UK May Kill the EU's Net Neutrality Law 341
An anonymous reader writes "The U.K. government is planning on vetoing the E.U. legislation that enforces net neutrality under the guise of 'won't anyone think of the child pornography blocking?' again. From the article: ' It’s a surprising turn of events. Just last month, the European Parliament voted to place the principles of net neutrality into law. However, before it becomes law throughout Europe, each member country must also pass the legislation. On Thursday, the British government indicated it may veto it instead. At issue is a new provision that critics argue would restrict the British government’s “ability to block illegal material.” The amendment made it so that only a court order would allow for the banning of content, and not a legislative provision, as originally proposed, according to RT. “We do not support any proposals that mean we cannot enforce our laws, including blocking child abuse images,” a government spokesperson told BuzzFeed.'"
Good, time to kill net neutrality. (Score:1, Interesting)
I like that my ISP can scan my email for spam and remove it, I like that the ISP I use for web hosting blocks traffic from sites that are trying attacks against my web site and I am sure the vast majoity of parents like that their school blocks various web sites that are designed to prey on kids. All of this would be prevented by the various net neutrality bills that have come up; it is good that someone in the U.K. with a technical understanding is reading these proposals.
Once net neutrality is killed we can switch to the family of laws that are need and that is application neutrality. Application Neutrality is the principle that ISP don't have to treat all sites and data on the internet the same but that they have to treat with a same set of rules for all traffic for a application type. ISP should be able to block email or block various web sites and application neutrality allows them to do so provide they filter email the same or block web content by the same set of rules for all sites.
Fake news (Score:2, Interesting)
First, the best way to fight child pornography is not to filter it - that way child pornography is still reachable through a proxy. Rather, the server must be legally seized.
Second, two years ago the european parliament did pass a resolution allowing for filtering child pornography through the net. I don't think this resolution has been altered in any way by net neutrality.
So, I think it is unlikely for the British goverment to veto european net neutrality - I don't think the british goverment would be so much misinformed. This news is 100% fake coming from some anti-european british.-Ignacio Agulló
They will be sued (Score:4, Interesting)
The rule is that a member state needs to transpose the whole EU directive into local law within a set timeframe. So, either the UK transposes the whole directive in UK law or they will be taken before the European Court of Justice by the European Commission for lack of, or imperfect, transposition. Their choice.
This sounds more like a desperate effort by the tories to prevent UKIP from making a too high score in the next EU parliament elections happening over the next few days.
Re:Why are they in the EU again? (Score:5, Interesting)
The UK contributes more to the EU then it gets back in rebates and grants combined, so you're "they like receiving money" claim is nonsense.
The amount of trade the UK does with the EU outweighs any deficit in rebates and grants they get. If you want to leave the EU over rebates and grants you'd be sacrificing a pound to save a penny. The UK may whine on endlessly about leaving the EU but the extent of their trade with the common market makes that an impractical idea to say the least.
Re:Good, time to kill net neutrality. (Score:5, Interesting)
Net neutrality proposals needs to die and quickly.
You may have intended this as sarcasm. If not, I'd suggest you haven't fully understood the problem.
Look at the current UK government's record, for example. First they introduced mandatory "porn" filtering - which you must formally opt-out of - in the name of "saving the children"; of course, even in it's first incarnation, it was blocking things that were clearly not porn [theguardian.com].
Then they swiftly moved to "leverage" that to block "extremist" [theguardian.com] material. The problem, of course, is that extremist is a nebulous term; UK politicians have described groups as diverse as the Countryside Alliance and UK Uncut (a tax pressure group) as "extremist", and it's these same politicians - not the courts - who are deciding what should be blocked.
Maybe you really do want to live in an internet bubble where the only things you see are whatever the government of the day has decided is "safe". But most of us would rather make our own minds up.
Re:Good (Score:5, Interesting)
They refuse to give technical answers to technical questions even in the (unlikely) event that they can understand expressions like "static IP" and "DNS lookup" they persist in attempting to use dumbed down expressions to avoid using technical terms - thus ensuring that their words do not ahve any useful meaning.
In short, if they were not a monopoly, they would not last a week.
Disclaimer: I had a broadband problem last week - reported it - NFF, but problem gone. Repeatedly threatened with GBP220 call out charge. Process took three hours.
Re:Why are they in the EU again? (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem is that the Euro is a monetary union without a proper fiscal (and by-proxy political) union. The US has a strong central government and can fix these imbalances by, amongst other things, spending federal dollars in the states with weaker economies. The Euro does not have a proper mechanism to do this and you can see the stronger export economies reaping the rewards of Euro membership (looking at you Germany). A lot of big-ticket items (such as German cars and second homes) were bought on cheap credit due when the southern economies joining the Euro.
Re:Why are they in the EU again? (Score:4, Interesting)
In short, we were happy with the old EEC. Anything further should start with rebuilding the EC into something that actually resembles a functioning democracy, with strict limits on the mandate of this superstate.