Netherlands makes net neutrality a law | Hacker News Reader

Netherlands makes net neutrality a law

bbc.co.uk

207 pointsSuraj-Sun30 comments

Old news. Since that time mobile data subscriptions went up in price with all dutch providers: reason? "data usage for whatsapp and skype etc wasnt accounted for in the initial prices". Also, last month a judge ruled that two ISPs need to block The Pirate Bay. What's that about net neutrality?

Well it makes sense, doesn't it? The costs for a mobile network provider are largely fixed and not really tied to consumption (it's maintenance and predictable/steady network upgrades).

Calls and SMS don't really cost the network anything (aside from inter-network fees). They're priced in such a way so that with the assumed amount of customers, they'll recoup their fixed costs. If people stop making calls and sending SMS, they lose that predicted income and have to recoup it from other sources (either the fixed monthly fees, data fees, or tacking on bullshit service charges).

Of course it makes sense; when you stick a price on a new service and find out a couple of years into selling that service that the price you put on it doesn't level with the costs you are making to maintain it. Then you need to level it; moral issues aside (some say the ISPs lured clients in with low prices only to raise them after they were in), that's the way it works. But then again, just raise the price, and do not block certain ports and sell it as a 'mobile internet' subscription or charge extra for 'certain kinds' (e.g. skype, whatsapp) of data usage.

The problem mostly was that people who were once overusing their SMS/text bundles/credits were now no longer paying huge bills because of Whatsapp. BBM offset this for providers by having a seperate BBM internet plan required.

There's still a appeal running against the ruling; so nothing is currently filtered. Meanwhile the european court ruled ISP have no obligation to filter traffic since DPI violates privacy law, http://curia.europa.eu/juris/liste.jsf?language=en&num=C...

Dutch parliament is not pleased with the high prices and are pushing for EU regulation (http://www.nu.nl/internet/2501814/kamer-wil-af-van-absurde-t... , dutch) They also plan to create a third slot for the mobile frequency auction in 2012 which should increase competition and lower prices (http://www.nu.nl/internet/2651466/partijen-willen-prijs-mobi... , also in dutch) The NMA (dutch ftc) also raided mobile providers in december and they're being charged with cartel forming http://www.fiercewireless.com/europe/story/dutch-authorities...

I'd say there's a large effort being made in defending net neutrality. The only thing i agree on is that it's old news. http://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/news/2011/06/dutch-parlia...

Not true, The Pirate Bay is filtered on Ziggo as of today and will be filtered on XS4All tomorrow. They have appealed the ruling, but have to filter in the meantime.

I'm using Ziggo and I can access The Pirate Bay just fine.

Net neutrality in this context means an ISP must offer unfiltered internet. Unfiltered as in they cannot decide on their own to block certain sites or services. A judge passing a ruling to take some site down that he/she believes is breaking the law is something else entirely.

This might look nice but sadly this kind of reasoning by Dutch parlament isn't consistent at all!

- For some reason Google is allowed to act like "a postal worker who delivers a letter, looks to see what's in it, and then claims he hasn't read it."

- Judges can rule blocking of websites (like they did with the pirate bay).

- Mobile operator fees are unregulated an artificially kept way too high.

- We pay a regulatory fee for every empty CD, DVD or Tape we buy because we just might use it to put copyrighted stuff onto it.

There is no straight line of thinking when it comes to this kind of law.

What does it mean to be "artificially too high"?

Result of cartel?

cartels tend to fall apart eventually.

Slightly OT Well, as an italian living in the Netherlands, allow me to disagree with 3 and have empathy about 4, since we have that in Italy as well.

As for 3, every time I go back to Italy I'm amazed at how much they pay for calling, sms-ing and navigating with their mobiles. Here with Vodafone NL I pay for 15€/month for 400min/sms + 1GB of data. My father in law pays 20€/month for 620min/sms + unlimited data.

In Italy you can forget anything similar to that. I agree that now prices are going up, but that is especially the case when you get a subsidized phone with your plan: there they'll charge you a steep premium. It's very sad but the introduction of smartphone whose price was above 400€ (iPhone, I'm looking at you, not the first but the most popular) allowed the providers to pumps the price saying: "Hey, here this 500€ phone, but let's sign a 1500€ two years contract". People began stupidly falling for these sort of things, and the result is that prices are soaring and people are outraged. In the meantime providers are happy. /OT

- what Google eavesdropping are you referring to? Them displaying advertisement next to your free email? Get a paid account - here in USA a simple plans starts with $60 dollars w 2Gb data, and service completely sucks. As a Dutch expat, my Vodafone connection is one of the few things I really miss here in Silicon Valley.

And yes it is old news as parliament already passed this law, still I am proud of my tiny home country

I agree about the other stuff but

> - Mobile operator fees are unregulated an artificially kept way too high.

What do you think OPTA does? There's been several cases in fact where operators (both mobile and otherwise, iirc) were caught price-fixing. It's a few years ago, but at least something is in place.

Maybe it doesn't work as well as it should though, is that what you meant? I'd be interested to hear.

There is a NMA (competition regulators) investigation going on into mobile operators, and there is proof that for pre paid services there was price fixing going on.

I'm not saying you're wrong here, but do you have a source for that? Though I had heard of the investigation, I didn't know any proof had been found.

No hard proof maybe, but a senior official/whistleblower said he had proof. News was related to visits to mobile providers early december I believe.

Very old news. Still, a very relevant object lesson in how this has come about. Not because the Netherlands is so progressive in tech legislation, but because of a few greedy mobile telecom operators were stupid and arrogant enough to offer politicians an easy scoring opportunity.

This also explains why despite this apparently progressive stand on net neutrality, there has been virtually no upheaval surrounding the court order to block the Pirate Bay, or the government support for ACTA.

Net neutrality in the Netherlands was a political "accident", not a sign of a certain political climate. Neither Dutch politicians nor the Dutch media really give a shit about digital civil rights.

"Neither Dutch politicians nor the Dutch media really give a shit about digital civil rights."

O.o

Where do you get your information about Dutch politicans and the media? When a judge ruled that XS4ALL and Ziggo should block TPB, it caused an uproar in The Hague. Ok, said uproar wasn't that bad, but most oppositional parties (D66, PvdA, GroenLinks and SP) together introduced a motion about the issue, and were very much against it. Given that the PVV approved of the motion, and recently called the blockage 'censure', I can say without a doubt that msot politicians in the Netherlands 'give a shit' about digital civil rights.

As for the media, I don't see where you got that, either. Pretty much anything that concerns digital media rights and the Netherlands gets printed in most major newspapers here.

Not that there aren't some things in politics here that I think are stupid, but digital civil rights isn't what I'd think of first.

"uproar in The Hague". Are you kidding me? Only the PVV made a bit of noise, but that's the same PVV that did a 180 on ACTA. As if anybody takes them seriously.

PvdA have sold out our rights every time they where in power. The SP has already shown itself in favor of internet censorship on several occasions (yes, even when it came to supporting the copyright mafia, that's the "socialist" party for you).

Pirate Bay will be blocked, and nothing else will happen. The only hope is not having a corrupted judge on the appeal, because the media will drop the story after tomorrow, and so will the politicians. And we'll be stuck with yet a bit less freedom on top of everything they've taken away over the past few decades.

Net neutrality was the only real win, ever, in the past 20 years. The rest has all been a downhill slope.

We are the country that wiretaps its citizens on the largest scale of any western nation. We have implemented a public transport system that allows us to trace people's comings and goings. The media has swept most of that under the rug, just like it has swept ACTA under the rug.

And it's not just digital civil rights that is a low priority in the Netherlands, it's civil rights in general. Look at how we are now an ID-card carrying nation without much protest.

Congrats, Holland. Way to go.

Hopefully this will spur europe to move forward, as a union, to enshrine net neutrality into law, and hopefully prod the US into action.

FYI Holland != Netherlands.

Nonsense. For all international intents and purposes, Holland and Netherlands are the same thing. The fact that "Holland" originally refers to only a part of the country is really off the mark when talking to foreigners; many languages don't even have a word for "the Netherlands" and simply call it something that sounds like "Holland" (e.g. Polish, Icelandic, Malay, etc). Or, more often, there is an official word for "The Netherlands", such as "Alankomaat" or "Países Bajos", but nobody ever uses it, often does not even understand the word.

I really wish my fellow countrymen would stop this nomenclature chauvinism. It's really just a symptom of an inferiority complex from the less populated regions of the country (traditional "Holland" roughly coincides with where the major cities are). Get over it already.

(disclaimer: I've always lived outside traditional "Holland" myself)

I, too, have to disagree with you. As skrebbel (I like that nick, by the way) said, practically everyone knows you mean that tiny country somewhere in Western Europe called 'the Netherlands', when you say 'Holland'. And I'm from Zuid-Holland.

And ironically enough, the court-ordered block of The Pirate Bay just went into effect in The Netherlands as well (For Ziggo, at least; XS4ALL follows tomorrow).

Ironically? Both laws are about the government taking control of the internet.

The TPB blockage is not about the government, but about the record companies protecting their interests (read: screwing pretty much everyone else over).

Arguably, net neutrality is about the government 'taking control' over the internet, but I don't think what's being done here is necessarily a bad thing. Here, the government is clearly protecting the freedom of the people. And yes, that means there is a little less freedom for the big companies. I'm fine with that.

Man. Nostalgia for the old debates about net neutrality just kicked in, and it really pales in comparison to e.g. the SOPA hearings.

Proud of my country! Let's hope other countries follow suit quickly.

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