back to article MEPs: Specialised services? Oui. 2-speed internet? Nein

MEPs have called for greater restrictions on content producers' ability to set minimum internet service provider (ISP) service levels for their content. Producers and ISPs themselves need to be more restricted than is planned under new EU telecoms rules, they said. The European Parliament's Civil Liberties, Justice and Home …

COMMENTS

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  1. LarsG

    Traffic management? Net Neutrality?

    What about restrictions and self imposed censorship the ISP's are involved in?

    Which incidentally is encouraged by the government.

  2. Lee D Silver badge

    For once, we don't have to explain to MP's/MEP's why this sort of thing is important, or push them to do it, or remind them that commercial services are not the end-all of consumer-provision.

    I don't object to someone paying for, say, an internal Netflix that doesn't count towards their traffic limit. I do object to having my service degraded because I refuse to pay extra for it, though.

    For once, politicians appear to have hit the nail on the head, and their wording seems quite useful, relevant, and wide-ranging.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Wide ranging?

      You can be sure it's wide ranging. Whilst the perceived beneficiaries of this law will initially be end-users like you and me, this legislation will ultimately be co-opted by the bureaucracy in Brussels and Westminster to serve their own interests. Whether this is increased surveillance, draconian rules on what content the ISP is allowed to serve (think of the children!!!) or the ability to ensure market dominance of favoured, politically connected corporations, this is the kind of legislation that gives our benevolent overlords a fantastic precedent to further regulate the life out of a once-free internet

  3. itzman

    And end to VOIP?

    As VOIP packets will now not legally be able to compete with any other traffic for priority delivery.?

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: And end to VOIP?

      Go back, read, comprehend. Post....

      Oh BTW if you think that you have end to end QoS on the open internet, think again.

  4. Not Fred31

    Impressive failure to understand what is going on...

    Three committees voted on Opinions last week - completely unreported - while the first draft from the Civil Liberties Committee, which hasn't yet been voted on, is the sole focus of your article.

    C minus. Could do better.

  5. Not Fred31

    PS

    Where the hell does the Ja / Nein in the headline come from? The MEP in charge is Catalan and from the biggest political party in the Parliament. The MEP following the dossier for the second biggest party in the parliament is Greek.

    Typical British prejudice Ja - related in any way to what is currently going on... nein.

    1. Mephistro
      Happy

      Re: PS

      "Where the hell does the Ja... ... come from?"

      It comes from your comment. As for the 'prejudice' part... XD

      1. Mephistro
        Happy

        Re: PS

        I've just noticed that, being Monday morning, my post may need some clarification due to the usual problems in reading comprehension caused by too little/too much caffeine and 'Mondays Syndrome'. To put it short: There is no instance of the word "Ja" either in the headline, or in the article. Your brains probably took a short cut after reading the word 'nein'.

        I've lots of experience on this subject -i.e. being able to tell the difference between "Ja" and "Oui", thanks to all the Pink Panther TV shows and WWII films I've watched over the years. :-)

    2. frank ly

      Re: PS

      So, what is Catalan for yes/no and what is Greek for yes/no? Would use of those words have been immediately obvious to the majority of readers?

  6. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    "The rules, if introduced as originally drafted, would prohibit ISPs from "blocking, slowing down, degrading or discriminating against specific content, applications or services, or specific classes thereof" unless it is "necessary to apply reasonable traffic management measures"."

    bye-bye government censorship then - maybe the EU does have a purpose after all (if it can't be bothered to enforce it's own existing rules on single markets though, i'm not exactly going to hold my breath for this to work out .... )

    However: define "necessary" and every circumstance in which it applies, and define "reasonable" and every measure that term is intended to cover. If they can't do those things - and they shouldn't, given the pace of change - then they should not allow through any legislation with such vague terminology.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      From the article:

      "the proposals define 'reasonable traffic management measures' as activity such as the blocking or throttling of communications to combat serious crimes like the distribution of child pornography."

      .

      There, not hard.

  7. Phil O'Sophical Silver badge

    "impair the quality of internet access services"

    Since internet bandwidth is finite, doesn't any prioritization of one category of traffic naturally imply some level of impairment to other traffic? I do have to wonder how many of these Muppets Elected to Parliament would even know what an RFC was, let alone have read RFC1633 and its successors.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: "impair the quality of internet access services"

      Net Neutrality isn't really about if voice or video have bandwidth priority over email, it's all about content of the same type and how it's delivered.

      Scenario A

      Google (YouTube) say, if you get a stream from YouTube and another from iPlayer, if you give us priority, we'll bung you £50million a year.

      Scenario B

      Sky Broadband give top priority to any Murdoch owned site over others and even throttle those of rivals.

      .

      So it's not about what you speed up / slow down, but WHO you speed up / slow down.

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