very distinct nationalism at play in the political and economic dynamics. That's not necessarily better or worse than other models but just a reflection of how the EU came into being.

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      That's pretty much what the US started out as under the Articles of Confederation. It didn't work for long. The EU is learning that lesson too: having a monetary union (centralized control of monetary policy, removing that from the individual nations' economic toolsets) but no fiscal union was a recipe for sovereign debt problems from the beginning, and patchwork regulations across the EU do lead to real problems for cross-border import and export. Tighter EU integration from the start would have been ea

      • Re:Understandable given the nature of the EU (Score:4, Insightful)

        by r1348 ( 2567295 ) on Saturday December 06, 2014 @02:08PM (#48538729)

        Fine, but give me a democratic EU. I want a say in what the European Commission decides, I want to finally understand whatever the Council of European Union is (seriously, nobody seems to know), I want a democratic European Parliament with the power of legislative initiative. Anything else is a nice-looking dictatorship.

      • The EU is learning that lesson too: having a monetary union (centralized control of monetary policy, removing that from the individual nations' economic toolsets) but no fiscal union was a recipe for sovereign debt problems from the beginning

        This: monetary union and debt solidarity should have come together. The reasonable conclusion now is to toss the monetary union, since nobody in EU want to pay for other countries' debts.

  • In other news (Score:3)

    by prefec2 ( 875483 ) on Saturday December 06, 2014 @11:23AM (#48537983)

    The German government was in favor of net neutrality. If Merkel's reelection might be in jeopardy due to her position on net neutrality she will change her position. So this is not the end of it.

    Furthermore, if a fragmented EU market hinders US monopolies to extend their services to the EU then this is not necessarily a problem for the citizens here in the EU.

  • Thanks Momma Merkel! (Score:5, Informative)

    by Rhywden ( 1940872 ) on Saturday December 06, 2014 @11:31AM (#48538001)

    Let's not forget this statement of Momma Merkel comes from the same woman who stated that the "Internet is virgin territory" merely a year ago.

    She simply does not understand internet issues and thus promptly falls back on an industry-friendly position.

    • She simply does not understand internet issues and thus promptly falls back on an industry-friendly position.

      Perhaps she fully understands the Internet issues, but it's just more lucrative to side with the industry (who also understand Internet issues) than with the users (who for the vast majority do not understand Internet issues). Same with patent term extension on pharmaceuticals; it's always hidden on the 3rd or 5th page of the business section and in the "may" pay more (vs. generics) language bracket. Same with copyright term extensions: items that would become public domain do not, which DOES rob society. A

      • No she doesn't. SMS was a new and exciting technology for her during her first term (started late 2005). Internet is still new to her.

      • I don't think that most of the industry understands the internet either. I mean, just look at the debacle with this moronic "Leistungsschutzrecht" where they tried to make Google pay them for advertising for them. And when Google refused to play ball (either by simply delisting them from search results or just returning results without snippets) they tried to get a law passed that would have forced Google to pay and list them.

    • Still - unlike the author - she can spell her name.

    • Let's not forget this statement of Momma Merkel comes from the same woman who stated that the "Internet is virgin territory"

      In no-longer-Soviet Russia, Internet is Virgin territory! [virginconnect.ru]

  • Albeit, I still want a DNA test to confirm that Mrs.

    Please shut up about things you don't have the foggiest clue about. Yes, that means you have to remain silent a whole lot, but frankly, the world would be a better place that way.

    • Wouldn't make much difference. Das Merkel doesn't say a lot and it doesn't do anything besides sitting there and texting.

      That talking pantsuit could disappear and nobody would notice for weeks, if not months.

      • Merkel is a typical product of East German education. She doesn't decide jack. She just waits to see where the wind blows, then scampers to the front of the movement and shouts "follow me!"

        That's not a leader, that's a mockery of one.

        • I know enough East Germans. They are nice people and they can decide very well if they have to. Merkel is a product of Kohl's making and thus prefers to sit out everything.

  • You got the gold, you make the rules.. It is universal and painfully obvious.

    Eh, probably just as well. Another bought and paid for bureaucracy rarely does any good outside its own office.

  • Chancellor Merkel is right: the Internet works best when predictable quality standards are available.

    Chancellor Merkel is very carefully wrong. Predictable quality standards are orthogonal to net neutrality, but most people don't know that, so she gets away with claiming net neutrality conflicts with quality.

    We'll take the quality standards. Codify uptime, packet loss, and latency requirements for residential Internet service. The providers are perfectly capable of achieving reasonable requirements in al

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