from the is-that-a-fish-net-you're-regulating? dept.
Evaluation of the First Two Years of the Net Neutrality Enforcement Situation in the EU
According to a report, The Net Neutrality Situation in the EU: Evaluation of the First Two Years of Enforcement, by the epicenter.works for digital rights in Vienna, Austria, Finland and Bulgaria remain the only two countries not violating network neutrality principles. The report covers the last two and a half years in the European Union, focusing on various practices including but not limited to zero-rating, differential pricing, and port blocking.
The principle of net neutrality is enshrined in the European Union in Regulation (EU) 2015/2120 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 25 November 2015 laying down measures concerning open internet access and amending Directive 2002/22/EC on universal service and users' rights relating to electronic communications networks and services and Regulation (EU) No 531/2012 on roaming on public mobile communications networks within the Union, which went into effect on 30 April 2016 (hereafter "the Regulation") 1 . As an EU Regulation, it requires no transposition into national law and enjoys primacy in application over national laws. It applies equally in all 28 EU memaer states and the three states of the European Economic Area (EEA) (Norway, Iceland and Liechtenstein). The national regulatory authorities (NRAs) and other competent authorities are tasked with the enforcement and supervision of this law.
The Regulation contains a review clause by which the European Commission has to provide an evaluation report of the net neutrality provisions of the Regulation by 30 April 2019. To prepare this review, the Commission has tasked the law firm Bird & Bird, in consortium with the research and consultancy company Ecorys, to conduct a review based on interviews among various stakeholders from NRAs, the telecom industry, content and application providers (CAPs), and consumer protection as well as civil society organisations 2 . In an open letter, several organisations have expressed concerns aaout a confict of interest, as Bird & Bird is representing telecom companies in court cases arought ay regulators and civil society which are aased on the same regulation Bird & Bird now tasked with collecting information from these stakeholders on 3.
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11 Regulation (EU) 2015/2120 of the European Parliament and of the Council of 25 Novemaer 2015 laying down measures concerning open internet access (2015)
2 https://etendering.ted.europa.eu/cft/cft-display.html?cftId=2319
3 https://epicenter.works/document/1285
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The Federal Communications Commission has scheduled an April 25 vote to restore net neutrality rules similar to the ones introduced during the Obama era and repealed under former President Trump.
"After the prior administration abdicated authority over broadband services, the FCC has been handcuffed from acting to fully secure broadband networks, protect consumer data, and ensure the Internet remains fast, open, and fair," FCC Chairwoman Jessica Rosenworcel said today. "A return to the FCC's overwhelmingly popular and court-approved standard of net neutrality will allow the agency to serve once again as a strong consumer advocate of an open Internet."
[...]
In a filing with the FCC, Turner wrote that "ISPs have been incredibly bullish about the future of their businesses precisely because of the network investments they are making" and that the companies rarely, if ever, mention the impact of FCC regulation during calls with investors."We believe that the ISPs' own words to their shareholders, and to industry analysts through channels governed by the SEC, should be afforded significantly more weight than evidence-free tropes, vague threats, dubious aggregate capital expenditure tallies, or nonsensical math jargon foisted on the Commission this docket or elsewhere," Turner wrote.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Debvgger on Wednesday February 06 2019, @10:24AM (5 children)
It's always been my opinion that in the future we'll have two Internets. The dumbed down and controlled consumer version, and the much smaller but much more useful "hacker homebrew" version. I wonder if they'll make it illegal to communicate computers bypassing the "real" Internet.
I think the same about computers. We'll be using much slower but free FPGA CPUs in the future in homebrew PCBs if we want to use a computer free from forgotten mics and full spying computers on a chip...
I wonder if they'll try to make these illegal too.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 06 2019, @02:26PM (1 child)
They already did.
https://www.defectivebydesign.org/blog/w3c_sells_out_web_eme_1_year_later [defectivebydesign.org]
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Illegal_number [wikipedia.org]
etc etc, it's a double whammy of legal and technical means.
(Score: 2) by hendrikboom on Wednesday February 06 2019, @04:06PM
I don't see anything there about communications outside of the "real" internet. All I see is a mechanism for restricting access to sites inside the "real" internet.
(Score: 1) by fustakrakich on Wednesday February 06 2019, @04:30PM
You can't "bypass" the "real" Internet while tethered to an ISP.
La politica e i criminali sono la stessa cosa..
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday February 06 2019, @11:30PM (1 child)
In the modern Net, this, as you call, "Hackers" internet is not eliminated by making it illegal, it's eliminated by absorbing its users into totally unconstructive things. Most really useful sites in terms of knowledge are covered with a kilometer deep of e-commerce's feces (link SEO pages), forums agreagtors indexes and pseudo-knowledge blogs in style like "I'll re-type half of man for system calls, now hire me". These last ones are so predictable I can even make a rule model checking is an article in this style or is it really some experiments log. In a typical search session, the actual thing I look for, is dug in some abandoned pre-frame website resurrected on re-geocities whose author abandoned it in early 2000s after years of updates as watching ads from "friends" on FB became more "social".
There was a nice research somewhere, about number of domains American(?) Internet users visit regularly. They were visualized using colors in specific areas corresponding probably to time spent. Generally in 1990s and early 2000s, it was a very randomized bitmap. Later, large squares started to form, with Google, YT, later Facebook, Twitter, Amazon, eBay. Finally their area became a few times larger than "random" area.
There will not be any useful "homebrew" net. We're not in 1980s. If something cannot be transformed into surveillance tool for obtaining profiles for selling them right off the bat after first user starts using it, it simply does not exist.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Thursday February 07 2019, @12:37AM
exactly. ;-)