EU May Not Unify Its Data Protection Rules After All 55
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."
Special service available!=net neutrality violated (Score:4, Interesting)
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.
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Yeah, give them an inch. See where that ends.
Re:Special service available!=net neutrality viola (Score:5, Interesting)
The decisionmakers at ISPs don't have a piece of skin in this fight because they have special classes of access just as a benefit of being where they are within their companies, and they stand to make more personally from making profit-minded decisions. For these reasons, there's very little personal incentive to uphold the moral high ground because the decisions don't have an immediate negative impact on them. They might feel it once they retire and/or if they go to a different industry, but that's after they've made their profit, and it's long after their short-term decisionmaking window.
It's just human nature. We haven't had this trait bred out, and it's doubtful we as a species ever will. The only way to counter short-sighted thinking is by shortening the mental leap between short-sighted decisions and long-term consequences, which is what everyone fighting for net neutrality is trying to demonstrate right now by citing live examples of where a lack of enforcement has already gone wrong (T-Mobile Unlimited Music, Netflix v. Comcast/VZ, etc.)
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Everyone doing what is best for them works as long as you have every side matched fairly. If one side has an advantage over the other, they can screw them over at leisure.
For reference, see job market.
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It is fine if i have to pay for more bandwidth/allocated bandwidth.
As long as everybody has to pay the same price for this. Because then I (as a customer or provider) can compete in a special area with google.
If only companies who can affort their own ATM networks and are powerful enough to push anybody else to give preference to their traffic, then nobody can compete.
Which is why i think a mandatory split of companies into branches and trading of bandwidth of all kinds (guaranteed, allocated, and opportuni
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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
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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.
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Did you actually verb "policy"?!
Re:Special service available!=net neutrality viola (Score:4, Funny)
Sorry. When they stuff enough IT governance shit into your brain you start to talk funny.
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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)
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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
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Nonsense. The shift to extremes is due to the economic crisis. Nothing more. The same occurred in the 1930s, and in the 1980s. The future of the EU is more EU unless Wall Street and the City screw things up even more than they already are.
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Did you even read the article that you linked?
Re:Understandable given the nature of the EU (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
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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)
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)
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.
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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
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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.
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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.
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Still - unlike the author - she can spell her name.
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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]
Dear Mrs. Merkel (Score:2)
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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
Only one rule has been consolidated... (Score:1)
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. (Score:2)
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