France's Telecom Regulator Thinks Net Neutrality Should Also Apply To Devices 38
An anonymous reader quotes a report from TechCrunch: The ARCEP, France's equivalent of the FCC in the U.S., wants to go beyond telecommunications companies. While many regulatory authorities have focused on carriers and internet service providers, the French authority thinks Google, Apple, Amazon and all the big tech companies also need their own version of net neutrality. The ARCEP just published a thorough 65-page report about the devices we use every day. The report says that devices give you a portion of the internet and prevent an open internet. "With net neutrality, we spend all our time cleaning pipes, but nobody is looking at faucets," ARCEP president Sebastien Soriano told me. "Everybody assumes that the devices that we use to go online don't have a bias. But if you want to go online, you need a device just like you need a telecom company."
Now that net neutrality has been laid down in European regulation, the ARCEP has been looking at devices for the past couple of years. And it's true that you can feel you're stuck in an ecosystem once you realize you have to use Apple Music on an Apple Watch, or the Amazon Echo assumes you want to buy stuff on Amazon.com when you say "Alexa, buy me a tooth brush." Voice assistants and connected speakers are even less neutral than smartphones. Game consoles, smartwatches and connected cars all share the same issues. The ARCEP doesn't think we should go back to computers and leave our phones behind. This isn't a debate about innovation versus regulation. Regulation can also foster innovation. "This report has listed for the first time ever all the limitations you face as a smartphone user," Soriano said. "By users, we mean both consumers and developers who submit apps in the stores."
Now that net neutrality has been laid down in European regulation, the ARCEP has been looking at devices for the past couple of years. And it's true that you can feel you're stuck in an ecosystem once you realize you have to use Apple Music on an Apple Watch, or the Amazon Echo assumes you want to buy stuff on Amazon.com when you say "Alexa, buy me a tooth brush." Voice assistants and connected speakers are even less neutral than smartphones. Game consoles, smartwatches and connected cars all share the same issues. The ARCEP doesn't think we should go back to computers and leave our phones behind. This isn't a debate about innovation versus regulation. Regulation can also foster innovation. "This report has listed for the first time ever all the limitations you face as a smartphone user," Soriano said. "By users, we mean both consumers and developers who submit apps in the stores."
Apply it to Facebook and Google (Score:5, Funny)
Everyone should have equal access to advertise to Facebook readers. All YouTube videos should be treated equally. Also all search results and ad placements should be handled equally, with no extra charge for preferred placement.
If we don’t get Media Neutrality, companies will have to pay extra to connect with the specific users they want to advertise to. It’ll be the end of the Internet!
Search Neutrality (Score:2)
Also all search results and ad placements should be handled equally
When I search for something, how fair is is that only things with names similar to the words I searched for are displayed? Maybe that Sponge Bob pajama set identifies as a router or fire extinguisher. Who are you to say only Linksys or Cisco can join in the private club of my search results, you RACIST search engine. Let every search return all results possible, and it better all be first page!
Funny, I've never had to use.... (Score:4, Interesting)
Funny....I've never had to use Apple Music on my Apple Watch, and I listen to music at the gym nearly every morning.
Re: Funny, I've never had to use.... (Score:5, Informative)
App store owners, particularly Apple, have a history of blocking or removing apps which they seem provide the same functionality as built-in apps. In other words, competitors.
This goes not only for apps that get fully blocked (e.g. Phone app, lock screen, 3rd party app stores) but also reduced functionality (integration with the control center, full speed web rendering, motion icons, etc.).
Impossible (Score:3)
And what about Windows Mobile. Is this to the point of forcing everything onto Window's platform? If so, this isn't an Apple/Android thing, but a massive handout to MS.
Re: Impossible (Score:1)
No, that's not what the regulator is suggesting. The regulator is simply suggesting that, if Microsoft wanted to make Edge for iOS, Apple wouldn't be allowed to stop them.
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You've got it backwards. Assume, via witchcraft, Windows Phone somehow started taking off. It's about making sure that Clash of Clans can be on Windows Phone, and not only Age of Empires (a MS product). It's about making sure that Walmart and Target can deliver what you order off Alexa. It's about preventing being locked into an ecosystem by replacing all the native options. It's the whole "what combination of features do you want in a distro" vs. "This is the new Windows, suck it up"
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You're Wrong
An unregulated capitalistic free-for-all will tear apart is own support structures.
the inevitable atmosphere of monopoly abuses, employment abuses, legal abuses, environmental abuses, makes innovation much less likely.
Capitalism needs good rules and transparent guidelines to flourish.
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The rest of the world will just move around EU regulations and EU demands.
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True: Like, how Net Neutrality protects consumers from the monopoly power of content providers. That so many laws protect corporations, is a US problem.
They'd be flopping in a puddle, not swimming in a tank and dying very soon after. Or, to abandon the metaphor; most innovation dies: See Edison electric company for a textbook example. Or to put it another way; being most innovative rarely brings the most useful product, just the most profits.
Reducing all software to the lowest common denominator wouldn
Re:Regulation protects, does not foster anything (Score:5, Informative)
Property law.
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Property law
Law != Regulation.
There absolutely needs to be rule of law. Dictates as to what you can or cannot do that are not laws and are not overseen by elected officials are more dubious.
I think some regulation is required; however my statement stands that no regulation fosters anything. They are inherently limiting, that is the point; that may be desirable in some case but let us not pretend regulations are something they are not.
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Mobile Virtual Network Operators. They resell cell service from the big four carriers and offer plans or services that can be cheaper than what the major carrier offer (in particular, per-minute plans can be overall cheaper with them).
Consumers get a choice and can pay less while new businesses employ people.
Without regulation, that wouldn't exist.
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Higher MPG standards combined with pooling the entire vehicle lines caused companies to invent the SUV and light pickup truck.
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Ma Bell. Back in the day before the telecom breakup there was Bell. It was heavily regulated - it could not profit more than X. So instead of lowering prices or rebating customers or any such nonsense, they instead plowed all that extra cash into research.
Case in point - Bell Labs. Which developed a whole lot of very innovative things (e.g. the C programming language and Unix) - all as a direct result of regulations.
Hmm... Nope. (Score:3, Interesting)
When I read this at first I thought, "Hmm... interesting idea." But, my devices aren't blocking me from accessing the net. I browse with web browsers that follow the HTML and other standards so everything is available. I happen to use Safari on the MacOS and iOS but I also have many other browsers which I sometimes use for testing my web pages to see how they load. Frankly, it is really the responsibility of the content developer (webmaster) to make sure their sites are accessible to as many users as possible which is pretty simple by following the standards.
So, no, this is not needed. I call it overregulation.
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It's a free market. Other vendors produce other products. If you don't like Skype or Facetime then use something else. There are alternatives.
Programming languages too? (Score:2)
Wait until he learns about programming languages...
In the mean time, all client/server communication should accept all standards: xmlrpc, json, rest, and whatever competing standard I forgot.
Mobile OS Providers Act as ISPs? (Score:2)
I always thought that even something like Apple's requirement for app developers to use https instead of plain http violates net neutrality at least in spirit. The gatekeepers like Apple and Google effectively act as Internet service providers to their app developer community because there is this hard, mandatory separation inside the device between the access provider (the OS and system services) and the actual endpoint of the communications link (i.e. the application). If a real ISP, say a DSL service p
Result of coprorations hating the free market. (Score:1)
This is a fine example of the pattern of corporations hating nothing more than an actually free market, and of regulation actually making a market more free.
I would even argue, that all regulation that made markets less free was directly created by corporations themselves, to strangle their competition, while conveniently being able to blame "the government" for "regulation". But I doubt there's even a single law nowadays that isn't completely and 100% created by corporate lobbyists. Which nowadays is the s
E E E (Score:2)
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